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Toxic vs Neurodiverse

Is the label “toxic” destructive to the neurodiverse?

Over recent years, the term “toxic” has become common usage to describe people who have a negative impact on those around them, and are considered manipulative, selfish, lacking empathy, etc, for others. There are many variations of this description, but we are all reasonably familiar with it these days.

Keeping our own mental state safe and healthy can often require us to distance ourselves from those who display these characteristics. Life can be difficult enough without complications from those who have these tendencies!

However, the term has become something of an overused cliché, and can often be used as an excuse to simply avoid doing the hard work of self understanding and navigating relationships with empathy and compassion. I’m not suggesting that we no longer recognise the destructive nature of those with narcissistic “toxic” tendencies, but rather to make sure we aren’t part of the problem!

Neurodiversity (ND) is a spectrum that describes the cognitive functioning and processes of the brain. The most common is ADHD, but it includes a wide range of often overlapping conditions such as ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), Aspergers, Dyslexia etc.

For those with some form and level of neurodiversity, many of the cognitive processes with communication come across as offensive, rude, self-centred, blunt etc, without the appropriate filtering exercised in “normal” communications and relationships. This often creates huge issues, which the “normal” person can interpret as “toxic”, refusing to accept that the ND person actually cares and is genuinely confused by the reactions they get.

When ND people question the reactions of others, they may get accused of things like gaslighting, which only serves to worsen the destructive communication cycle. This creates very difficult problems for ND people, often compounding their struggles in relationships. I’ve experienced this myself as an ND person, and constantly see it in others.

Some of us learn to recognise how we come across to others and can adapt and monitor our language and responses, but it’s hard work, and our impulsive and spontaneous nature means we often say things before we realise. Then there’s also the way we act in response to other’s emotions and reactions, which can come across as indifferent or uncaring. We can be forgetful and distracted, or hyperfocused to the point of being dismissive of what’s going on around us.

All of us are complex and nuanced creatures, and for those on the ND spectrum, life can be difficult enough without being labelled as “toxic”. So please, don’t use the toxic label as an easy way out of personal growth and wisdom.

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Good/Bad Christianity

As most of you know, I post some rather scathing stuff about Christianity.

There’s a few reasons for this, the most obvious being the level of abuse I went through in churches – from subtle forms of gaslighting and manipulation, through to some pretty heavy stuff. Basically, I’ve experienced the full length and breadth of what Christianity can offer.

It’s taken me many years to sift through the mess and discover my own sense of self, my place in the world, and what sort of “spirituality” works for me.

Most of my posts are directed towards the extremists and fundamentalists, who embrace an extremely toxic form of religion that has little to do with the things Jesus apparently preached.

Strangely, having participated wholeheartedly in that type of religion for many years, I actually have a high level of empathy for those in the “system”. I genuinely understand how one can get hooked into it. I appreciate the patience of friends over the years, many of whom stood back and let me go through it all, and some who confronted me with the harsh reality.

In the end, both ends of the spectrum helped me see what I was doing, but it was those who really challenged me, directly but politely, that caused the biggest shift.

Sure, I’d dig my heals in, and do the mental gymnastics needed to justify my beliefs, but eventually, straightforward logic and reason won me over, along with experiencing genuine, unconditional love, with no expectations and conditions.

So for those of you who would agree with how disgusting that form of Christianity is, but get rather disconcerted that I’m painting you all with the same brush, let me qualify things.

For me, the entirety of Christianity has become irrelevant, and that colours my opinions. But I totally appreciate those who have a “real” loving faith that reflects the nice bits of the bible and embraces doctrines that truly benefit themselves and humanity.

Here’s the thing though…

Christianity, in any form of “good” or “bad” is 100% subjective, built on traditions and assumptions, filtered through emotions in a way that builds deep levels of confirmation bias. This means that, for the “good” ones, they look for good in the theology and doctrines. They see through the lens of love.

But Christianity doesn’t make people compassionate and empathetic! Yes, that’s a bold statement, but I’ve found the reality is that the people who find Christianity as a place of deep love and acceptance, that helps them with existential angst, and provides a loving and supportive community, were already like that in the first place!

“Good” people become “good” Christians.

But Jim, there’s so many testimonies of “bad” people getting saved and turning their lives around!

So, here’s the other thing…

When you look closely at those testimonies, and if you have the chance, the personal lives of those people over longer periods of time, we find a very different picture. Nearly all embrace the most extreme forms of fundamentalism, becoming religiously obsessed, with obnoxious agendas to “get everyone saved”. They are the ones who exemplify bigotry, condemnation, exclusivity and division. They preach hell and damnation.

They have taken the things that make them “bad” and wrapped them up in Christianity. This creates a veneer of pseudo love, that other Christians (mostly fundamentalists) approve of. This means that even the “best” Christians accept them, to greater or lesser degrees, as just passionate and “on fire”.

In all my interactions with Christianity over 40 years, through a huge range of denominations, and working with countless people in many capacities, I’ve found this to be true. And yes, there are people who were originally loving and compassionate, but got caught up in “bad” things, so their testimony does have some validity. But even then, most of those in this category don’t become the religiously obsessed I’m talking about.

But wait, there’s more!!

As I mentioned, the entirety of Christian beliefs are a subjective construct, with no empirical evidence whatsoever. But that’s the case for ALL religions! The “spiritual” is something we have no evidence for, apart from anecdotal stuff, emotional experiences, visions etc. There’s nothing to actually prove that ANY religion is true, let alone THE truth. It’s all various degrees of dogma.

BUT, that’s actually OK. Because the real benefits of any religion are in what sort of person it makes you (or helps bring out in you). It’s all about metaphor and allegory, shaped by stories and legends etc. Whether they are literally true isn’t really important – it’s how we live that gives religions any credibility.

So yeah, when we embrace dogma, we are instantly on the “downward” path. Instead, as most “good” Christians do, hold your beliefs lightly, ready to change and grow. Embrace questions, fight through dogma, be open to answers from anywhere. Trust the deep love that is already in all of us (although that can be buried very deep for some).

“Good” Christians don’t care about converting you, getting people saved, and making sure they believe the correct doctrines. They just want to get on with loving people, allowing their loves to speak for themselves. They innately live with empathy and compassion, with a belief system that reflects the simple example of the unreligious aspects of Jesus.

So get out there and just live life to it’s fullest – with love, compassion and empathy, and quietly believe whatever you want.

[Note: I use “good” and “bad” as descriptors, rather than specific moral judgements on the people. In some ways, I’d prefer to use “beneficial” and “detrimental” as they have different connotations, but that’s a whoooole other topic!]

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Is altruism truly altruist?

altruism (ălˈtro͞o-ĭzˌəm)

  • n. Unselfish concern for the welfare of others; selflessness.

One of the traits we most admire in humans is altruism.

We reward and revere the most altruistic in society and recognise our desire to be that way ourselves – but usually as an unattainable goal.

So what makes the most altruistic of us capable of such acts? Well, it’s not selflessness! On the surface it appears to be, but there is a deeper motive in every human – self-worth.

We do good, selfless things because at the foundational level, they make us feel good about ourselves. We make sacrifices, go out of our way, to help others without thought of our own needs. We do have genuine empathy and compassion for others – absolutely! But that’s the emotion triggered by our paradigms and not the core motivation. Ultimately we do good because we feel good.

Sure, we can do it as an act of discipline, actively denying our need to feel good about it – which pretty much amounts to masochism and self flagellation, LOL. Or we can recognise that feeling good about doing good is why we keep doing it. And the more we do it, the better we feel, which inspires us to keep doing it!

So stop pretending that we are being a martyr – to others and, more importantly, to ourselves. Recognise and embrace our need for self-affirmation and self-worth that really drives our altruistic actions anyway. This avoids the false humility and builds integrity and honesty in ourselves and our relationships.

Sadly our conditioning (especially when religion is involved) regards this as unhealthy and even sinful.

We have a lot to unlearn!

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Religious freedom?

The big debate is currently around people having the rights to exercise their religious beliefs – freedom of speech basically. But the real issue isn’t our rights to exercise our faith so much as questioning the veracity of those beliefs in the first place.

Let’s face it, if I was a Satanist wanting to introduce religious education into schools and petitioning government to make live animal sacrifices legal…. well we all know how well that would go. “But it’s not the same thing!!” we cry “everyone knows Satanism is wrong and evil”. Really? Technically, it’s a religion, and has the same legal rights as any other religion. So why shouldn’t they be free to exercise their “firmly held religious convictions” and be free to openly discriminate against Christians?

The questions we should all be asking are around the belief systems themselves. We should be looking at why any religion discriminates against another human for any reason. We need to dig deep into religious culture and question the veracity of every belief and how they affect our society. We have to have the guts to challenge beliefs that damage and divide – beliefs that create pain, suffering and abuse. To ignore these questions and blithely grant the status of “religious freedom” to Christianity (or any other religion) is to be complicit in the damage caused!

So lets have the guts to be honest and upfront. Let’s challenge those beliefs and expose them for what they are instead of wasting time around people’s rights to express them.

In saying that, I’m not calling for some Christian hate campaign. On the contrary – we’ll never get anywhere by simply fighting and discriminating against religious beliefs. The key – as always and in all things – is love, patience and empathy. That’s not the same as tolerating a destructive belief – it’s standing up to them with facts, reason and patience. If we mock and belittle those beliefs we create bigger barriers and lose any hope of speaking truth.

It’s a narrow road we walk when trying to simultaneously bring truth and love to humanity. We must be strong enough to say no, but also compassionate enough to bring understanding and break the walls instead of making them bigger. Our common humanity, love and compassion for ALL must come before, and/or be the basis of, any religious beliefs. If not, those beliefs should not get any freedom of expression to the rest of the world. Believe them of you want, just don’t expect to have any rights to inflict them on others.

We can do it – if we are prepared to cut to the real issues with bravery and compassion.

Live loved!

 

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Popper’s Paradox

Free speech,

Tolerance,

Unconditional love…


 How do these things work in reality?


 In 1945 the philosopher Karl Popper proposed the paradox of tolerance.

In a nutshell he said “if a society is tolerant without limit, their ability to be tolerant will eventually be seized or destroyed by the intolerant”, or to paraphrase that: we can only survive by being intolerant about intolerance.

As we all know, white supremacy and all it’s ugly variants are making headlines and empowering those who secretly embrace those views to speak out. There’s also the current political mess in Australia over gay marriage, where conservative christians are doing all they can to stop it.

So where do we draw the line on free speech and religious freedom?

We have to draw it somewhere, or our society will become victim to it and we will loose those very freedoms!

The balance is in how we confront them. If we use “violence” (physical, vocal or in any form) we are playing the same game, and when confronted in this way, the intolerant simply dig their heels in and use the opposition to fuel more intolerance.

Respect for their humanity is key. To recognise that we could be the same if we’d been raised in a different environment is a sobering thought. It’s a learned trait, something we aren’t just born with. So compassion and empathy is the key to any communication, bypassing the rhetoric and reactionary thought processes and focussing on understanding why people are like this.

At the risk of being overly simplistic, it comes down to a lack of love. They never experienced the type of unconditional love themselves that breeds self worth and empathy for others. They are broken and angry, but instead of looking within, they are lashing out at the rest of us.

But they still have to be stopped from spreading this disease, and that’s where we have to draw lines. Although love is the only “cure” for these people, we still have to deal with the affects they are having on our society.

The alt right issue is pretty obvious, but the christian right style of bigotry, especially towards LGBT people is more complex because of the religious freedom problems. And that opens a very large can of worms because it will eventually confront all religions on issues of bigotry and tolerance.

Perhaps it’s time we stop being afraid of challenging people’s belief systems?

We can do this with love and patience without compromising our stand. They believe they are doing the right thing, so we have to talk to their hearts, bypass the religious rhetoric and present compassion and empathy for the broken as our motivation.

We also have to remember that for most christians it’s a case of “the bible says so”, and that’s a tough nut to crack. But with the same level of compassion we can help them to understand that their views are in error, as have been so many christian opinions over the centuries, that had to be adjusted and morality, ethics and science outgrew the ignorance of ancient culture.

We must be strong but loving – compassionate but without compromise – draw the lines but help them gently step over them. It’s hard work, but if we can step back from our own reactionary thought processes we will be able to exercise the love they need to see in action.

 

 

(Originally published 24/8/17 on Jim’s Awesome Blog)

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