A New Direction, Not Entirely Unexpected

I haven't gone back through this blog to see if there are any posts that dealt with a particular moment in my life that should have sent alarms blaring, but now I can see it for what it really was. 

Starting in 2009, I began to suspect that I had Aspergers. At least that is when I began to suspect again; as Tracie pointed out, I felt I had it long before, but somehow forgot. 

No, the event that should have sent alarms blaring was in early summer of 2007. I was being moved to another job in my contract position, one that had the potential to become a real, permanent position. This was not in the technical support area, where I was far more comfortable, but in a retirement and benefits position. I graciously accepted the position, as in the early 1990's I did a similar job when I worked for AT&T. This should be a piece of cake.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

Even though the source material wasn't really that difficult, I struggled. For some reason, I just could not wrap my head around all the nuances of the position; the variables, the terms, the numbers. It was so very confusing to me. In the end, I completed the training, but barely, and soon found myself doing a job that made me feel panicky every day. Ultimately, I contacted the placement company, and they found another job for me, back in the technology support area. 

The panic I felt in with that class and position I had felt before, many years before, when dealing with algebra. For some reason, even though I love science and use plenty of maths, algebra is something I simply cannot do. This goes back to high school. When I applied myself in other maths, I succeeded. Never with algebra. 

I put the failure of both the algebra and that position to many things; the trainer, the instructors, the fact that, at least where the benefits job was concerned, silly human variables were involved. 

Surely, it couldn't be me. 

But to be honest, I knew better. 

Being and appearing fairly bright are really two different things. There are some things I absolutely excel at, what my childhood neurologist called "tunneled interests". There are things I'll good at, such as language. Then, there will be things that I simply am not interested in, and things I will simply struggle with, even if I wanted to understand them.

Never did it enter into my mind that those struggles were due to a disorder. Even when I began to suspect that I might have Aspergers it didn't, though I suspected the problems with algebra were probably in some way involved.

In actuality, there are many things I struggle with, and always have. 

Since September of 2014, I have been officially diagnosed. Aspergers is no longer a diagnosis; I have an autism spectrum disorder, with serious comorbidities. Knowing now what I do has made looking back an interesting exercise, and I can now see many instances when it was certainly the undiagnosed problems at work. 

These diagnoses existed in some form or another since my childhood. My doctor was hinting at that. But an Aspergers diagnosis would not exist until the 1980's, after I graduated high school. Many of the struggles I've had my entire life can be traced back to this. If only I had known then, I might have changed what I could have, and certainly would have been better prepared for others. 

There is more, and I will talk about them.

Here.

When Will We Ever Learn

I remember the first time I walked into a public library with my Dad. I had gone before, but it was always just a fast affair. It was summer of 1976, and Dad wanted to walk around, so I did the same. Being thirteen at the time, I no longer needed to visit the children's section. For the first time, I was looking at adult books.

The sheer number of books at the Regency Branch was astonishing to my young mind. But there weren't just books. There was music, records, plenty of them. There were also newspapers and magazines from all over the country, and I flipped through the "New York Times" for the first time. Sandalwood Junior and Senior High had them as well, but I never paid attention; here, they leaped out at me.

The sheer bulk of information available at my fingertips left a lasting impression on me. For me, libraries are every bit as important as any other civic institution, and perhaps on par with churches in relevance. Keep in mind that this was still the mid 1970's, and most mass consumed communication at the time consisted of radio, television and the various publications. Keeping current usually meant that you were maybe a day behind, though with television big events could, and did, preempt anything showing at the time.

Still, the amount of disinformation that I encountered (and frequently believed as well) was amazing. By the time I graduated, I was learning how to discern the chaff from the wheat, and still struggle to move beyond innuendo and rumor. For me, that library, as well as the one I worked in at school, were brains to borrow. It was all free.

Around the time I entered college, the first computer networks were being traced between many of the local colleges. The potential power, the promise, they held amazed me. I knew that the day was coming when those same college networks would connect everyone. It had been speculated for years that this was coming. By 1995, thanks to companies like AOL and early social sites like The Well, millions of homes were connected. Today, it is rare to encounter a household without the Internet.

When you think about it, this is sort of like a digital library of Alexandria... with scandal sheets, bulletin boards and diaries for the reading. While not perfect, there is plenty of verifiable information on the Internet, real honest information. It is not perfect, but it is current. News is almost instantaneous. So is innuendo and rumor.

Somehow expecting that at an age when news and information could be had in mere seconds that people could verify information for themselves, to discern the chaff from the wheat, was simplistic and naive.

While the facts may be the facts, belief systems are harder to overcome. If something looks too far fetched but fits into our belief system, it is easier to not look for those facts than to overturn those beliefs. For us, our perceptions are more important, too valuable.

I'd be a liar if I said I wasn't a victim of my blind faith at times.

The inability to acknowledge facts when they come up against our beliefs is not just a human weakness. It is a fatal flaw, something those who wish to control us seek to control at any given chance. In this day of oligarchs and plutocrats it is easy to be manipulated. Even well meaning, though sometimes occasionally misguided, friends and family fall into these traps and rifts can form. The powerful are not so misguided, and their pockets deep, their will strong.

But not invincible.

For their control depends upon an uniformed public, one which won't verify facts. They may seek to control that flow of information, and in many cases have succeeded in turning the tables. Facts, though, are immutable, and sooner or later resurface.

It is up to us, therefore, to try to stay ahead of the hucksters. They have plenty of flash, plenty of noise. We must look beyond all of that. We must learn.

We Get What We Pay For, And Someone Else Pays

A few months back I was researching my Schwinn Spitfire. This is a classic, from the days before they were known as "beach cruisers" or even "cruisers"; they were simply single speed, coaster brake equipped bikes. In the case of the Spitfire, and its near stablemate the Tempest, they were dubbed "industrial bikes". Industrial indeed, for at 22kg, they are extremely solid.

My Spitfire was made in April 1978. At the time, it sold for $139, not a cheap single speed but fairly typical for the period. When I found the bike, as a pile of rusty parts in early summer of 2008, it was basically worthless. But, adjusting for inflation, it would have sold for over $450 new.

That seems pretty steep, but in fact many well made bikes pretty much cost the same. A comparable Huffy model from the same period was correspondingly less, of course, but would still be over $300 today.

These were mass produced bicycles. Huffys were common to most department stores, while Schwinns by that time were relegated to shops. The lesser bikes, your AMFs and Murrays, plus a few off brands such as Setico (common to the local chain, Pic-n-Save) could frequently be found for much less, usually the $50 to $75 range. You don't see too many of them around, and for good reason; they were poorly made, usually from plants in Taiwan.

Those plants in Taiwan would eventually improve, and much of their production would be taken up by manufacturers in the People's Republic. A few years ago, Huffy and Schwinn were acquired by a large conglomerate, and the production moved to those same manufacturers.

Which is why you can still find new Schwinn and Huffy cruisers for less than a couple hundred dollars. Suffice to say, they are a far cry from their ancestors.

But they are inexpensive and every new school year or Christmas they leave the racks in droves and find their way onto American streets. And, due in no small part to their cheap construction, frequently find their way to dumpsters within a couple of years, when they are sometimes replaced by bikes of similar quality.

Logically, simply spending a good amount of money on a good quality bike is the right thing to do. The larger retailers know this, but seldom stock them. Their business is in turnaround; bikes break and are replaced. For the most part it is a good economic model for retailers, but a poor one for the consumer.

But that's not what this is all about.

The drive to keep consumer prices down has had several negative effects on our economy for the past three decades. The first is the mass migration of manufacturing to areas where the costs can be kept down. While this has sometimes resulted in good products, the vast majority of these products have been of lower quality, cheaply made and soon landfill fodder.

The second is an artificial devaluation of consumer goods in some areas, and a resultant flattening of wages. Because the costs of a vast number of consumer products is so low, the drive by the worker to demand even modest increases in wages decreases. Forget the fact that some things have kept pace with inflation or have even surpassed it; we can still fill our lives with cheap consumer goods, so we feel as if we are living a good life. That feeling is what the producers and marketers of these goods are banking on, so to speak. As long as those cheaply made trinkets that clutter our lives can be supplied, we should be expected to feel good.

The trade-off, though, has been a reduction in real manufacturing jobs, stagnant wages and a lifestyle that is artificially buoyant. A good many real productive jobs have been replaced by service jobs, which lack the same security.

We didn't mind, of course, as long as we could have that lifestyle. People here may have lost jobs, and people abroad may be forced into factories with abominable working conditions and horrific wages. As long as we could have our big televisions or even cheap bicycles.

Yet we have embraced this lifestyle, even as we have been racing towards along with an economic model that was unsustainable. What I fear is that we have yet to hit rock bottom, and it may be all of us who have yet to feel that impact.

The Mad Dash

Complaining about other drivers seems cliche, let's be honest. Today, however, I feel compelled to. I live near a major road that, just a few years back, wasn't. When I first moved here, it was a two lane suburban street. The problem was that it lay along a proposed route that would connect a very important part of Jacksonville to another very important part of Jacksonville. Portions of this route had already been built, with some on top of preexisting infrastructure while others were purpose built for the remaining leg.

Seemed like a good idea to the traffic planners.

Aside from the one purpose built leg, most of the route runs through neighborhoods, sidewalks bordering its asphalt flanks, with well delineated (though I think narrow) bicycle lanes. The speed limit for most of this run is 45 mph, typical for most suburban arteries in such settings, with a small 55 mph segment through a less congested area, then back down to 45 for the remainder.

Of course, nobody drives the speed limit anymore.

But this route has gotten almost dangerous.

Wait; strike the "almost".

Today, as I drove home from work, I found myself doing 55 in the long 45 stretch. I was in the left lane, preparing for my left turn, and while I normally don't like to speed at all, not doing so in this situation is foolhardy.

The trouble is that people were passing me, in the right lane, at speeds that were probably closer to 70. If they were simply going around is one thing, but they maintained these speeds and that slot until they disappeared down the road. If it were one or two people is one thing, but this seemed to have been almost every single one of them today.

And if it hadn't been for the rain, chances are they would have encountered bicyclists a little further up the road. Indeed, they may have, beyond my turn off.

Which brings me to another terrifying moment.

I have to make a left turn into my neighborhood where there is no light. This means crossing the two westbound lanes. Gauging the speed I need to cross the remaining lanes should be easy, assuming that the oncoming traffic is doing 45 mph. Which, of course, is not the case. Just like the eastbound jets, we now have westbound jets, also moving along at speeds greater than 55. This is the flow I have to go with during my morning commute, when my thirty one hundred pound Volvo 240 wagon is still warming up.

As anyone can tell you, getting an older station wagon up to speed is hard enough, let alone one that weighs in at a ton and a half. Then, not even a third of a mile up, I have to get into the left lane to turn off (I take a different, though parallel, route in the morning). In other words, I have to scoot my one and a half ton elderly grande dame of a car into the left lane, where many a frustrated test pilot seems to be living, all the while being pushed by others.

It can be argued that I wouldn't be having this problem if I were to buy a newer car, perhaps a lighter one. Yes, that'd be swell, except, of course, I live and die by the adage "buy new, wear it out, make do or do without". Besides, if people were doing the speed limit, or even just a little over it, this would not be a problem; my car is quite capable of speeding along, it just takes a little time to get there.

But this is just crazy. Forget coffee, my morning adrenalin rush is provided by my fellow drivers.

I could so go into how this seems endemic of a society that lives faster than it should. I won't.

Though I just did, of course.

The Rounding

When I was young, I really wasn't particularly active. Due to a number of health problems, my activities were restricted to those less strenuous. I did a number of things most children did, but not those that pushed my body too hard.

Because of that, as well as one of my health problems, I was a little pudgy. Earlier, I could only be described as round, but as a teen, I always carried around a belly. It was my cross to bear, and I still do.

At least my activities were stimulating, at least for me. I built models, rode my bicycle, explored the woods behind our house, walked to Pic n' Save for my parents, went to the library by myself, stuff that seems, in my still young mind, to be fairly harmless. I did play some sports, though the last time I played football, it shattered my collarbone; no future in the NFL for me. No, most of my activities were really centered around learning and exploring. Not school work, but self directed education.

The other day, we went to the water park. Right now, swimming is a real pain for me; I have an injured shoulder, the one that many years earlier I busted playing back-lot football. My plan was to laze around in a float and maybe wade in the wave pool. Being a poor swimmer, even when my shoulder isn't hurting I prefer those activities anyway.

When we arrived at the water park, our friends had already been there for awhile in our shared cabana. I'm body shy, and always dread the moment I need to remove my shirt to hit the liquid. You see, I still have a bit of a belly. A bit more, in fact. Thin arms, thin but somewhat well-shaped legs, and a belly. I worry that people will look and comment, as they are so apt to do.

Fortunately for me, I was in good company.

I would have to guess that a good three quarters of all the adolescent boys there were rounder than I ever was. Their parents, namely good ol' dad, were my size or bigger. Well tanned, muscular, frequently tattooed but with bellies that sometimes rivaled my own. Definitely the wrong sort of oneupmanship.

In total, I would have to say that two thirds of the males there had my body form.

For the first time in my life, my shape wasn't the exception, it was the rule.

The parents' condition could be forgiven. With age comes weight, usually, and once you hit your late thirties and early forties, it becomes a challenge. But these kids?

Even as we were heading home, I noted a number of local boys who wore the same body shape. Sadly, there were also a number of girls who looked the same.

Maybe we've become too focussed on activities that require more mental exercise than physical. It would be easy to spout off the numbers from the government about how we've become less active overall, but that's not my point.

I feel for these kids.

I know that by the time I reached sixteen I was capable of making twenty mile round trips on my Schwinn Continental 10-speed. I may have had a belly, but I had rather muscular legs. Some of my other friends who did the same were veritable rails, with barely any body fat; how I envied them. Yes, I still built models and yes I was still a bookworm. But my parents rarely took me those places I needed to get my things, and when I became interested in girls they seemed even less interested in giving me lifts to see them (Mom, Dad; you were wise). If I wanted something, it was either walking or bicycling.

To be honest, I loved my bike.

I don't see children today riding bikes as we once did. Maybe it's because the most common ones today, derived from off-road and mountain bike designs, are heavier than the bantam weight Schwinns, Huffys and Raleighs of my youth. Perhaps its our now fear based culture; we are afraid of letting our children wander beyond our sight.

Or maybe it's this thing I'm typing these words into.

Maybe it's all forms of distraction that keep us indoors. We've built our worlds around things that require that we sit and stay. Our children are growing up in those worlds.

Don't get me wrong, I feel that the computer and our networked world has been one of the greatest creations in human existence. With the click of a button I'm chatting with friends oceans away. I don't play most computer games but there is a Wii in the house, and it is a whole lot of fun. Many of the children I worked with told me about all the things they have made their game systems do, about how many hours they sat and explored all the little niches of their virtual worlds.

Sat and explored. It's fun.

So is bicycling, or flying kites, or hitting a few at the diamond.

And really exploring.

A Republic, Madame, If You Can Keep It

The story goes that as Benjamin Franklin was leaving at the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, a woman walked up and asked the good doctor if we were to have a monarchy or a representative government. "A republic, madame, if you can keep it," was his response.

The wise doctor knew perhaps too well how easy it would be, could be, for any form of government to be manipulated.

By the end of the 19th century, with the Constitution being interpreted in ways that I'm sure our founding fathers had never intended, the path was being blazed to allow the rich and powerful to manipulate our government more to their likings. There have been many times when they have been pushed back, held in check by the law. Eventually, though, they found ways to have the very population whom they were seeking to control vote to allow the powerful to do just that.

We the people were, and are, ultimately voting against our best interests.

It saddens me to see the depths of the divisions within this country today. Regardless of the differences, be they skin color, religious, philosophical, political or economic, these divisions seem to be growing in magnitude and width.

This is exactly what the powerful want.

In so allowing this divisiveness to flourish, they can go about their business of actually holding the reins of real power, namely economic.

I'm not sure if we've passed a threshold of no return yet, but I worry that we are fast approaching it. Woe be unto us if that happens.

As long as we allow the forces of fear and irrational thought to rule the day, as long as we allow rumor over fact, speculation over what can be substantiated, govern our actions, the powerful, whose interests are certainly not our own (and indeed can be said to be light years from it), will continue to manipulate us.

It is time for the people to realize that it is indeed "we the people". Failure to do otherwise will take this once great land of ours down a path that many have tread before. Remember, it is not military or economic strength that truly defines a nation. It is in how that nation stands for its principles, and for its people.

Happy Independence Day.

Immobilizing the Masses

Last summer, the band Wilco released a new single, "You Never Know", a very George Harrison-esque song. In the first verse, the singer, Jeff Tweedy, sings "Come on, children, you're acting like children, every generation thinks it's the end of the world." He managed to capture, in that verse, something I've noticed for a long time; we seem to be braced for the worst at all times, and this psychosis seems to be passed from one generation to the next.

And the newer generations are better equipped to experience that paranoia even better than the previous.

Our generation has taken it to new levels, in fact. With the advent of the Internet and the 24/7 news cycle, our need to believe that the sword of Damocles is hanging over our collective heads is taken to even greater heights. What is this accomplishing?

Nothing.

This mass hysteria, this belief that the end is forever nigh, is a poison, a neurotoxin on our society. It freezes us, it paralyzes us. We are unable to think clearly, we are confused, easily befuddled, and for the most part perpetually angry but with no real focus.

Trust me, there are people out there who will help us to focus that anger.

A quick look throughout history shows that those who are willing to help us focus that anger have their own agenda, and you may be assured that ultimately your best interest is not in mind. Think of them as fear peddlers, who also throw in a heaping helping of hate with every sound-bite.

A really good example would be the politician who can only win an election by demonizing his opponent. Or a minister that is always waiting for the Second Coming, and they need your donations. Or a newspaper that can only maintain circulation at the expense of rational thought.

In many circles, this is referred to as FUD - Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, an effective tool to achieve control of populations by playing on their neuroses.

As long as they keep us befuddled, we can't really think.

Do they honestly believe it?

Maybe, but the cynical side of me can't help but notice they are laughing all the way to the bank. Some of the people who are playing on our fears are raking in money, be they politicians, talk show hosts, televangelists or entrepreneurs.

They play us for suckers, and if I had to guess I would say they have done a very good job of it. We are effectively paralyzed.

Even worse, we are also controlled, and like a spider that has received the sting from a ground digger wasp, all we seem to be able to do is lay still while our very souls are devoured by their schemes.

Remember, people, this is still a democratic republic. If we wake up and shake off our fear and move forward, we, the people, can take it back.

And that is what they fear the most.