What it's like having Asperger's Syndrome.

Just imagine you're completely clueless about the people you're talking to. It's like you're insulated from society (through overexposure to reality) and while you have certain very commendable certainties you totally don't get people: you're genuinely socially clueless. Your mind is a rogue adventurer that has got everything "important" figured out...except today. Aspies have been the best scientists in world history (those who survive the bullies of childhood and the bullshit of adulthood that is) for that exact reason: we simply don't do politics or warfare! Asperger's Syndrome is routinely mistaken not only for Attention Deficit Disorder but as well (albeit less formally) for heroin addiction, mental retardation, homosexuality, sociopathy and worse...often producing these things in the Aspie through the power of suggestion because of how desperate Aspies can become for acceptance. However painful the stigma of such labels may be at least we're labeled somehow, we "fit in" finally, we're not such a mystery. Frankly this is the coward's path, but that's just this blogster's opinion. We Aspies definitely can alarm people without ever trying. In my case I think I've even had to do some work in setting the record straight in my own mind that alarm and awkwardness is not a positive emotion because I had actually mistaken it for positive excitement in others until finally it would boil over and lo and behold I was just dealing with small minds trying to defend their narrow world, their bubble, a very icky (and sticky) situation. Aspies would have a much easier time if people just accepted reality as it is rather than having to shallowly, hastily label everything. Aspies live in a more intense, arguably more real world than the oft shallow society at large. If that's a "disability" I must frankly confess to not minding it that much.

What Mexicans mean about the future.

Right up there with machismo in common Spanglish parlance is mañana. But like machismo, mañana is routinely misunderstood. Mexican Spanish has many ways of expressing the future for which there is no meaningful translation in U.S. English. Words like futuramente (futurely?) and phrases like en un futuro (in a future?) defy translation. It may be argued that healthier societies never get too specific about the future. There is a humanistic wisdom there that goes right over the head of the industrialist. Yeah.

What Jesus had to say about peacemaking and meekness.

Jesus said, "Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart." He also said, "Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God." These are some major clues as to what the imitation of Christ and transformation into Christ in order to become the Father's sons in the Son consists in. The Evangelical Counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience (obedience being at the heart of it!) are simply bywords for the overarching "Evangelical Counsel": become God the Father's child! In the two Gospel quotes the Son of God is saying that, if we would be like him sons (also consequently heirs and, yes, soldiers, but decidedly not in the physical sense) to Father-God, we have to be peacemakers, which means being meek rather than rowdy, which is our (fallen) nature. To that end Jesus even tells us to ask for anything so we can take out our rowdiness on the Father and not on our siblings. You would almost get the impression that the world's thugs aren't obeying Jesus nor are they imitating Jesus very closely. But note: we're not to be doormats to thugs but instruments of God (as St. Francis prayed, "Make me a channel [also instrument] of your peace," and Mary has even been called the "Reed of God") which implies yielding power and wielding principle, not the other way around. What happens is this: most people seek their stability in worldliness, but he who yields to God is truly rock-solid. That may be ironic or paradoxical or Alice-in-Wonderlandish. It's also 100% the case. Jesus says to his inner circle of Apostles, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you." Jesus teaches a peace that starts from within and is affirmative, rather than some secular notion of nonviolence which is linguistically a negative value and by its pathological approach only seems to this blogster to encourage the very thing it condemns.