An Open Letter..
An Open Letter to the Editor of the Talking Fingers, who is looking for Autistics who can communicate with AAC for Volume II
Breaking the silence
Dedicated to all the non-speaking souls, who left this world without a trace
Disclaimer: I take many examples in the following post from animal kingdom, as I strongly believe an Autistic is more closer to Natural world, than to the Concrete Jungle.
Recalling a passage from the book, Straw Dogs..
“If a lion could talk, we could not understand him,' the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said.
'It's clear that Wittgenstein hadn't spent much time with lions,' commented the gambler and conservationist John Aspinall.”
You ask any caregiver of a non-speaking autistic child, they firmly believe that - an Autistic do have their own natural language with which they speak and command, be it with their gestures, or with their body language, or with their cries, or with their laughs, or with their echoes or with their strides or with their jumps.
Verbal communication in human animals is over-rated. Just the way constant speaking is not communicating among life partners. Just see, how short arguments lead to filing of divorce papers.
If we really are so effective with our words, Why do we have family feuds, Why do we have Racial Riots ?
What about nuclear weapons that are facing at each other ?
Words, can be both boon and bane. Same twisted words can be used by Hitler and use it for ethnic cleansing and same twisted words can be used by Gandhi to call for a revolution with peace.
Even human beings cannot survive Indian Streets if you make them homeless for few days, but look at the Prairie dogs, which navigate the Indian streets at ease with their marked territories. It is known fact that Prairie dogs can communicate with its pack about a Man's size, along with finer details like height and weight.
Borrowing one more long passage from Straw Dogs,
"Small mammals communicate the coming earth-quake
or cloudburst. Trees release 'volatiles', substances that
warn their neighbors that gypsy moth larvae are attack-
ing their leaves... extinct packs of wolves and flocks
of dinosaurs enjoyed their own proprioceptive social
communication.... Gaia, the physiologically regulated
Earth, enjoyed proprioceptive global communication
long before people evolved."
Bacteria act on knowledge of their environment: sensing
chemical differences, they swim towards sugar and away from
acid. The immune systems of more complicated organisms
display learning and memory. 'Living systems are cognitive
systems. And living as a process is a process of cognition.
This statement is valid for all organisms, with or without a
nervous system.'
Unfortunately, Non-verbal autistics need to attend therapies which are being designed by Behavioral Scientists (most of the techniques adopted on them are operant conditioning methodologies used on animals), be it positive or negative reinforcements. Simply put, whatever an Autistic can do , can be done by an Animal with a good amount of reinforcement training.
But, unlike animals, Autistics have a human form, they need to execute many things in life to pass a day.
They need to attend school, college and go to work, earn money, pay up rents, get married, find a masked way to navigate a neurotypical dominant world. wherein nobody, absolutely nobody tried to worked on the linguistics of Autistic Body Language and normalized it. If they continue to stay mute even after 5 years, they are denied by schools, colleges, and workplaces.
If an Autistic, picked up speaking and can recite a Shakespeare poem by heart. He might still fumble to flirt with a girl, he might say "Can you check my Spotify playlist which I made for you" instead of saying "You have the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen". Their communication is like Penguin bringing stones to impress its mate. They have a complex communication pattern, which needs to be understood alike by the Neurotypicals and linguists.
If you stand in midst of a forest, butterflies do not visit your shoulder and say "Hi" or the deer doesn't come to you on it's own and do a small talk. So is an Autistic, they need a deeper connection to communicate with us, we need to wait for them to speak up. Like all the Brits wait for the queen to speak, instead of you prompt her to make a conversation.
My debate about inclusion for non-speaking is by far very very tricky task ahead. Because neurotypical world never mastered this skill of reading unknown or invisible or unspoken. They started showing signs of doubt towards the neurodiversity movement, they think that it's only the 'SPEAKING' autistics who dominate the Neurodiversity research and profound Autism is sidelined, so let's not give them a chance to question us and let's show them that the silence do have a voice and it is far wiser than we think it is.
Here is my proposal for Volume III, Talking fingers, Ask the Caregivers to be the voice of the silence and let History remember their talking fingers and names forever.
That's all.
Cheers,
Pal
