The Thinker

A psychologist did diagnose me with Asperger's. Actually, I don't
put too much stock in psychogolists or any of this society's
authorities. But there are many things different about me and I do have
some very real deficiencies. Growing up, my social deficiencies were
quite marked. I never understood what was going on socially. But every
year, I caught on a bit more and a bit more. And then my spatial
reasoning and manual dexterity are both very poor. And, due to the same
disconnection of the hemispheres, I have no depth perception.
But I've worked very hard to overcome these problems. When I started
playing tennis, I was positively awful. But I played Varsity Tennis in
high school and made a decent showing. Likewise, I learned to juggle
quite well, which was something that always eluded me. And though
officiall, I don't recognize facial expressions very well, I think that
truly caring about other people is really more important than glib
repartee.
I don't believe there's anything wrong with me. I believe there's a
lot right with me. What I lack in spatial reasoning and manual
dexterity, I make up for in contemplation and vision. And I may not
respond to social cues in real time but I believe I understand a great
deal about humanity. And you can't understand humanity without
understanding sociality; we are very social creatures. We rely on each
other to get along in this often harsh world.
The problem with me and the problem with society is that there's no
market for a person like me. And if there's no market for a person like
me, we are on the wrong track. Because I am a thinker. Let me repeat
that, I am a thinker and not some airy, head in the clouds
thinker.
I was blessed with colossal brain power, power that was meant to work
through humanity's problems, to find solutions to our economic,
political, and social dilemmas.
But there's no place for such a person in our society. We settle our
politics with TV debates that are becoming incredibly mindless. Our
economy is a haphazard junk-yard. And as for how we conduct our
humanity: I pray there's no God because if there is, this society will
burn in hell. But anyway, I'm resigned to the fact that there's no
place for me to be who I was meant to be. And it's too late, anyway.
I'm a shadow of the man I was at fifteen, full of ambition and
fire.
But in literature, I've found a way to lay out some aspects of my
vision. And I don't do it to entertain the few readers who it now
finds. My work, from the most ragged poetry to the most elaborate
essays, is my service to humanity. It is my fervent hope that someday
this society will see the error of its ways. And then, in the great
eruption, there will be need for philosophical guidance.
I pray that my work may provide some small part of that. It's meant to
paint the horrors of our age so that people will never forget. But it's
also meant to give some glimpse of what a better society should like.
And some of these glimpses could only have come from the suffering and
persecution I've gone through. Amen.