Autistic People Who Join Cults

I was recently listening to a podcast about the Heaven's Gate cult and its members' mass suicide. For anybody living under a rock or who wasn't yet born in 1997 when this was all over the news, Heaven's Gate was an offshoot of Christianity that taught its followers that the cult's leader, Marshall Applewhite, was the second coming of Jesus. They believed that in order to get to "the next level" (heaven, if you will), spaceships would come to Earth and pick up the followers for a trip to celestial paradise. But then when the comet Hale-Bopp was discovered, Marshall Applewhite came to the conclusion that the spaceship that was to escort his followers to paradise was trailing the comet. It would not land, and the only way to board the ship was to "leave one's vehicle"-- one's body. That is, commit suicide, so that one's soul will be sent to the ship.

On March 26, 1997, one of the surviving members anonymously called the police to report the mass suicide (he came forward later about his identity). The next morning, the story was all over the news. The Heaven's Gate website had so much traffic that morning that people often had to keep hitting "refresh" several times before the page would load.

I was sixteen years old when this story was in the news, and I was simply floored by it. How could anybody believe that committing suicide would send their souls to a spaceship trailing a comet? I remember that my dad commented that it's too easy to lead people down a path, that it's how Hitler was successful in getting people to buy into the Nazi ideology. Now that I'm older and have read a bit about evolutionary psychology, I have a better understanding why. There is no limit to what people will believe if a charismatic leader knows which buttons to push. Scientists, such as Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins, have hypothesized that this tendency to believe what your parents, tribal elders, or some other authority figure tell you helped our ancestors survive in the African Savannah, a setting that was rife with predators, disease, and rival tribes who would fight with you over resources. People who were skeptical of things like, "Don't swim there. You could be eaten by a crocodile" were less likely to survive and reproduce. And these people's brains didn't differentiate between the aforementioned sound advice and something absurd, such as, "If you don't sacrifice an animal for the gods, there will be a terrible famine."

Evolution, of course, did not account for the fact that by 1997, a huge portion of the world would be living in houses, have plenty of food at their fingertips, and not be in situations where there would be predatory animals that could eat them. In 1997 (and in 2019, of course) the human mind still carried baggage of its evolutionary history. This inexorable drive to believe the absurd claims of a charismatic alpha male and to cave into peer pressure was alive and well. It is one of those things that makes us unique as a social species.

That's why it shocked me when I recently found out that one of the members of Heaven's Gate was autistic (and to clarify, he had left the group itself before the mass suicide, but still maintained the beliefs. When he learned about the suicide, he killed himself so he could join his friends on the ship). Autistic people are less likely to follow leaders, to cave into peer pressure, to do the social dances that most of us take for granted. In fact, many of them will just see these dances as utterly absurd and ridiculous. What, then, would drive an autistic person to join Heaven's Gate?, I wondered. But after thinking about it for about five minutes, I realized that in a way it did make sense that some autistic people might join a cult. They're the exception, not the rule, of course, and they probably join for different reasons than their neurotypical peers. And when I generated my hypothesis as to why, it just saddened me.

I can't speak for the guy who joined Heaven's Gate, and in case his family is reading this, I don't want to upset them by speculating about the guy's environment (and I don't want to name him either, even though it is of course easy enough to Google). But in general I can see what might lead someone on the spectrum down this destructive path. I can see it from examples in my own life.

Think about it: You go through your entire life hearing the same damned mantra from well-meaning but tragically misguided family, teachers, and peers, "You don't know how to interact with people." "You don't get it." "You're inappropriate." "You make people uncomfortable." And so forth. You try hard to figure out the social rules, but they are not written in stone and are subject to change upon context. You deal with unbelievable anxiety. You are unintentionally gaslit by the same people, who tell you that you misinterpret friendly teasing as bullying (even though you know damn well that it's bullying), that someone who said something bitingly personal and nasty was "just frustrated and wasn't trying to be mean" (but you knew damn well that he was), and who even dismiss egregious behavior by friends as normal. Your life consists of internalized psychological warfare, and eventually don't trust your own perception in regard to the most mundane, everyday things. It's when I consider this that I realize that yes, of course, a cult might seem like it makes sense to someone in that position.

In cults-- or even some sects of mainstream religion, for that matter-- the rules of social interaction are highly regulated: Don't use certain words; eat this, not that; eat this meal at this time and say these words before the meal; don't interact in a particular way with the opposite sex until you're married; have children by this age; and so on. Or in the case of Heaven's Gate, sex is evil, so sterilization is recommended. Again, I don't want to speculate about the autistic member of Heaven's Gate in particular. But many of us on the spectrum are asexual on top of all the other crap that makes our lives difficult. Imagine, too, being told that your lack of (or relative lack of) interest in dating, sex, or both is wrong, unhealthy, a mental illness, etc. Even if people don't tell you these things, you might feel left out if everyone you know is running off to get married and have kids. Join this group, and you won't feel left out when you're the only person who isn't passionately screwing somebody. Not only will you not only not be expected to get laid, you'll be expected not to get laid.

The more I thought about the aforementioned as possible factors that would make an autistic person join a cult, the more sense it made. Although a vulnerable autistic person is in a much better situation if they're coming of age in 2019, in 1997 the Heaven's Gate member was living in what I call the Final Decade of the Dark Ages for autistic people, an era in which to most people "autistic" meant you didn't talk, and "Asperger's" was a virtually non-existent word. Not to mention, it was also an era in which an autistic person's eccentricities and difficulties were dismissed as "behavioral problems". I am sure that a lot of people are tempted to say, "Oh, you know what? Autistic people are just more gullible." Yeah, okay. Some of them are, about things like a kid trying to screw with you by sarcastically saying, "You're soooo cool!" (stuff like that never got past me, however; my radar was always finely-tuned to such things). But in terms of believing cult leaders? No. A lot of neurotypical people join cults, and let's not forget that many neurotypical people believe in some of the more absurd claims of mainstream religion, such as that a 600-year-old man built an ark that could fit two of every animal species on the planet. So no, please don't try the "autistic people are more gullible" crap to explain away why they might join a cult.

Thinking about these things made me angry, angry enough to put my fist through a wall. It's only been in the past decade really that mainstream society is starting to see the hurt they've inadvertently caused autistic people even when they meant to help them. It's only now that they're seeing the anxiety they cause when they try to make autistic people adapt to the neurotypical world, but never vice-versa. The story about the autistic Heaven's Gate member is really heartbreaking, but in hindsight it's not surprising.

The Long Silence, Part 1: Writing to Survive

The Silence

The long silence began at age eleven and continued until I was twenty-eight.

For almost twenty years, my parents- Mom especially- unwittingly sent the message that everything about me was wrong. In particular, my self-identification as a tomboy and corresponding gender expression were subject to extreme scrutiny which in turn was a huge source of mental anguish for me.

As I entered adolescence,  Mom began pressuring me to mature into a "young lady". She didn't understand why I so vehemently refused to wear low-cut shirts, short shorts, and other "girly" clothes like the rest of the girls. I tried telling her that I was a tomboy-- I figured it was just another accepted way of being. I didn't realize that it was something that most people considered a stage, something that I was expected to outgrow. I should mention that when I called myself a tomboy, I didn't mean in the tongue-in-cheek way that some people use it when saying, "Oh, I like sports, I'm a tomboy" (I hated sports at that time, anyway). I meant that it was where I fell on the gender spectrum (though such terms did not yet exist, or were at least not well-known) and Mom kept telling me that I was growing up and needed to learn how to be more feminine. We often got into intense fights that left me feeling scarred.

Eventually, it seemed clear that the word "tomboy" was a dirty word-- when Mom did say "tomboy" it was laced with disdain. Time passed. I was 13 years old. Then I was 14 years old. Then 15, 16, 17... and I was not outgrowing it. I knew that I never would. But how in the world could I tell Mom this? She sounded so damn sure that she was right and that I would "change my mind someday". Even though I was sure that I was right and that Mom just didn't get it, I lived in abject terror that I would have to eventually change and conform. After all, it's a tired cliché that children grow up to say, "Mom was right. And I thought I knew everything." If that didn't happen, what would it say about me?

Even though Mom understands better now, I don't think she knew how much mental anguish this whole thing caused me. It was something I thought quite deeply about as I suffered in silence, knowing that I couldn't talk to them about my thoughts, and I don't think she or Dad were even remotely aware of it. They certainly didn't know that I wrote about it. It seems that they just saw me as a fish that was aimlessly swimming around, crashing into the side of the fishbowl.


Writing Throughout the Silence

How in the world could I handle this series of rejections from my own parents who honestly and sincerely thought they were helping me? I wrote stories. The great thing about writing is that you can say what you want without people interrupting you to question, correct, or criticize. This cathartic writing started when I was twelve. Maybe when my parents read this blog post, they'll realize how deeply I was thinking about certain issues when they dismissed my viewpoint and awareness of who I was as me not understanding the world and just being a teenager who thought she knew everything.  

Cathartic Writing #1: A String of Events

I often came up with odd ideas for cartoon characters, stories, and jokes. If I showed them to my mother, she got upset about everything that was off-color in any way. She always threw in my sex as a factor as to why such ideas were inappropriate for me to write about and draw. It became clear that I could not predict what would set her off, so I stopped showing her anything for a decade. I felt asphyxiated in so many ways that seemed related to-- to put it bluntly-- what was between my legs. 

I wrote and illustrated a story, A String of Events, in which a character goes through a similar asphyxiation. I had a cartoon series, Radioactive Squirrel, which was my answer to the children's cartoon Darkwing Duck. Just like in Darkwing Duck, Radioactive Squirrel has an adopted tomboy daughter, in this case a girl named Slick. There are some differences: Radioactive Squirrel's brother/sidekick, Flash, has an adopted son named Spunkster. Coonster, Radioactive Squirrel's pilot (a raccoon, of course), has an adopted daughter named Ghouler, who is a bit like Wednesday from The Addams Family. All these characters live together.

In this installment of my series, Slick gets the lead role in the school play. This role is in a Western that requires her to use a gun. Radioactive Squirrel does not want Slick to be in such a role in the play because he thinks it's inappropriate for girls. But she tricks him into thinking that she has been assigned another role. On opening night, a movie director sees the show and invites Slick for the lead role in his upcoming movie.  Radioactive Squirrel, already fuming that Slick has tricked him, does not want her to be in the movie because it might be too violent, have foul language, and make her play a role that is too masculine. Flash takes matters into his own hands, allowing Slick to be in the movie.  

Here is a scene from the story, with minor grammatical errors and all. The dialogue from Radioactive's mouth is eerily similar to the kinds of things my mother said-- and how she said them. You'll see Radioactive stutters from his upset in one line:

"Well, I got the leading part in the school play! They called me 'one heck of an actress'!" [said Slick]

"Really?" said Radioactive. "Who do you get to be? A princess? An angel?"

"No," said Slick. "This is a play about the old west. I am a teenage cow-girl who fights a desperado and saves the day."

"WHAT?!" said Radioactive. "My little girl has to be a-a fighter! That is not suitable for a little ten year old girl!"

"BUT DAD!" said Slick. "That part required a girl, and Ghouler gets to be the phantom who is the desperado's assistant!"

"I don't care what Ghouler has! Besides, for her, the phantom part is very inappropriate! But I won't say anything to Coonster, because Ghouler is not my daughter and you are! Besides, for them to decide a girl should get this part is very wrong!"

If you think I didn't know what I was doing, the title page of this story reads "This is dedicated to those who feel the need to blow off a little steam." 

Cathartic Writing #2: All Right Now

Okay, so I'm probably not the first kid to write about their parents' yelling into a story as a way to vent. But these feelings about gender policing did not go away, despite Mom's insistence that I would change my mind as I grew older. Not only did they not go away, but they also grew more complex. As my teen years rolled by, it became increasingly clear to me that I was never going to feel or even want to be more feminine, no matter what Mom said.  But I felt frightened, wondering if she was right. I mean, look at all the movies about tomboys. In Now and Then, for example, the tough tomboy, Roberta, becomes feminine and dresses girly as soon as she gets her first crush. Mom often told me that I was the only girl who didn't want to be feminine. My cousin, Melinda, who was well-read in gender issues, assured me that it was not uncommon, that I was not alone, and that some people are actually do more than gender-bend, and are actually transgender. Mom's response when I worked up the nerve to tell her this? "Melinda has a lot of radical beliefs."

Silence reinforced, time to write.

What if, I thought, there was a story where a tomboy didn't turn into a princess after getting her first crush? What if, instead, the person in question understood her, just like my friend Jonas (a camp counselor and my first crush) did? What if he became her friend, just like Jonas did?

The story, which takes place in the mid-'80s, features Rachel, a 12-year-old tomboy who spends time primarily with boys (something I wish I had done as I probably could have been spared a lot of the duplicitousness of teen girl friendships). Rachel's mother, who had accepted her tomboy ways over the years, suddenly starts pressuring her to change. She wants her to dress more feminine, act more feminine, and play with girls-- not other tomboys, but feminine girls. Much as I found sanctuary at my left-leaning summer camp, Rachel finds sanctuary at the house of her best friend, Jake. She develops a crush on Jake's 23-year-old brother, Bernie. In this story, the two families have known each other for her entire life, so it is a bit odd that Rachel suddenly gets this crush. But get it she does, and she finds herself spending hours talking to Bernie about the way her mother keeps pressuring her to change. She says many of the same things I said to my cousin and camp friends at the time (sounding more 16, the age I was when I wrote the first draft, than 12). Unfortunately, I can't find the original draft (though I'm sure it's on a data CD somewhere), but here is some dialogue from another draft I wrote a year later:

“You need to talk to your parents. You can’t continue having fun this summer if you have to do it behind their backs.” [said Bernie]

“I can’t talk. They won’t listen.”

           

“You don’t know that.”

            

“Tried it in the past. Never worked. Besides, I feel almost obligated to their views.”

Yes, I wrote that as a teenager. This isn't a bit of 20/20 hindsight on my part; it is what I was thinking at the time. I also said these things to my friends from camp and to my cousin. Yes, I did indeed say that I felt obligated to my mother's views. Again, when you are a kid and one of your parents sounds so damned sure, you question your own sanity even though you know that you will never change your position on a particular issue. And on top of that, many adults, such as my teachers, often commented that people get more conservative as they get older--  I didn't realize this meant fiscally conservative. I thought it meant socially conservative. That also greatly terrified me, especially when Dad would say things like, "What are you even fighting for?" as if I was a rebel without a cause.

Here's another scene, which I think aptly illustrates the discomfort I felt when my parents got on my case about gender issues. And the very last paragraph bluntly illustrates just why I thought enforced gender roles were absurd, and what it ultimately came down to:

“Rachel,” said my mother as my father turned onto Solar Drive to exit the development. “I want to see you act like a lady tonight.”

I looked back at the children on Sunset Drive. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I willed my heart not to race.

“It means you are to behave like a lady. You are to keep your voice down and you are not to play physical games with Jake.”

 “Whatever,” I said, just to keep her happy, though there were no guarantees.

“Don’t talk to your mother that way,” said my father. “She and I are looking out for you and with your best interests in mind.”

I said nothing. I concentrated on my breathing pattern. I would talk to Jake when I got to the harbor. He would laugh with me and let me get some frustration out of my system.

I didn’t get it, anyway. Why wouldn’t my parents just let me be who I was? I liked being loud with boys. I liked wrestling with Jake. I liked skateboarding. I liked being with my friends and they liked being with me.

But why? Why was it that last summer, I was allowed to wrestle and allowed to be loud? Why was it that now that I had a thick bushel of pubic hair and what I called “Japan Flag Syndrome” I had to limit my behavior? Why?

And a similar one:

“You can’t let your reproductive system constantly determine your behavior,” I said.

It confused me even more when other kids at my camp supported me and my gender expression (which without Mom there to scrutinize me sometimes even included flattening my chest with sports bras). They also said things like, "Your parents should be supporting you in your beliefs." Many girls didn't even shave their legs because they didn't believe in it, and their parents supported them. I thought to myself, Would Mom think these other kids' parents are too permissive? That they're bad parents? That they're radical? That they're not bringing their kids up right? And then of course I began to wonder if my parents were just plain conservative. In fact, I remember thinking that whether gender-bending was okay was a controversial issue, every bit as controversial as euthanasia, for example.

This line from Rachel came straight from my thoughts about my family: 

"...and here I am cooped up in this old-fashioned Victorian household!”

And another:

"You don’t even know me. I am a human being, and human beings make mistakes. Deep down I am a good person, and I also think that my degree of femininity is irrelevant and none of your business.”

There was Rachel, saying things to her parents and others that I could rarely work up the nerve to say to my parents.

Incidentally, I still want to write a novel with these characters, but I also want to come up with a different storyline.


Cathartic Writing #3: Survival of the Fittest

By the time I was 17, my thoughts about gender issues became even more complex. It was devastating to hear Mom tell me over and over that I had to start being more feminine, that someday I'd change my mind about these issues, bla bla bla. I don't think she knew just how deeply I was thinking about these things. I thought about them so deeply that I came to the conclusion that the reason people are so hung up on gender roles is based on the instinct to reproduce (years later I would learn that this sort of thing is called evolutionary psychology). Thus I came up with a story to illustrate this absurdity and how it hurts people. I wanted to write it as a dystopian graphic novel but unfortunately I had a really hard time with story structure and never finished the script, let alone a full fledged graphic novel. This is the synopsis of the story (which perhaps I will write someday, but I suspect a similar tale has been told), Survival of the Fittest:

Experimental mice live a secret science lab miles below the Earth's surface and, despite the experiments, have pretty decent lives. They are even friends with the cat that lives in the lab. Then there is a nuclear war that annihilates the entire human race, except the scientists in the lab. They realize that they are probably the only humans left and commit suicide. The mice realize that they, too, are likely the only mice left. But they try to figure out a way to both survive and repopulate their species.

In order of the species to continue, difficult decisions have to be made since resources are limited. First thing's first: The mice eat the bodies of the dead scientists. Soon, the food in the laboratory kitchen is gone as well, and the mice resort to killing and eating the cat. The main character, a teenage mouse named Renata (I chose the name because it means "rebirth"), can see where this is going, and is already horrified that the mice have killed the cat for food.

The Enforcers, a group of Nazi-like mice, comes to power. Renata's own 12-year-old brother even joins this group. In order to ensure reproduction and that the mice are well fed, the Enforcers kill for food anybody who cannot reproduce-- that includes mice that have passed reproductive age, mice who are gay, and mice who do not fit into their gender roles (because how can you reproduce if someone of the opposite sex doesn't even know WHAT sex you are?). Mice are pressured to start procreating as soon as they reach reproductive age.

Renata knows that this cannot end well, that ultimately everybody will be killed, not just those deemed "unfit". She leaves the lab and sets out on a two-week journey. She eventually finds a patch of land that was not affected by the nuclear war. There is some food and water-- enough to start over. So she journeys back to the lab to tell everybody. But when she gets there, her worst fears are confirmed-- just about everybody has been killed in the constant warring. She sees a mouse kill her brother, and in a fit of rage she grabs a gun and kills that mouse. She looks around and sees that she is literally the only one left. Exhausted and ultimately resigned, she carves a stone tablet that says "Never, ever forget." And then she turns the gun on herself.

Final Thoughts

It hurt that my parents couldn't see that I was a deep thinker and that I intensely entertained many issues. It seems that they just saw the potpourri of superficial behaviors and points of view as evidence of me not understanding the world rather than simply evidence of who I was. I know what you're thinking-- what if I had shown my parents the stories I had written? It sounds like a good idea, right? The written word is powerful, after all. In fact, transgender musician Ryan Cassata wrote this song to try to get it through to his father that he wasn't just going through a phase, that his identity as a boy was there to stay. But, as I've stated before, I was afraid to show Mom any of my stories. Secondly, I don't think she was ready to hear it. I don't think she would have understood what I was trying to tell her and what kind of mental anguish I was experiencing any better than before. If anything, I think it would have raised more questions than answers, and that's just a shame.

Fortunately, some people did understand what I wanted to say, and they listened. I remember in the summer of 1998 being up until 3 AM with one of my counselors, telling her about Survival of the Fittest and the ideas behind it. I recall that she told me that she was going to think about this story for days, because it really gave her pause. Yes, at age seventeen, I got someone seven years older than me to think deeply about something that she hadn't thought of before. She could see that I was a deep thinker. Many of my peers at camp also knew I was a deep thinker, and my old friend Jenna knew this as well. I know they appreciated that about me and just how deeply I thought about certain issues.

I can only hope now that my parents also appreciate it.

How to Handle Bullying: An Evolutionary Perspective

Today is my 33rd birthday! I'm on Amtrak, on my way back from visiting my cousin in Providence, RI. It was a great weekend, full of Monster Mini-Golf; visiting the Armenian Museum in Watertown, MA; helping in the vegetable garden (she's a vegan); making vegan pie and cookies; searching for edible mushrooms in the woods; finding out that her first cousin twice removed's first cousin once removed is a famous TV producer (don't ask)...

Inspired by reading Richard Dawkins's new memoir, An Appetite for Wonder in which Dawkins briefly discussed his memories of witnessing school bullying, I presented my views on childhood bullying from an evolutionary perspective. I ended the post by stating that I was glad that science could shed some light on bullying and hoped that it could likewise provide insight as to what can be done about it. I think in some ways it can, although not in the way that one might think. I mentioned in the post that the bullying I experienced ended in 9th grade (age 15). What happened? It didn't just disappear. I did something about it, and I think my solution-- which is rooted in a basic understanding of evolution-- could be promising for many victims.

Let's backtrack a bit to the beginning of this story: at the end of the summer of '95, at age 14, I broke my left ankle during a game at overnight camp (my first summer, no less) and had to go home five days early. My ankle was confined to a splint for a week and to a cast for an additional six weeks. I knew that the ankle muscle would be atrophied due to lack of use for seven weeks, so I vowed to build it back up as quickly as possible by walking every day. That is exactly what I did. While the tendons were still stiff from immobilization, I simply walked about 1/4 mile (400 meters) down the street and back again each day. After the stiffness subsided, I gradually increased my distance to about 2 miles (3200 meters). Sure enough, the muscle was restored in about two months. I continued my daily after-school walks because I enjoyed them, and even incorporated a little jogging. It was odd for me to do this as I was always terrible at anything remotely athletic, including jogging. However, I continued these daily walk/jogs throughout the following months.

As discussed in my previous post about bullying, 9th grade was among the worst school years of my life because the bullying was worse than ever. Just like many adults in my life, I blamed myself for the bullying and continually lamented that there was something "defective" about me. I even sometimes said that I wished I were dead (which I didn't mean; I was never suicidal, not even in my darkest moments) and that I wished I hadn't been born (which I did mean). When the spring arrived, my mother suggested I joined the track team. I thought she was out of her mind. I knew she was just trying to make me get some "real" exercise, but I had always been terrible at sports, with teammates always taunting me. The last thing I needed, I felt, was to do something that I was not only bad at and disliked but also something that would put yet another bull's eye on my back. For whatever reason, I acquiesced to my mother's wish and joined the track team; my life would never be the same again.

I was right about one thing: I was terrible at it. In perhaps an apt metaphor for my social life, I could not keep up with my teammates and found myself frustrated, wondering why it was so easy for them (years later I found out that I have exceptionally low lung capacity, even when conditioned). My track coach saw that I was struggling, and instead of chastising me for what I could not do (as did many adults when I ran into social trouble), he helped me to train. Whenever I was tempted to stop and rest, he ran beside me and kept urging me on. Although I never quite kept up with my teammates, I eventually reached a point where I was not too far behind them either. At track meets, my coach initially put me in the 100 and 200 meter dashes. Although I was not built for sprinting, at least it was a short enough distance that he knew I could finish. One day, however, he nonchalantly announced that I was going to do the 800-meter (half mile) run. I was petrified.

At the dreaded track meet, I struggled through the first lap (400 meters). Ready to collapse, I desperately cried, "What do I do?" "Do it again," he said, because, well, the 800-meter-run is the 800-meter-run! I pulled myself through the second lap, timed at a terrible near-five minutes. Nevertheless, my coach congratulated me for completing it. After that first time, running the 800 became gradually easier. My body was adapting to the daily demands of the intense workout that is running. What happens, exactly? Because of the increased demand for oxygen in the muscles, the heart actually grows larger (it's colloquially known as "athlete's heart") so that it can hold more blood and deliver oxygen more efficiently (this is why marathon runners have very low resting heart rates). The lungs increase in size as well. These wonderful adaptations enable the runner to run for longer periods of time without tiring. The ability to do this is important for the point I am trying to make about handling bullying (I'm getting there, I promise!).

After about a month on the track team, I noticed that I felt euphoric following my runs, which gradually increased in duration and intensity as my body became more able to meet the demands of the workouts. As time passed, these feelings of post-running euphoria-- and increased self-confidence-- gradually increased in duration until I felt almost constantly happy... except, of course, when I was bullied. But the fact that running induced this state of mind-- relatively new for me-- seemed to have significant changes on my brain. One day, while heading to class, I had an epiphany: the bullying I experienced was just that-- bullying. It was abuse. It was harassment. Some of it was physical assault. It was not an "understandable response to a horribly annoying and weird person." It was not me "bringing this treatment on myself." As I strode through the hall I realized something important: What I had been experiencing was not my fault. I made myself a promise: from now on, I was going to stand up for myself. I was not going to let anybody treat me like a virus that needed to be destroyed. 

I was to be put to the test that very day. A few months before, my ceramics teacher had sent me to the room across the hall to work because she could not stop the kids from throwing clay at me. She did this for my safety, but it obviously sent the other students a message that I had been banished from the room. It did not stop any of the kids from sneaking into the room where I was working and harassing me. This happened, too, on the day that I promised that I would henceforth defend myself. Two knuckle-dragging guys entered the room and, as always, started taunting me in the usual manner, calling me names, stealing my tools, and trying to throw balls of clay at me. That day, I was also listening to the soundtrack from Annie. Of course, these boys decided to use that against me as well. Before they could say anything, I was already embarrassed. But I had made myself a promise, and I would see it through to the end. If I had to fight, I would fight. If I broke both hands while defending myself, so be it. 

"What the f*** are you listening to?" one of the boys taunted.

Normally, I would have said, "Nothing," and hoped that the boys wouldn't figure out that I was listening to soundtrack from a musical that many deem "babyish." Instead, I said, "Annie. You got a problem with that?" 

Did they further taunt me about my choice in music? Yes. They even went on to call me a "f***ing circus freak" and told me that the teacher sent me in here because she didn't want me in the class. I maintained eye contact and said something to the effect of, "Okay, so? Why is that any of your business?" 

After a few more minutes of this back-and-forth, I said, "Okay guys, I've had enough fun for today. Why don't you leave?" When they refused, I told them again to leave. I said something like, "I am supposed to be in here, and you're not. And I am asking you to get out. Now!" 

The boys grabbed my tools and ran to the ceramics room, but not without turning up the stereo so that the entire hallway could hear my choice of music. I recall thinking, "I'll never hear the end of this," followed by, "So what?" I ran back to the ceramics room, retrieved my tools, and returned to the room where I had been working. I returned the stereo to its normal volume. The boys did not come in for the rest of the class. 

A number of things happened that day: I have no doubt that the boys thought that they scored yet another "victory" against me. I know that I was shaking while I defended myself. But something else happened: I had at last mustered the strength to defend my dignity. I think the boys came in to harass me maybe during one or two classes after that. Given that their "visits" had been nearly daily before, this was a significant change. Did my teacher suddenly have control over her class when she did not before? I doubt it. Was the decrease in frequency of visits a coincidence? Perhaps. But I think what happened was I did exactly what the bullies were not used to: I stood up for myself. I defended my dignity. I made it clear to them that I was not going to tolerate any abuse. I had won. In fact, very few people bothered me for the rest of the school year.

Clearly, the vigorous exercise I engaged in every day improved my mood and enhanced my self-esteem. Why? I assure you that my experience is not unique. Many runners report feelings of intense euphoria following a run. It turns out that running-- or any intense physical activity, such as lap-swimming-- stimulates the release of endorphins and other neurotransmitters that induce euphoria and act as natural long-term anti-depressants. What does this have to do with evolution? Well, I personally think that every bit of psychology has something to do with evolution; I think without evolution psychology doesn't even make sense. But what happens, exactly? Why the runner's high? Some scientists suggests that runner's high was an adaptation to make prolonged and extensive running-- endurance running, that is, which puts great strain on the muscles-- more tolerable to our ancestors while they pursued prey over long distances (this is called persistence hunting). The neurotransmitters stimulated by running acted as natural pain-killers.

Other benefits from regular vigorous exercise include: neurogenesis (creation of new brain cells), increased attention span, increased energy and motivation, improved memory, and increased ability to learn.

Aside from the evolutionary explanation as to why running gave me the strength to stand up to the bullies, there are some important lessons to be learned:

1. If you or someone you care about is being bullied, it is not your/his/her fault!

2. Ignoring bullies does not work. The bullying only stopped because I defended myself, not because I "just ignored" the bullying, not because I changed something about myself, but because I DEFENDED MYSELF!

3. The best weapon against bullying is self-esteem. Period. Maintain eye-contact when possible and firmly tell the bullies to stop. The first time it may backfire, but eventually the bullies will figure out that what they are doing is something you will not accept.

I should also point out, however, that nobody's life follows a real story arc, complete with climax and resolution. I admit that I got into some terrible habits  while at university including overeating and not exercising and went from being skinny to being overweight; at one point I was close to obesity. At university, I also went through a bit of depression for many complex reasons; this was, I'm sure, only exacerbated by the chemical changes in my brain. Fortunately, in the past year I finally conquered my weight problem: since last October, I lost thirty pounds (for a total of forty since I was at my heaviest a few years back) and am at a healthy weight. I have since embraced running again and plan to run a 5K soon. Exercising, whether running, swimming, or lifting weights, is something that has become a regular part of my life and a near-daily ritual. Losing the excess baggage and getting back into shape, I feel like I have woken up from deep coma. In some ways, I am happier than I have ever been in my life.

Exercise is important for more than just the obvious reasons. Remember that.

Bullying: An Evolutionary Perspective

Sorry for the lull in blog posts. Something terrible and unexpected came up in the first week of August and I haven't really been able to relax until the past couple weeks. I'd rather not get into the details in a public forum but... enough with the apologies, on with the post. 

Last week I took an overnight trip back to New York City where I attended an event promoting Richard Dawkins's new memoir, An Appetite for Wonder.  Dawkins devotes a small portion of his book-- a few paragraphs at most-- to discussing the school bullying he witnessed as a boy. Fortunately, Dawkins himself was spared, but he indicates in his memoir that he is somewhat guilt-stricken for not stepping in when other children were bullied and that he has a difficult time reconciling this aspect of the boy that he was with the man that he became. Since Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist, he briefly speculates the evolutionary explanation as to why kids bully and also compares the bullies'-- and apathetic bystanders'-- state of mind to that of Nazis who tortured and killed their victims in the Holocaust. I found myself becoming a bit fixated on this insignificant aspect of the book because I, too, have wondered deeply about the evolutionary psychology behind bullying since I was sixteen years old. The interesting thing was that back then I had never even heard the term "evolutionary psychology." 

As are many kids with Asperger's Syndrome, I was bullied severely, in my case from 2nd grade (age eight) to the end of 9th grade (age fifteen). I entered 10th grade at a high school for which very few kids in my middle school (grades 7-9 in my district) were zoned. For the most part, since I had a "fresh start," I was not picked on. However, I was still lonely because I could not connect with anybody. As I often did when lonely, I retreated into myself and found myself philosophizing about the world around me and having intense internal monologues. As I watched a number of the silly and sometimes absurd social rituals performed by other kids in order to "fit in"-- such as wearing what's "in style," listening to the "cool" music, etc.-- I began to wonder if everything we do-- directly or indirectly-- is based on the instinct to reproduce and that bullying is a byproduct from that instinct. Perhaps, I thought, the "different" kid is seen as a threat to group survival. This idea came to full fruition in early 1998 at age seventeen. At the time I was naive enough to believe I had come up with a brilliant new idea. Somebody should have said, "This isn't exactly a new concept," and put the books of Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, and Judith Rich Harris in my hands. Nevertheless, since then I have formed a great deal of ideas about the evolutionary psychology behind bullying. 

Be forewarned: I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on evolution. The ideas I want to present are based on my observations, experiences, and what I have read, and if anybody more knowledgeable in this area wants to correct me, I invite you to do so. I recognize that I could be wrong about many of these ideas that I want to put forth.

First, let's look at the bullying I experienced. In elementary school, it was mostly childish name calling. I was told, "You're weird," and called names like "space cadet" and "alien" because, like many kids with Asperger's, I was often off in my own little world. Gym class was a nightmare. I was often ridiculed and humiliated for being bad at sports. For example, if the gym teacher made me goalie in a soccer game, my team groaned while the opposing team cheered. Harassment also delved into threats of physical harm. Once, at age ten, I was riding my bike when some boys ambushed me and chased me up the street. One shouted, "Let's kill her!" Part of me believed that these boys really wanted to kill me.

My situation got quantitatively worse in middle school. The name calling became more bitingly personal, and threatening phone calls and physical violence became an almost daily part of my life. Other kids sometimes told me that I was worthless, was a freak, and some even told me to go kill myself. In 8th grade, a girl ambushed me and pinned me to the wall, her hands on my throat while other kids watched and laughed from the opposite wall. I struggled but could not push the girl off. I actually found that I could not even call for help as I was not getting enough air. Fortunately, another girl intervened and stopped the assailant.  Later that day, the entire 8th grade knew about the incident and was having a good laugh over it. Life was at its worst in 9th grade. Every single day in ceramics class a group of girls threw giant balls of clay at me. When I told the teacher about what was happening, she imparted the fantastically ignorant advice to "just ignore it." 

So where does this tie in to evolutionary psychology? I have provided extreme examples of bullying in both verbal and physical forms in which there were invocations of death. Even when the bully is not taking it to that extreme, I think what it comes down to is that he or she wants the victim dead. Why? In our more primitive days, there were a finite amount of resources and the best chance for the group to survive was to cooperate. Part of cooperation involves conformity in order to minimize conflict. Additionally, people recognized each other as being part of their tribe based on similar appearances AND customs. The problem is, biological evolution did not "account for" technological evolution, which begat a world in which food was readily available and in which people from all over the world would encounter one another. I believe that we are still acting on the survival instincts to "filter out" the person deemed as a threat, the person who is "different." It is no wonder, then, that kids with Asperger's Syndrome experience some of the worst bullying. 

Another possible reason for being threatened by the "different" person is that behavior that is perceived as "odd" might be indicative of disease. Primatologist Jane Goodall once observed a polio-affected, partially paralyzed chimpanzee dragging himself back to the troop after a sojourn into the forest. The troop first reacted in fear to their former "friend" and then in anger assaulted and, possibly, tried to kill him. Eventually, Goodall intervened. The ill chimpanzee was subsequently tolerated in the troop, but was mostly shunned. 

Something else that I have observed, in my own experience and in working with kids, is that bullying is quantitatively worse in larger groups. When I attended a small private school in sixth grade, I found that people were much more accepting of me and my quirks. The same holds true at the overnight camp I went to which had a grand total of 150 kids. At a large summer camp (300 kids) that I worked at, however, I witnessed a great deal of bullying among the kids. And at my middle school with 1,000-1,100 kids? Forget it. For me that was the worst. If it is true that the size of the group is positively correlated with the amount of bullying (although the age of the kids is obviously a consideration), then why? Once again, let's look at our ancestors. They lived in tribal villages of roughly 150 people. Not only is a middle school of 1,000-1,100 students large, but perhaps it is perversely large. There will not be one, or two "tribes" (as in a private school or a summer camp) but several, simulating the tribal conflicts of our ancestors. The one not pulling his weight, so to speak, is a waste of resources for any tribe and must be destroyed!

There is also the issue of safety in numbers. One day I stormed out of my history class, in tears, because some of my former "friends" were picking one me, which they did nearly every day. A student teacher had been supervising the class while my history teacher stepped out. I encountered him in the hallway. He saw that I was in tears, shook his head, and said, "Every day with you it's the same thing. You can't handle your problems and you end up crying. Go to guidance." Because I was the only one getting picked on and because it was a group of my former "friends" and their friends picking on me, the implication was damning: several people against one. The "one" must be the problem. My ceramics teacher also advised me to go to the guidance office after a particularly horrible clay fight that ended with kids cheering as I left the room. Why weren't the bullies advised to go to guidance to get advice on how to handle their overwhelming compulsion to cause emotional and physical pain to the school "oddball"? Because there were enough of them, enough of them to normalize this absurd behavior. Even in the eyes of adults, I was the one who needed to be fixed, not they. I was the one not "contributing" to the tribe. Safety in numbers, too, would explain why bystanders don't step in and often are indifferent to the suffering of the victim: they don't want to be the odd one out and become victims themselves! Is it possible that natural selection favored those who lacked empathy towards "outsiders?"

Finally, I want to invoke the Asch Experiment, a study executed during the 1950s that tested individuals' motivation to conform to group consensus. Each subject was told that he was participating in an experiment about visual perception with seven other people. In actuality, he was placed in a room with seven actors, people who were aware what the experiment was really about. The participants were shown a reference card with a line on it, followed by a card with three lines of varying lengths. Participants were then asked to state which of the three lines matched in length the single line on the reference card. The group sat in a way that assured that the experimental "guinea pig" was the last to state which line he thought was the same length as the one on the reference card, that is, after everybody in the group had given his answer. In two trials, the actors were told to unanimously give the correct response, and in the third trial they were told to unanimously give the incorrect response. The first two trials were uneventful, with the participant feeling at ease as he gave the same correct answer as the actors. In the third trial the subject found himself in a dilemma and questioning whether the answer he was prepared to give was actually correct. Ultimately, the subject generally caved in to peer pressure and gave the same incorrect answer as the actors.

What is scary about the Asch experiment is this: The peer pressure in question was not overt. The actors weren't calling the subject names or even saying much of anything. But just the fact that they had a different answer was enough to pressure the subject to question his. In fact, years later the experiments were revisited in a slightly different format. Brain imaging studies indicated that the subjects did not change their answer out of fear of being the odd one out; rather, their actual perception changed. What do these experiments have to do with bullying? I fear that they have everything to do with it. As I look back on my own experiences, I recall in 7th grade that a good friend of mine stood up to the bullies for me. By 9th grade, however, she was also bullying me. One day she approached me and said, "Everybody wants to beat you up." I glared at her and, in an even tone, said, "Why?" And she said, "Because you're you." Peer pressure ultimately got the best of her. I don't think she independently decided she no longer liked me. I don't even think that she consciously decided to side with the bullies out of fear of becoming a victim. Rather, I think the groupthink involved literally altered her perception. I am not sure if the others said, "If you hang around Julie, we won't be your friends anymore." Even if they didn't, I suspect that her observation of their attitude towards me was pressure enough. Jodee Blanco's memoir Please Stop Laughing at Me relates several experiences of Blanco's former friends conforming to peer pressure and becoming bullies. Conformity helped our ancestors survive (at the expense of others' lives), but today we know better. We should, at any rate.

I want to end this blog post with a few more thoughts. School bullying is an issue I think about all the time: while running, while swimming laps, while lifting weights, while drawing, while writing, while watching TV, and while merging with reckless drivers onto I-95. For any parents reading this, telling your child to "just ignore it" is terrible advice. Also, keep in mind that some teachers might even say that to a kid who is physically bullied, as did my ceramics teacher. But think about it: if someone throws rocks at an adult while taking a walk, that is considered assault. But a kid experiencing something similar is supposed to IGNORE it? One problem is that many adults don't see bullying for what it is-- bullying. They don't know how painful words can be. They don't realize that pushing, throwing clay, or even attempted strangling are forms of physical assault. They often downplay the seriousness of the bullies' actions, calling it "teasing," "joking around," "kids being kids," a "rite of passage," and sometimes even comment that the victim is "bringing it on herself." Call it what you want. But to borrow a quote from one of my intellectual heroes, Dr. Jack Kevorkian (albeit from a very obviously different context), "But it doesn't bother me what you call it. I know what it is." Verbal and physical abuse are just that-- abuse. Both cause emotional pain, and research indicates that many of the same neural circuits for processing physical pain also process emotional pain. Science has done a great deal of good in helping us to understand how the human mind works, and I am glad that the brain imaging studies are there to concretely illustrate just how painful verbal abuse can be. Science is also helping us understand why bullying happens. Maybe next it will tell us how to eliminate it.

More Selfish Altrusim

When I was turning ten a family friend, who had moved to Colorado, came to Pennsylvania to visit us. The friend offered to buy me something for my birthday, and what I wanted the most was Super Mario Brothers 3 for Nintendo. When we got to the store and found the game, the friend insisted that she was going to pay for the game herself. My mother told her, no, that she would not allow her to buy it for me unless she, too, contributed something. This silly argument went on for a couple minutes. I began to notice yet another absurdity in adult interaction.


At this past year's Christmas party, my mother insisted on giving the guests food to take home. The guests kept saying things like, "I don't want it," and "You don't have to," but my mother kept insisting they take it. Eventually, the guests took the food. While this exchange was not nearly as protracted as the "Super Mario Brothers 3" one, it still reeked of ritual: social ritual.


Now, to be fair, my mother probably did not want the food because she is trying to watch her weight. But what about the episode involving Super Mario Brothers 3? Throughout my childhood, I watched my my mother participate in lengthy exchanges involving phrases such as "You don't have to," "I can't let you do that," and so forth. Despite having Asperger's Syndrome, even as a kid I knew that this was some kind of social ritual to make oneself look selfless. I thought it was ridiculous then, and I think it's ridiculous now.


Today I wonder if this is another example of reciprocal altruism. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in evolutionary psychology, but to me the protracted, "You don't have to" and "I can't let you do that" exchanges reek of reciprocal altruism. This is an evolutionary strategy observed in social species: If one being does something else for another member of his species-- usually a genetic relative or (in the case of humans) a close friend-- then that other being will eventually reciprocate. If someone tells their friend, "You don't have to do that," I suspect it translates into, "I am showing you how selfless I am so that when I desperately need help, you will offer it." The more protracted version of this exchange, perhaps, translates into, "I'm less selfish than you."/"No, I'm less selfish than you." 


Whatever the case, I think it's a silly ritual and an example of how absurd certain social rituals are. Additionally, from what I've observed, women do it more than men. Why? Possibly because women evolved to be more social beings in order to form close-knit groups to protect their offspring from predators. Either way, it's a ritual I don't participate in. If I had a child and my friend offered to buy her a video game, I might say, "Are you sure you can afford that?" ONCE and then when the person said, "Yes," I would accept their offer and thank them. This is just about to the extent I've seen men do it, incidentally. 


By the way, on a recent episode of The Simpsons, Bart and Lisa asked Marge why they were flying clear across the country to a wedding. Marge explained, "Cousin Cathy invited us so our feelings wouldn't be hurt, and we're going so her feelings won't be hurt." Homer even said, "I just don't understand the world of grownups."
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In the end, it comes back to what I said in "I'm Honest and Your Baby Is Ugly": There is no such thing as true altruism.