A Ramble About Newtown

I've been more or less silent on this subject so far. There's been a lot of pain, and it is all too easy to add to it even with well intentioned words. People have been hurt and traumatized severely by what happened in Newtown, and anything like this should never be used to make or score points on opinions or viewpoints. I've read a lot of articles and headlines using the tragedy to make points about everything from gun control, to prayer in schools, to abortion. It really does turn my stomach.

It turns out the shooter had Asperger's syndrome. As many of you know, this is something with which I am intimately familiar. Immediately once this became known, certain parties have come out to assure people that his disorder had nothing to do with the killings and that there are many, many good people with the disorder who will never harm another human being. The concern is that somehow it will spark a fear of people with Asperger's or autism if people find out the shooter had it, and so every attempt is made to downplay it. His Asperger's syndrome had absolutely nothing to do with it they assert.

As I said, I am intimately familiar with this disorder. I am one of the few people, if not the only person, who can refer to having the disorder in the past tense due to bio-feedback treatments. What's more, I can remember what it was like. I have family members with the disorder as well. I know this demon very well, and I know what it can do with the wrong stimulus. As a teenager, I knew how easy, too easy, it would be for me to shut off any pretense at empathy with other people and take a life. It scared me then when I realized it was true. I also know how difficult it would be to do the same thing now that my brain is functioning normally and I am able to feel what other people feel.

To be sure, there are thousands, if not millions of people with this disorder, the vast majority, who make the choices every day to try and fit in and live normal lives. They choose to not act on how they feel inside or how they perceive others feel about them or make them feel. But you must understand that to be born with Asperger's syndrome is to be born into a life of misunderstanding, ridicule, and personal emotional pain that never really goes away and that you don't really understand. This is true whether or not anyone around the person intends to be the cause.

To have Asperger's syndrome is to not be able to read the intentions or feelings of other people, and often to not be able to process your own. It also means that you are likely to be more academically intelligent than your peers. Because of this latter thing, people expect you to understand social cues, facial expressions, and relational subtleties that your brain can't process in the moment. The mirror neurons which allow for true empathy between two people simply don't function correctly in someone with Asperger's.

Often, someone with Asperger's is at least four years behind their peers in terms of social and emotional development because the part of the brain which processes it can't do it at the same rate as everyone else. When most kids move on to seeing things as right or wrong, black or white (normal around 7 or 8), a kid with Asperger's is probably still focused on “mine, mine” (normal around 3 or 4) and only makes progress depending on the severity of the disorder, and the perceived understanding and acceptance of the people around him.

This causes two problems. The first is that the kid isn't socially appropriate for their age group, and their peers know it. Kids are cruel and taunt the kid for being different. The kid with Asperger's has no idea why they are making fun of him, and why he can't make friends like they can. The second is that the kid with Asperger's can't feel it right away when someone truly cares about him and loves him, or when someone is offering real friendship. The only emotions which may register in real time are strong emotions like pain, anger, fear, and hatred because strong feelings are what will push through the brain's processor faster. Getting across to the kid that he is really cared about takes an incredible amount of time and energy. More than many people are willing to devote to someone who isn't a member of their family.

All the people with Asperger's who live peacefully have, at some point in time, made the choice to live with that pain and not seek retribution for perceived injuries and trauma. They have done so because they have made the personal choice that to do so is right and causing harm to those who have “wronged” them is wrong. This choice doesn't make the pain go away, sometimes it only compounds it as they struggle to fit in and pretend to be “normal”.

As I read the descriptions of the twenty year old kid who did the shooting, he seems to have had all the classic signs of Asperger's. The difference between him and the rest of us is that he didn't or couldn't make that personal choice to not act on his pain. Now, the reasons why he didn't can only be speculated at. Did he have any kind of religious upbringing? Did he have any kind of a moral compass or guide? Was it because his parents divorced a couple of years previous? I haven't the foggiest idea, and only he really knows.

The truth is that there were only victims in Newtown. The shooter was among them. This is a hard thing to accept but it is true.

People don't want to think that way though. They want to find someone or something to blame so they can persecute it and stamp it out so that it can never happen again. “If we can only eliminate guns...” or “If we can just return God to the schools...” The one which Autism advocates are afraid of is “If we can just contain or control people with Asperger's...” This is a perfectly human response to this kind of a trauma, but it is a misguided response. The human response is to try and control or eliminate the cause of our fears, but the truth is that such things can't be controlled.

No, the thing which must be controlled is fear itself, and fear can only be controlled through understanding, compassion, and forgiveness. It is hard to forgive such a grievous crime. We want to judge and hate the person responsible, and somehow forgiving that person makes us feel like we're somehow condoning it and thus somehow ourselves responsible. But people don't commit atrocities like this unless they're somehow in pain themselves. That pain creates fear, which then causes anger, which leads to hatred. This twists the mind until the most heinous actions seem good and reasonable. Denying the existence of this progression only makes it more likely to occur. It creates a cycle which then spirals outward to inflict damage on everyone it touches as it infects everyone.

Forgiveness doesn't condone the action, but it does accept some responsibility for it. And in order to keep an atrocity from happening again we must all accept some responsibility for it happening in the first place and not try and shield ourselves from that responsibility.

Twenty seven innocent people died that Friday, but there were twenty eight victims.