Sensitivity

I'd been contemplating writing this article since I woke up this morning. I wasn't sure if I was going to. What convinced me to go ahead and write it is because it's about a conversation I'd been having with a fellow colleague in the ColdFusion community and I believe they decided to stop talking to me because of my opinions on the subject. So although this isn't even remotely about ColdFusion I'm going to go ahead and open this up to broader discussion here since this is my blog and I'm interested in hearing others' opinions.

This started because I was pretty disgusted and disturbed (although not particularly surprised) by the recent decision of the Bush administration to deploy military troops within the US to supplement civilian police. It's been my impression since I was in my teens, that it's generally considered one of the singular most important events in world history (to say nothing of US history) that the US was created as a representative democracy with the intention of deliberately limiting the power of government. This is essentially the exact opposite of that. This is the short road to a police state.

The Kent State shootings happened in 1970, a good four years before I was born. I wonder how many people of my generation understand the meaning of "four dead in Ohio", or why it's important. Although that was the National Guard. The only good news to come out of this radical turn for the worse is that we now have some new "non-lethal" riot control weapons that the Army have tested in Iraq. If you've read the literature on those however, you know that even the microwave gun designed to excite the water in your skin has the potential to actually cook people if the operator leaves it on a little too long or if, god forbid there were some kind of malfunction like the one that killed Ray Cox. Not to mention that there are still existing concerns about damage to the eyes with this weapon and we have no idea about the potential long-term effects of exposure. So in theory, blinding someone and letting them die slowly of cancer a few years later is apparently better than a quick and relatively painless death from a bullet.

However as appalled as I am that the blow-back from this isn't (at least yet) as dramatic as the blow-back from the PATRIOT Act that got some of it repealed, this article isn't about the Insurrection Act. I just wanted to explain the context in which this conversation occurred, so people would have an idea of how it came about.

The subject of conversation that convinced this colleague to stop talking to me is swearing.

When I read about the Insurrection Act I felt it was an important thing for people to know. So with that in mind I decided to post it to Twitter and in doing so tried to form a message that would get people's attention. The objective was to maximize the number of click-throughs on the link, to improve the reach of that article. And in the process of formulating an "attention grabbing" message, I used "the f-word".

I was actually rather surprised to find myself suddenly in a debate about why I chose to swear. After what I'd just read, it seemed to me like anything I might say about it would be off-the-table for consideration as being offensive, when compared to the horror of deploying the military as police here. I suspect a few f-bombs were dropped on the floor of Congress when the Insurrection Act was presented. I don't believe the FCC's rules apply there.

I'm going to post the conversation here, although out of respect for my colleague (who apparently doesn't respect me anymore), I'm not going to post his name. Although I may have offended him, I still think he deserves to be treated with respect and dignity. So I won't post anything incriminating. Unfortunately Twitter isn't cooperating and I can't get a list of my outgoing direct messages, so I'm going to have to reconstruct my side of the conversation from memory. Granted I could have just omitted that fact and likely no one would have been the wiser. ;)

Colleague (C): FYI... repeat offenders are free to be profain... but they do get censored from my companies networking. (tollerance required here)

ike: sorry

c: Understand... it's a negative side of culture... a way of expressing frustration that isn't expressive... more crude, thanks for response.

::short pause::

Why do you swear?

ike: (this caught me off guard more so than the previous messages and my recollection of the response is particularly fuzzy) ... same reason I speak English - it's part of the culture I grew up in, so it gets repeated

c: You created a framework because you think. Culture is not excuse for being crude. ( my take of course )

ike: (again, memory is still pretty fuzzy - apparently I said something to the effect of "I don't see anything wrong with swearing in particular" - I *think* this is also where I said "I'm also not offended when Scrum calls me a pig because I'm not a Muslim.)

c: Let me rephrase, I eat whole grains because it's right. VS People who eat refined (badly named) white breads because they see nothing wrong.

ike: (actually I think "white people" are badly named more so than "white bread" -- it actually is white. :P Though I also disagree that we can place any kind of moral value of "right" or "wrong" on eating healthy... but I didn't ask, so maybe he has issues with the sustainability of the manufacturing process. Don't remember what I said here tho.)

c: I don't see usually means I didn't actually consider... think it through. aka inCONSIDERite. :)

ike: I appreciate the idea of considerateness - at the same time the words we choose to dislike are about 100% arbitrary (Is there a better way to express this? This is a real question, not a rhetorical.)

c: I will just say that is not correct IMO.

ike: Most people feel that way, though Muslims react just as strongly to the word "pig". (I'm pretty sure this could have been explained better, but I'm not sure off-hand how to improve it.)

c: I am not at all Muslim, but their reason is NOT arbitrary. That is just disrespect of your fellow man.

ike: Arbitrary meaning not based on anything scientific (then I provided this article as an example).

::short pause::

I'm pretty certain that science can refute their beliefs about pigs (then I provided a link to the Wikipedia article about Bonobos as another example).

c: Well, you have your out. I have no scientific reason to bother myself discussing this with you farther.

Being able to refute points does not make the offensive nature of speech arbitrary. It's rationalizing crudeness...

As best I can tell, he seems to have chosen to dislike the word "arbitrary" and taken offense to that... And honestly it had me concerned that I might have misused the word. So I went and looked it up on Dictionary.com to see if that was part of the issue. Dictionary.com gives a few definitions:

1. Determined by chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or principle: stopped at the first motel we passed, an arbitrary choice.
2. Based on or subject to individual judgment or preference: The diet imposes overall calorie limits, but daily menus are arbitrary.
3. Established by a court or judge rather than by a specific law or statute: an arbitrary penalty.
4. Not limited by law; despotic: the arbitrary rule of a dictator.

Looking at those definitions I can see where someone might feel that I had misused the word. I was using definition #2 "Based on or subject to individual judgment or preference". And really it's only the introduction of the word "principal" in the first definition that I might see as a point of contention. I hadn't intended to imply that a person's choice about how to view swearing wasn't a matter of principal. Only that it is very culturally dependent and the culture in which you're born is not something you control - that is determined by chance unless you want to bring the discussion into a religious context. I didn't want this to be a religious discussion, although I suppose it may have been without my knowing.

Which leaves me having made the comment that Muslims reaction to the word "pig" is arbitrary. And by this I never intended to imply that their principals are unimportant, only that their importance is subject to the cultural context. And frequently those cultural contexts amount only to "tradition", as in the case of the passage in Leviticus being passed down and then someone having made the claim that the pig is "is the only animal that invites its friends to have sex with its mate" - from the article I posted earlier. That description is known to be inaccurate because the sexual habits of Bonobos are... well if there were a word to describe the opposite of monogamy, it would describe Bonobos. And in an evolutionary sense, Bonobos are much more closely related to humans than pigs. I think globally there are far fewer people who eat monkeys than eat pigs... but then again I eat beef, whereas I once read in a relatively reputable news outlet that the sale of Red Bull was once banned by the FDA in India for fear that it might contain ingredients that came from cows. It certainly seems plausible given the nature of the Hindu religion that's dominant in their country.

An example of choosing fairly arbitrarily (by opinion) to be offended by a particular word in our culture would be "sh*t". Why that word? The word "crap" is synonymous in every way. With very few exceptions it means exactly the same thing. Yet it's considered okay for me to say "crap" on TV, but "sh*t" which is identical in every way other than the sound and the letters, would get me a hefty fine from the FCC as punishment for saying it. As best I can tell, that is the definition of the word "arbitrary". They both mean the same thing - one is offensive the other is not - and the defining factor is preference. We prefer the word "crap", but the reason for preference is unknown.

I grew up in a culture in which my parents read the story of the "three little pigs" to me and played "this little piggy" with my toes. So I have memories of the word "pig" being used in the context of terms of endearment. The mere notion of that is appalling to a person who grew up in a dominantly Muslim country (or so I gather from what I've read - I don't have any survey data or anything).

So I would be enormously embarrassed if I found that I had accidentally called a Muslim person "pig headed". To the average Christian it's just a euphemism for stubborn. That's one issue I don't have to worry too much about because I generally just say "stubborn".

But, because I do swear on occasion I've now lost a potential business associate. The context is surprising (re: Four Dead in Ohio) and it seems ironic to me that he described my reasons for not being offended by it as "rationalizing crudeness"... If you familiarize yourself with the study that's been done on cognitive biases like cognitive dissonance, the Milgram Experiment, the bystander effect and confirmation bias, it seems to me that rationalization likely makes up the dominant part of how our minds work.

There's actually a memorable quote from the movie the Big Chill about that notion of rationalizations being the better part of our psychological makeup. Granted this isn't a scientific analysis, but I think the notion is pretty convincing:

Michael: I don't know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They're more important than sex.

Sam Weber: Ah, come on. Nothing's more important than sex.

Michael: Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?

The definition of rationalization actually is choosing arguments to support a previously made assumption instead of looking to facts. Carl Rove has decided arbitrarily that Republicans have a better understanding of government and what makes good policy. So he'll rationalize away this recent about-face with regard to military deployment in the US. That rationalization is the same force that allows him to declare that being Mayor of a city of 9,000 people is impressive if the Mayor is a republican, but being the Governor of the State of Virginia (an order of magnitude larger) is a piddling insignificance when the Governor is a democrat.

And that ultimately is a lot of what we do when we chose our religious preferences is deciding between one set of rationalizations or another (see rationalization of the badness of pigs via the previous comments about their sexual habits). And I'll qualify that by saying that if anything I'm a Unitarian, NOT an atheist. I realize some people may find the above statements offensive and I apologize for that. It is however merely my opinion. And at the same time I personally believe that people's religious beliefs (and freedoms) are vitally important! That doesn't mean we don't get to choose them however, or that we don't have any control over them. I strive to be a "good person". Whether I strive to be a "good Christian" or a "good Muslim" or a "good Buddhist" is secondary.

Having said all that, I must say that it's often very difficult for me to understand what to do in these kinds of situations. I found out about autism a couple years ago and although I've lived with the experiences for years, I'm still learning how to manage the problems caused by Asperger Syndrome. I am actually getting counseling although it's not a quick fix. One of the more common problems is being "too honest" or "too blunt" as described in this article. I've been suggesting that particular article to a lot of people recently because it's relatively short and I feel it does a pretty decent job of clearly and succinctly summarizing the problems faced by people with Asperger Syndrome, a set of problems that are neither clear nor succinct.

This colleague of mine has apparently (based on his last comment to me before deciding not to speak to me anymore) decided that I'm plenty smart enough to understand why he's offended and that I therefore understand and simply don't care (as described in the "attitude problem" article). That's not the case. Is this blog the result of an apathetic or insensitive attitude?

If I had some other kind of handicap for example if I were blind or wheelchair bound, the problem would be easy to identify and address. There are government regulations that require office buildings to be wheelchair accessible. But while there are government regulations that require concessions for people who lack the use of their legs, there aren't any specific government regulations that will require employers to make concessions for a person who like myself lack the use of some "people skills".

I think more often than not what ends up happening with people who have Asperger Syndrome like myself, is that others assume because we're technically savvy that we therefore must be equally as smart about other things. And it's especially deceptive with regard to "people skills" because while there are a wealth of classes to teach technical skills (I had programming classes from 3rd grade through high-school), there isn't much in the way of "people skills" classes. Sure there are communications classes and the like, but the majority of "people skills" aren't taught in a classroom setting, which is where an autistic person needs to learn them.

People skills are normally acquired through observation and instinctive imitation -- and so usually people skills are something that "everybody knows". But just like it's not true that "everybody can see" or "everybody can walk", it's also not true that "everybody knows" these things. And right now a large part of the problem is that there's very little awareness in the broader community that some of us actually don't know these things -- and so we're expected to know them.

My last employer had asked me to express my concerns on more than one occasion. One day I expressed a concern about something -- simple disagreement about some code and the requirements doc. It wasn't personal for me. But my opinion differed and I ended up being reprimanded for disagreeing (the disagreement lasted less than 2 minutes - the reprimand lasted about 30). It was obviously very personal for my boss. I tried to explain that I couldn't tell the difference between when he wanted me to express a concern (because he'd asked me to) and when expressing a concern was going to result in my offending him and being reprimanded because I disagreed. Unfortunately he did nothing to try and understand or help me address that problem. I had actually disclosed my condition prior accepting an interview in the hopes that having knowledge of the condition would help. I still believe it can if both parties are involved in creating a solution that works for everyone.

So hopefully this blog will help with two things. One it may help raise awareness about autism and two I'm hoping that some of the feedback may help me improve my social skills. :)

Thanks

p.s. Some of my thoughts on this subject had also been percolating from a previous discussion about cultural sensitivity on Sam Larbi's blog. Hopefully he won't mind my linking to him here. :)

Though knowing that I have this deficit of people skills, I may also be "asking for it" when I publish my comic strips, as a few of them have been rather controversial.