Militant autistic manifesto: If we are in this together, why am I so afraid you are going to sell me out?

One of the worst, most deceitful gambits that the curebie movement has come up with to date is the whole “theory of mind” or “lack of empathy” gambit. Seriously, if you are going to try to blur the line between autistic and psychopath, you need to work a lot harder these days than you did in the 1980s, people. But having said all of that, it is worth talking about a few things before I get to my main point.

Social services should be about investment, not charity.

A common argument used by conservative shitheads who do not wish to pay the “enormous” costs of welfare to people other than themselves is that if welfare transfers to the poor were eliminated, small organisations that are formally known as charities would pick up the slack. Aside from the usual stupidities associated with this argument, it is well worth examining a few concepts associated with it. For one thing, the idea that privately run, disparate, and highly specialised charities can collectively replace a centrally organised and carefully planned system of allocations is laughable at best and complete bullshit at worst. Furthermore, because charities are only beholden to the people that finance them, impartiality is a big problem. A certain “charity” in America, for example, refuses to even talk to the people that it makes most of its money by claiming to represent, not even allowing them a spot at the table, so to speak. If a government organisation were to treat the people that it claimed to represent in this manner, the media would go after it with a vengeance.

The value of life

Everywhere you go, and no matter what you do, you will constantly run across advertising or drama in various media proclaiming how beautiful and wonderful life is. About two-thirds of the way through The Godfather, when Vito dies of a heart attack, he is heard to say that life is beautiful. Note that in this instance, I am referring to what goes on in the novel.

Path dependency, a threat to our bright future

Now that I have completed some experiments in integrating graphics with entries and looked at the results, I feel it is time to go back into a more serious mode in terms of subject matter. For this entry, I will talk about the problem called path dependency. Path dependency is, bluntly put, a threat to one of the things that we as a species desire most. We desire to progress in a forward direction, to leave the worst remnants of our past behind, and to have better than previous generations did.

The first question I am sure you will ask is, “what is path dependency?”. The best way to answer is through analogy. Imagine for a moment that you are a lion, wolf, or similar large animal of prey that depends upon a fast run and a powerful bite in order to win meals. You are chasing game that is a tiny bit slower in the long haul, and of a size that will keep you eating enough to make the expenditure of energy worth it in the end. But out of the corner of your eye, you see game that is far easier over the long term to bring down, and will yield a much bigger feast for yourself once the hunt concludes. So what do you do?

Why inappropriate or insufficient help is not preferable to no help at all.

Everything we do in life, whether it be flipping off a police officer, firing a gun, or scratching one’s face, has an objective in mind. The dying art of social services is no different. In a society where competition is emphasised over cooperation to an excessive point, there are always going to be people who have difficulty fitting into a social group, or a society as one might call it. And over the past thirty or so years, the emphasis has shifted so far toward competition that it is getting more like a fight with axes or meat cleavers than a licensed boxing match. Which means that social services are strained to the point of breaking, and beyond.