Dora's Corner: Learning To Be Understanding: The Art Of Autism!

...So I have friends and family with children who are autistic.  Heck, these days, having children with autism or any form of autism seems to be the "new norm"!  I am not sure why we are seeing more and more children with autism, ADD, ADHD, and such.  It makes one wonder what is going on with the world and/or the environment.  Actually, some of these used-to-be childhood illnesses are found in many adults.  Maybe the latter were never diagnosed properly or at all. 
Let's face it, back-in-the-day, there was a stigma about going to a doctor for mental issues.  Most often, people's mental-health was not addressed.  Mental issues were not talked about--most often it was all taboo.  Going to a psychiatrist or a psychologist was not for the sane person; it was a form of being broken and/or weak.  Regardless of one's mental state, it was just assumed that everything and everyone was okay.  So maybe, just maybe, because of all the "sweeping under the rug" which was done so long ago with people's mental health, maybe it all just got so out-of-control and created the pandemic that we now see, as aforementioned, in relation to illnesses such as autism.

I am no expert by any means.  People with loved ones with autism are way more informed than me, and they barely brush the knowledge of autism.  There are no real experts really or there might be a cure or a sound reason why some people get autism.  Studies have shown that the environment might be a factor.  The things we use to make things/build things, to grow food--all of it is atrocious.  Some people do not want to believe in the scientific studies which prove that what we are doing to pollute our world (i.e. toxins) is having a detrimental effect on all of us.  The greenhouse gases, fracking, spilling poisons into our water, soiling our ground, spewing toxins into our air--every negative action that we take against our earth, without batting an eye, is not just ruining our earth, but it is, in fact, ruining our health; mental and physical. 

Like I previously stated, I do not know how autism (or other mental illnesses) began or why it attacks certain people, all I know is that we need to seriously educate ourselves.  This dilemma is not our burden until it affects a loved one.  Perhaps that last sentence is a little jaded, but nonetheless, it is the truth.  We look away at these things which cause uneasiness in our lives.  If we do not have to see it then we do not need to address it and the issue simply goes away.  I hate to intrude upon your perfect little world, but if we do not take part (via a collaborative effort)  to understand illnesses, then we will in a way keep sweeping these issues under the rug, and nothing will be fixed.  Future generations will continue having such illnesses until such illnesses become embedded in all of our DNA.  Maybe they are already part of our DNA.

But for now, until we can get better answers, just stop expecting people with autism and such to keep conforming to what we assume to be a perfect society.  I never liked the word perfect.  What in the hell does it really mean anyway.  Utopian societies are not real.  They have never been real.  We live in a cruel world.  However, it does not mean that we have a right to keep being cruel.  Let's just stop expecting perfection from everyone and how about, once in a while, we conform to other people's needs.  Hence the quote below!

Just my take for the day!