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Lila Krishna's avatar

A few thoughts:

* Reading for a lot of kids is the one thing they can do without someone telling them they are wrong. It also is the easiest way to stay out of the adults' way. My mom was anxious and everything I did triggered her anxiety. My uncles liked to get me out to play but they were impatient with my lack of hand-eye coordination, so it was stressful to play with them. So sitting down and reading was great. There's no way to read wrong lol. I notice this among my friends' kids who started reading at like 2 or something. There was nothing for those kids to do autonomously.

* Maybe parents don't let kids just do things on their own enough without a whole bunch of rules. Thing my kid likes best is when we're just cherishing what she's doing on her own, maybe stepping in to help a bit. Feels like highly involved parents don't let kids do this, like they want to teach kids what to do etc, which is annoying. But if a kid has learned to read already and picks up a book, or is going on a tablet, they get autonomy over there.

* I don't find nerdy Indian programmers, at least from my generation, being 'autistic' in any way. They usually tend to be highly attuned to grownups and know the right things to say and do in high visibility social situations. I think this difference between indian and american programmers probably exists because in the US, getting into nerdy things or sitting down for a long time to focus on things and persist at difficult things happens when you opt out of social stuff. The normal course of education doesn't encourage this to this extent. But in India, especially if you're Hindu, there's a lot of stuff you can get good at if you are the sort who'll sit down and focus for long hours, which is encouraged greatly by adults. You can get great at classical music, you can learn a lot of religious material, you can learn a lot of math, you can read a lot and write a lot. These things are not odd esoteric interests, but things everyone learns, so you can get quite far with some interests and the adults will be so proud of you. So reading for long durations etc fits into a social context. You don't have to do these things solo, unacknowledged.

* Every now and then in the Bay Area I come across a young person who is smart and very sensitive, and it seems like they found "their people" in a weird sex niche doing drugs. Their childhood seems to have had a lot of promise, but once they stepped out of their small town, they had a lot of trouble fitting in and ended up in a place like this. When I think of similar people I grew up with in India, they usually are really into indian classical music, and even when they move to the US, they find a group of people into classical music, and that culture typically is full of traditional, innocent people who have been trained with a lot of rigor by teachers who treat them like family, and they bring that culture into whatever new group they have for music. Those groups have a familial vibe with no ulterior motive. Even though I grew up in that culture, I feel stifled when I come across such groups, and I think that was hugely because I had this whole feeling of not belonging anywhere. I actually like them much better now lol because I've worked on my issues. Anyway, I feel like this is what those smart sensitive young people need, but in the Bay, it seems like that niche is dominated by predators.

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Darian Δ's avatar

I may be biased in knowing only high IQ autistic people, but the part on autistic people lacking theory of mind and cognitive empathy just feels backwards. I'm trying to juggle several ideas as I read the article and hopefully come to the comment section with something intact.

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I enjoyed this greatly and find I'm best suited to speak around such things by way of mystical/religious terminology; as a child I was more LB and began interest in STEM, psychology and linguistic commonplace academic study, until I got tired of that, found it improper, unhelpful and learned to enjoy the merits of the so called right brain. I am much happier now residing as "The Master" in open awareness and refining myself to a point via the emissary without becoming lost in that separation. There are however a "hierarchy of masters" which I'll get into later. Quite fractal.

I'm also coming to find LB RB problematic, not by you, but in general; the methods of discussion appear to me mostly left brained--even in the attempt to get us to appreciate The Master, The Emissary steals the show!

I may be wrong but they appear to me to be 2 modes of function more so than localized definite hemisphere dependent phenomena—the midbrain acting as chooser of which program or lens, brain state to inhabit. People become rooted in a pattern of behavior for various reasons, but most people may still train themselves into the position of that controller, chooser, sovereign sort of self behind the two modes of awareness.

In magic we sort of learn to grow from LB into RB, and then from that expanded state recognize the synthesis of both via the Crown or "Throne of God" central to these opponent processing forces.

In this way Saint Michael redeems the serpent--so that both of these "angels" might serve The Lord. These left and right, dark and light, red and blue, circle square, yin yang forces are always known to be descended/subservient/permeated by a secret third to which these lesser two are "wings". This third is The Dao, or supreme God under which the apparent god and satan (L and R) are manifest.

In Steiners cosmology this would relate to Lucifer(R) and Ahriman(L), there is great risk in worshipping the right brain "as the most beautiful angel" and forgetting its necessity of subservience of something even higher than it--namely the mid brain or "Christ". There are RB dominant disorders as well, there is a required balance; I've begun calling these two poles and a third mediating force which comes into your awareness by balancing the two--I say comes into awareness because this third is from whence the latter left and right are birthed, but it becomes disguised.

The three must be balanced, but the midbrain acts as mediator and organizer—this is the point in which "consciousness" interfaces and spreads out into the body, what you refer to as "your self", that Identity, begins its unfolding from that fine point at the center of the head

We see that same tripart distinction in the head heart and limbs.

For any interested in the topics of left and right brain and want to actually begin doing practices to shift toward development of "higher mind", fixing the problems we inhabit via improper attention--let me know or read some of my work. I provide quite direct pointers to the praxis of all this, though our terms may differ, our goals are the same.

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