Episode 9
Hubert - Only Zero or One There's No In-Between in an Autistic Brain
They call it high-functioning. It just means you can't see the cost. He's had some days when he couldn't speak at all, and his mother sat beside him reading Nietzsche aloud until something switched back on.
This is a conversation about what it costs to look like you are coping.
Sound Bites
- "There is a physical sensation of discomfort when I lie. I feel physically sick."
- "What a high functioning autist is, is someone who's just as autistic as every other autist, but someone who can hide it more for the benefit of neurotypical people."
- "We can pay the ultimate price for fitting in apparently so well, when actually inside we're feeling absolutely out of sync with the rest of society."
- "It's like a computer that's overheating, the mouse thing starts to jump from place to place, and suddenly it's not moving at all. That's autism for you."
- "Veracity is the need for truth, order, and things making sense."
- "We're not a mistake. We're meant to be here. We're doing our job."
Hubert found out he was autistic at forty-two. He calls his lot the lost generation — men who got through school, work and relationships playing a game nobody gave them the rules to.
He has been a European Parliament intern, an award-winning entrepreneur and a van man. He has also spent days unable to speak, his mother sitting beside him reading Nietzsche aloud until something switched back on. This is a conversation about what it costs to look like you are coping.
What We Explore
- Why a white lie causes physical pain, and what that does to small talk, work and friendship
- "High functioning" — what the label hides, and who it is actually for
- The bridge between neurotypical and neurodivergent minds, and why Hubert thinks everything ahead of us gets built on it
Mentioned in This Episode
- Quinn, and the Autistamatic YouTube channel — where Hubert takes the idea of veracity, which he uses to hold truth, order and physical discomfort in one word
- Nikki Stevenson, writing in The Guardian in 2015 — called prejudice against neurodiverse people the last great prejudice
- Nikola Tesla — died penniless, and is Hubert's example of what a society wastes when it will not accommodate the people it depends on
- Star Trek — the version of a future human he was drawn to as a child and still is
- Elon Musk'sremark that nobody who spent an hour in his head would want anything he has
Connect with Hubert
Hubert is not on social media. He can be contacted through me via this email address: hamish@thebravemanproject.com
The autism education channels Hubert recommends:
- Autistamatic: https://www.youtube.com/@Autistamatic
- Autistic AF: https://www.youtube.com/@Autistic_AF
- That Autistic Guy: https://www.youtube.com/@orionkelly
A little about Hamish Niven
For 25 years, I lived a life that looked successful from the outside. Inside it was falling apart, and I was throwing fuel on the fire — addiction, alcohol. I was on a steep path to self-destruct.
November 2018. I chose life, and had to change everything.
I built The 13th Room because nothing like that existed when I needed it.
The Brave Man Project — this podcast. It is about men, but not just for men. Men who broke under the weight of their own performance. Men who rebuilt and climbed so much higher.
The 13th Room is a space for the successful man who needs to change and knows it. 13 sessions, you and me. No fixing. Pure witnessing. Starts with a free 20-minute conversation.
Podcast website: https://thebravemanproject.com
Hamish's website: https://hamishniven.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBraveManProject
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamishniven/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hamish.niven
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hamishniven/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hamishniven
Transcript
Can drink coffee during? Is that okay?
Speaker:Absolutely, you whatever you no,
Speaker:not not you can do whatever you want.
Speaker:Not quite not quite whatever you want.
Speaker:Yeah. There is a funny autistic story I should tell you about.
Speaker:You can do whatever you want. Because obviously we take that literally.
Speaker:Yes. I don't think I told you about the Australian story when me and my
Speaker:mum my mum took me to Australia when I was fourteen and we went to stay
Speaker:at my mum's friend's house with her husband,
Speaker:who'd emigrated out there from England.
Speaker:And obviously we got the normal welcome of,
Speaker:you know, our house is your house.
Speaker:Just do whatever you want. So they went off to work and it was the Atlanta Olympics,
Speaker:I remember, so would have been 199 6 And I was watching the Atlanta Olympics
Speaker:and Mum comes down the stairs and goes,
Speaker:What the hell do you think you're doing?
Speaker:I was like, I'm watching the Olympics.
Speaker:Yeah, but you're just in your boxer shorts.
Speaker:I was like, I was told to do whatever I want.
Speaker:Yeah, but they didn't mean that.
Speaker:So why do they say it? I think that's pretty much symbolic of everything we're gonna
Speaker:be talking about today, no? And that sums up autism.
Speaker:I think so. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think it does.
Speaker:And I think that's why it's funny.
Speaker:Is in in the good way funny. I think we'll be talking a lot about detective work
Speaker:today and you know, for sure all some of the great detectives are were autistic.
Speaker:But also Frank Drebin from Police Squad is clearly autistic,
Speaker:so
Speaker:You know, it it is funny because it's to the point,
Speaker:it's literal, and it's hilarious.
Speaker:But there are some challenges.
Speaker:There are some challenges, aren't there?
Speaker:Yeah. Right, so hi everyone. Today I'm chatting with Hubert.
Speaker:And as you got from the beginning of this conversation,
Speaker:Hubert is autistic and this is gonna be an interesting conversation.
Speaker:He and I have had lots of conversations about this,
Speaker:so I've got a vague idea what it's all about.
Speaker:And part of this conversation is to give you an idea of
Speaker:How complicated it is because neurodiverse is tough,
Speaker:neuro spicy is very tough, and autistic takes it several steps further,
Speaker:doesn't it? It feels it feels as such,
Speaker:having spoken to many neurodivergent people,
Speaker:it feels that they all have their challenges.
Speaker:It feels like
Speaker:The journey, for example, that the dyslexic community has taken over
Speaker:the last thirty years is out is amazing and outstanding.
Speaker:Their life was very tough. I think it's slightly ~ easier now,
Speaker:but never to underestimate those challenges.
Speaker:The ADHD lot can't be easy.
Speaker:Can't be easy. But I have spoken to people who have both ADHD
Speaker:and autism, so the infamous or DHD crowd,
Speaker:as they're known.
Speaker:And their general opinion is that their ADHD tempers their autism.
Speaker:And their end and their autism tempers their ADHD.
Speaker:So it does feel that the autistic,
Speaker:pure autistic characteristic is the most intense internally.
Speaker:There's not really anywhere for the energy to go.
Speaker:This is your platform to tell me a little bit about it or a lot about it.
Speaker:And let's start with
Speaker:When did you find out you were autistic?
Speaker:In fact, first of all, do you are you autistic or do you have autism?
Speaker:I am autistic. And actually, it feels like the word that's mostly coming
Speaker:to the fore recently is I am an autist.
Speaker:And I think that's both a development of of the autistic word,
Speaker:but it's also a process I feel that we're moving away from labels that
Speaker:are clearly out of date. And there's the whole genesis of the word,
Speaker:which comes from, you know, nineteenth century.
Speaker:observations which are partially relevant but nowhere near relevant enough
Speaker:to be putting labels so such intense labels on people
Speaker:and fundamentally it's misleading because the word derives from the Greek
Speaker:I believe orthos which is self,
Speaker:i.e. self focused, self obsessed,
Speaker:and that is a external observation of us.
Speaker:It is not actually what we're feeling at all.
Speaker:So
Speaker:I think slowly we're moving away from the word autism.
Speaker:I think that's why there is there's a feeling that we're moving towards this maybe
Speaker:bridge bridge concept of autist.
Speaker:I think a lot of our are of of us are artists,
Speaker:which maybe mm is a side point to that.
Speaker:~ but hopefully there'll be there'll be new terminology for it because
Speaker:I feel we have no correct terminology.
Speaker:But yes, to use the current jargon,
Speaker:I am autistic. I was born autistic and I will die autistic.
Speaker:So there's no cure?
Speaker:There's no cure because it's not an illness.
Speaker:Drugs don't work. CBT, cognitive bra behavioral therapy,
Speaker:things like that won't work. As you said,
Speaker:there's no cure, it's not an illness.
Speaker:It's something you live with. It's it's something that challenges you.
Speaker:Explain to me I guess, explain to me a an average day.
Speaker:Would that be a good way of doing it?
Speaker:I would say the question would be what is it like to live with blue eyes?
Speaker:I live with it.
Speaker:And then you can go into, you know,
Speaker:I look in the mirror, I see they're blue,
Speaker:you know, I like them, I don't like them,
Speaker:I've got this kind of hair, it goes together,
Speaker:whatever. Obviously, autism maybe is a little bit more complex than that,
Speaker:but fundamentally it it it is what it is.
Speaker:The challenge comes from when the rubber hits the road.
Speaker:So when autism hits the neurotypical world,
Speaker:that's where the challenge comes.
Speaker:Because by itself, and I remember as a child being self contained,
Speaker:I may have may as well be have been the happiest child in the world.
Speaker:I mean, I was just
Speaker:one huge bundle of energy that's sometimes just have to be sent away
Speaker:to the other room for being too happy.
Speaker:So, you know, autism alone is pure happiness.
Speaker:You know, the infamous phrase when you met one autistic person,
Speaker:you met one autistic person. So I'm partly going to speak for
Speaker:my community and partly I'm going to speak for myself.
Speaker:But I myself could spend, you know,
Speaker:hours analysing this floor, you know,
Speaker:and the patterns of wood. And I would be delighted just doing that for a while.
Speaker:You know, many of my neurotypical
Speaker:Friends would find that boring.
Speaker:And so it's at at that age, or even now,
Speaker:maybe, if I found the peace to do that.
Speaker:So, yes, I am, but I only found out about this last year.
Speaker:So I found that at the tender age of 42,
Speaker:which is a common story. Something that I have started to take up my MP
Speaker:and hope to feed the minister,
Speaker:the health minister in the UK,
Speaker:because I feel that the level of knowledge in our society.
Speaker:was not good enough considering the literature already from around nineteen eighty
Speaker:was there to start pointing to the fact that there's a hell of a
Speaker:lot more autists than were assumed then.
Speaker:Most of us were not identified.
Speaker:And so now we have this huge cohort of so-called late identified or late diagnosed,
Speaker:however you want to put it, autists,
Speaker:sometimes referred to as the lost generation.
Speaker:And
Speaker:you know, in part I I understand why Okay.
Speaker:so lost generation, what does that mean?
Speaker:Well, when you find out that you're autistic,
Speaker:the common ~ occurrence observation within the community is that you go
Speaker:for a period of grief because you basically go back for every moment
Speaker:of your life and work out that you didn't make
Speaker:a good or bad decision. Most of them look bad but
Speaker:you you were actually making the decision wholly in the wrong context.
Speaker:So it wasn't that you you know played the game badly,
Speaker:the game of life. I don't know if you remember,
Speaker:but when we were both young there was a board game called Game of Life.
Speaker:We put little markers in the little car and you drop the car around
Speaker:the board and the board had school and university and adult life and
Speaker:all you know all all the rest of it.
Speaker:And you could have children that you put in car with you.
Speaker:So traditionally you'd kind of look back at your game of life and go,
Speaker:Well, you know, I did this wrong,
Speaker:right, I did this wrong, ~ etcetera.
Speaker:~ but it turned out that, you know,
Speaker:I was I don't even know what what what analogy to use on that one actually,
Speaker:but I was playing a whole different game.
Speaker:You know, everybody was playing the game of life and I was playing Scrabble,
Speaker:you know. It was just it was ~ or indeed I was moving around the game
Speaker:of life as opposed to ~ in a car with little dots for
Speaker:for for myself and potentially my partner and my children,
Speaker:I was trying to do the same, but with,
Speaker:you know, a dom a domino piece.
Speaker:And I was just driving around in a domino piece pretending that I
Speaker:was playing the game of life. I think that would be as good as it gets
Speaker:on on that one. So there was no real chance of anything sticking because
Speaker:I was bumping against the edges and just kind of going along the outline,
Speaker:you know, school and university and work and relationships.
Speaker:I was I was there, but I wasn't.
Speaker:Why were you not there? What was what was what was missing?
Speaker:So again, another very well known concept now also in the literature about autism,
Speaker:the concept of masking. So basically an autistic person
Speaker:is primarily led within the brain by,
Speaker:as I understand it, the prefrontal cortex.
Speaker:So we approach pretty much everything in life,
Speaker:and sometimes it does feel like everything in life,
Speaker:as a very high-end
Speaker:problem to be solved. And so and that includes everything from going
Speaker:to the bathroom all the way up to actual real high end problems to be solved,
Speaker:like I don't know, physics equations or whatever else is is is challenging
Speaker:to to make a decision on or to work out how it works.
Speaker:So we kind of overuse this tool,
Speaker:I think for an evolutionary purpose.
Speaker:And certainly what I looked at when I was going through the various stages of life,
Speaker:or what are the rules of the game?
Speaker:And based on those rules, how do I fit in?
Speaker:Now, that kind of sounds like maybe everybody's journey,
Speaker:but
Speaker:What I found talking now to my neurotypical peers about this,
Speaker:their working out of the rules of the game was I would say in less detail
Speaker:and more natural,
Speaker:more generic. And once they worked it out,
Speaker:they kind of went with the flow,
Speaker:which is quite a well known phrase in our society.
Speaker:Just just go with it. Just just relax,
Speaker:man. Chill out. As my mum would always say,
Speaker:just enjoy the weekend, you know,
Speaker:just lay your hair down. When I had
Speaker:For us, and certainly for me, as soon as I work out one context,
Speaker:even if there is stability within,
Speaker:for example, young a young person's life,
Speaker:in mine there wasn't, which didn't help because I moved between countries
Speaker:and schools, so that that's always difficult for anybody.
Speaker:But even if there was a period of stability,
Speaker:my brain is forcing me to always work out okay,
Speaker:but what game is really going on here?
Speaker:What's really going on here?
Speaker:And obviously with the older you get,
Speaker:the more you do see that there are more underlying games here.
Speaker:You know, the infamous adage the others don't seem to know what they're doing.
Speaker:Which actually I don't feel my neurotypical peers really over analysed.
Speaker:I was certainly analyzing it from about the age of eight.
Speaker:And I actually remember the day when it happened.
Speaker:I walked into my living room with a with a Lego Formula One toy.
Speaker:that I built I was incredibly proud of and I walked into the the living room
Speaker:and my mum was there with some friends.
Speaker:And I presented this car saying,
Speaker:you know, the game is I'm a child,
Speaker:you're meant to get really excited by the fact that I'm doing this shit.
Speaker:And so there was a kind of a like a nod to,
Speaker:you know, great, you know, of of you go to play by yourself now,
Speaker:mate. But for me that was just this huge right.
Speaker:So the adults are actually playing a whole different game and they don't seem to be
Speaker:consequential in what they do because one day they're interested in what I'm doing,
Speaker:the next day they're not interested in what I'm doing.
Speaker:So you see, I hope that shows just how it starts getting really complex already
Speaker:by the age of eight. You're already in this this walking calculator.
Speaker:So what happens is you you are this you're you're in this ever and
Speaker:you know you're in this never ending problem solving mode because your brain keeps
Speaker:forcing everything to be a problem to be solved,
Speaker:a high end problem to be solved.
Speaker:So this is why autistic children we were known as I'm sure we still are as deep
Speaker:As you know, little professors,
Speaker:adult before their time, always more confident speaking to adults than their peers,
Speaker:because we're already solving problems way ahead of our of our pay grade.
Speaker:So we're never really there because we're always in a in a in in some sort
Speaker:of version of a of a of a of a future solution to a problem that we're currently
Speaker:dealing with. So we're never really enjoying the moment as it is.
Speaker:Unless we can
Speaker:really be autistic. But with age,
Speaker:our opportunity to be because an autist as I said,
Speaker:I could focus on the on the on the grain patterns on this floor for a long time.
Speaker:So I can be very present. I believe many of the people who walk this planet
Speaker:and around whom religions were built were autistic.
Speaker:Because these were people that were able to well what we now call,
Speaker:you know, the power of now meditation and all of this stuff.
Speaker:I think that was just neurotypical people observing autistic traits
Speaker:and then making all kinds of theories about it.
Speaker:so I can be present. The trouble is that the more autistic you are growing
Speaker:up in our society, the more people look say,
Speaker:Well, you're a weirdo. You know,
Speaker:why are you staring at the wall?
Speaker:Why are you not talking right now?
Speaker:This is this is a moment that you should be talking or would you like me to say,
Speaker:or he'll say anything. Off we go into these into these,
Speaker:you know, directions, which means that with time you become more and more
Speaker:of a masker. So
Speaker:go back to that point. So you more and more hide your natural autistic traits.
Speaker:You're still problem solving. So you can you can't stop that.
Speaker:But in your behaviour, you're going along with the crowd and you're trying
Speaker:to be cool, whatever that is at the time.
Speaker:And obviously some of us have a bigger opportunity to do that because for example,
Speaker:I was relatively tall, I could play rugby,
Speaker:I could you know, I wouldn't say I was the most popular boy at school,
Speaker:but at least I could speak to the popular lot and kind of,
Speaker:you know, in the end go to the pub with them.
Speaker:So that kind of made me
Speaker:popular enough to get away with it,
Speaker:but it r it really doesn't matter because behind the scenes,
Speaker:wherever we are on you know in the social pecking order,
Speaker:we're still suffering immensely by about the age of thirteen.
Speaker:Now I'm not sure how it is now with people who maybe children
Speaker:who know they're autistic. And I actually think they've got other challenges that
Speaker:they may have I think there's there's a whole topic area to be d to
Speaker:be to be discussed about that because
Speaker:I have no problem with young people knowing they're autistic.
Speaker:I have a problem with autism being a medical condition.
Speaker:So the fact that these young people are immediately being kind of labelled as,
Speaker:you know, terminally ill, I I think that's a whole different issue that would
Speaker:require maybe a separate podcast.
Speaker:We had nothing in the sense of so maybe,
Speaker:you know, we we I didn't consider myself,
Speaker:of course, long term or terminally ill.
Speaker:And and certainly I I I I could fit in more or less and and s at certain times
Speaker:I'd be applauded by whether it be parents or or my peers or whatever.
Speaker:But the I but the I at the age of thirteen I was,
Speaker:you know, staring from my bedroom window,
Speaker:which was on the second floor,
Speaker:looking down into the garden, thinking,
Speaker:you know, I think I'm gonna throw myself off here because I'm
Speaker:not really comfortable in this existence.
Speaker:This isn't for me. This isn't something that I wanna be involved in.
Speaker:And was only I think the few parts of my you know,
Speaker:again, the and there are teenage autists who are killing themselves
Speaker:and I think they're killing themselves now as far as I can see.
Speaker:I'm sure the online world is not helping in many ways.
Speaker:I had enough in my life in terms of an ordered room,
Speaker:an orderly room. That's very important for us.
Speaker:So I had an orderly environment that I could small one,
Speaker:but one that I could control, which kind of kept me alive.
Speaker:But, you know, this is you know,
Speaker:my neurotypical peers were not standing out windows thinking about these things
Speaker:at thirteen.
Speaker:There's there's so much there,
Speaker:isn't there? There is you know,
Speaker:why why was it so difficult? You also touched on the fact autists perceived
Speaker:things differently. It's not it's not from the reptilian brain,
Speaker:it's it's the other way round.
Speaker:So everything everything is black and white.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly right. So we st obviously we're still connected to
Speaker:the reptilian brain and we've still got needs,
Speaker:all of them, all the carnal stuff is going on in us.
Speaker:But all of that, including the carnal stuff,
Speaker:is overlaid by you know,
Speaker:I heard recently, and and this is just to be clear,
Speaker:I'd rather not be autistic. So everything that I say from this point onwards please
Speaker:take ~ with a with a pinch of salt.
Speaker:I think it was Elon Musk who's well officially autistic,
Speaker:said that if anybody spends an hour in his head they would not want
Speaker:to have anything that he has in exchange for that.
Speaker:They would give everything away.
Speaker:So everything that I say is absolutely with with that with that in mind.
Speaker:You know, I've heard that the the theory that autism is kind
Speaker:of evolution pushing the boundaries of humanity towards a human two point
Speaker:~ And I can I can go along with that.
Speaker:As I said, not because I want to be autistic in the current moment of our evolution,
Speaker:'cause it's not much fun. But I I can imagine in the future that it'd
Speaker:be and obviously a lot of autistic people are drawn to Star Trek,
Speaker:which is this kind of vision of this kind of future human,
Speaker:let's call it. Certainly I was drawn to Star Trek from a very young age.
Speaker:You know, we do have a very different relationship with our ego.
Speaker:We do have a very different relationship with money.
Speaker:We do have a very different relationship with greed.
Speaker:and I think these different relationships will be necessary for us as
Speaker:a species to to survive. So it kind of makes sense for evolution to
Speaker:be and it doesn't have to be evolution.
Speaker:You can if you know, if if if you believe in a single god and
Speaker:and that they're running their experiments,
Speaker:whatever i it doesn't whatever the theological background of this,
Speaker:it would make sense for there to be this potential experiment going
Speaker:on because I believe all of it is an experiment,
Speaker:you know
Speaker:We've clearly changed over the course of time and are changing.
Speaker:And I believe ADHD is part of that as well.
Speaker:I believe the whole neurodivergent spectrum is part of that.
Speaker:And I believe that's why there are more people learning difficulties within that
Speaker:group of people, because it is somewhat of an experiment.
Speaker:In in the positive sense of that word.
Speaker:Because I bel you know, I I don't believe we're you know mice in a in a laboratory,
Speaker:all of us. But clearly evolution,
Speaker:things
Speaker:Come and things go and certain species stay and certain species disappear.
Speaker:You know, and theoretically we know this planet one day is going to disappear.
Speaker:So there's plenty to be thinking about in terms of how do we move forward with
Speaker:all of this knowledge. And you know,
Speaker:even though we do move along by our own thought,
Speaker:there does seem to be things that are bigger than ourselves and
Speaker:and and certain patterns that seem to be going back 14 billion years.
Speaker:So I
Speaker:I I can see autism as maybe a a version of human two point because there
Speaker:is a there is a there are plenty of autistic traits that are really,
Speaker:really, really useful looking at the problems that we have currently in our society,
Speaker:in the world and climate change,
Speaker:all of this stuff. I still would rather not be autistic.
Speaker:That's like it is what it is. That's that I can und I can understand.
Speaker:I mean, obviously I I know a lot more than we've discussed so far.
Speaker:So I'm just trying to think where we can where we can really highlight what
Speaker:are the biggest challenges. I mean,
Speaker:one one that we talked about before we came on was honesty.
Speaker:And neurotypical people lie.
Speaker:That's ~ it seems to be our whole sta our our whole society is ironically based
Speaker:on that. Mm-hmm. You know, you laugh at your boss's jokes because you want
Speaker:to stay friends with him and you
Speaker:You conform, you wear a mask, you pretend,
Speaker:all this kind of stuff. And we know we're lying to each other.
Speaker:We know we're deceiving each other.
Speaker:And how does that work for an autistic brain,
Speaker:an autistic way of perceiving the world?
Speaker:Yeah, this is certainly one of the this is certainly one of the big problems
Speaker:~ for us. And I would say this is pan community.
Speaker:So wherever you are on the spectrum and that's another topic which requires another
Speaker:podcast. What is a spectrum? And no,
Speaker:we're not all on the autistic spectrum,
Speaker:but
Speaker:I'm not going to go into hyper focus on that at this moment in time.
Speaker:But directly in relation to your question,
Speaker:I believe that the vast majority,
Speaker:if not all autistic people, have a so I'm not saying that we know
Speaker:the absolute truth. It's not it's not about us having some sort of,
Speaker:you know, special connection with with the ultimate truth.
Speaker:It's not about that. What we do have is a very strong need for order.
Speaker:And within that order there is a right and a wrong.
Speaker:Now we can sometimes get that order wrong.
Speaker:You know, I I s I mentioned that maybe some of our major spiritual figures
Speaker:in the past were autistic. I would say some of our major dictators in the past,
Speaker:hint hint, were also autistic.
Speaker:So, you know, ~ you know, y you gotta take the good the the rough with this move.
Speaker:But the point is there is a there is a real need for for for a zero
Speaker:one approach to everything we do.
Speaker:And obviously in s where society is so fundamentally based
Speaker:on small talk and on little white lies,
Speaker:which are not particularly
Speaker:you know, harmful potentially.
Speaker:Although I would say there is a cumulative aspect there.
Speaker:For us that's a major challenge because,
Speaker:you know, at the end of the day,
Speaker:if you ask me, if you ask me, how are you,
Speaker:I will tell you. And you don't want to know.
Speaker:Most of the time. Unless you're in the mood to know.
Speaker:But then I get a nice a nice long expression of I'm feeling this.
Speaker:Yes. You know, when we have a telephone conversation,
Speaker:I'll be the one first downloading because it's clear that I've got
Speaker:more to say, not because I've had maybe a more intensive week.
Speaker:I've just got more to say. Even if most probably if you've had a more intensive week
Speaker:week, I've still got more to say.
Speaker:So So that's part of part of the fun.
Speaker:However, and c slight segue, I love I love there's nothing better than having
Speaker:conversation rather than hi, are you what's the weather like?
Speaker:Bang, straight in. Straight in,
Speaker:deep and meaningful. You know,
Speaker:I I I I do say to my friends there's no no foreplay.
Speaker:It's straight in. You know, no foreplay.
Speaker:and it it yeah.
Speaker:So that that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker:Yeah, I mean obviously so so where we're interacting with with the with
Speaker:the everyday world, that becomes highly problematic.
Speaker:Well, first of all, it becomes problematic because we usually don't know we're
Speaker:autistic for a long time, or certainly we didn't.
Speaker:So we were really trying to work out,
Speaker:okay, well, if everybody's this uncomfortable,
Speaker:why is everybody doing it? And this was a huge paradox for me.
Speaker:Because I'm so uncomfortable with small talk and I'm so uncomfortable with even
Speaker:the little white lies.
Speaker:And not because of of some ethical high horse,
Speaker:it's literally because it's it's physically uncomfortable to to to to tell mistruth.
Speaker:Stop there. What do you mean by it's physically uncomfortable?
Speaker:There is a physical sensation of discomfort when I lie.
Speaker:I feel physically sick. Okay.
Speaker:Right. Yeah. And I'm not saying it's exactly the same for every autist.
Speaker:Yeah. I'm quite big into personality mapping and ~ and and and I believe that
Speaker:we autists have exactly the same personality types as
Speaker:neurotypical people and I believe I'm part of a a group,
Speaker:a personality group, which even if I wasn't autistic,
Speaker:I would still not really like lying in general.
Speaker:So I may have a double whammy on this,
Speaker:which is why I may be so physical.
Speaker:But the point is certainly, and I know autism has a part to play in this,
Speaker:there is a physical reaction to a lie,
Speaker:which is awful for me on the physical level.
Speaker:So I'm just I'm just looking at that.
Speaker:So everything's chemical, everything's emotional.
Speaker:You you know that whatever you are saying is untrue,
Speaker:or you're being told something it's untrue,
Speaker:so you're going, that is untrue and that tastes like pain.
Speaker:Let's keep it really simple. That kind of thing.
Speaker:There's a there's a a response to something that is untrue because it's it's
Speaker:distasteful and then it manifests as as I said,
Speaker:a pain in your gut or something.
Speaker:I I can I can relate to that
Speaker:When I'm about to tell someone a lie,
Speaker:I feel shit. Okay. So and I hope quite a lot of people do that.
Speaker:I think quite lot of people do.
Speaker:But it's it's I can still override that and still lie to your face if
Speaker:I feel I'm feeling unsafe or I want you to do something.
Speaker:Yeah, but do you also feel uncomfortable if,
Speaker:you know, someone says, How was your weekend?
Speaker:and you say, Yeah, it was great when it was actually shit.
Speaker:That was a lie. Do you feel uncomfortable saying that?
Speaker:I do. However, however
Speaker:It's less uncomfortable than having to explain what I did or things like that.
Speaker:You know, I'm I'm I'm weighing it up and it's that maybe the difference.
Speaker:The difference is because again we're zero one.
Speaker:So for me, and and this is obviously a huge topic about in in autism in terms
Speaker:of our executive functioning issues,
Speaker:which we certainly have. And I'll s quickly switch analogy just to because it'll
Speaker:it it'll directly feed into lying.
Speaker:If I've got a pile of paperwork on my desk and one piece of paper relates
Speaker:to a matter which is worth a pound.
Speaker:And another matter relates to £10,000,
Speaker:I treat those two pieces of paper exactly the same.
Speaker:Even though it's illogical. You know,
Speaker:because obviously that's for me to put the 10,000 pound issue matter piece
Speaker:of paper on top of the one pound issue as more important,
Speaker:I have to force myself to do that and actually undergo physical pain to do that.
Speaker:Because I'd just like to do it in the order as it lays on my desk
Speaker:in an authentic manner. Because that's just the way I'm programmed.
Speaker:And lying is exactly the same.
Speaker:So I if I, you know, lie to you in terms of something really,
Speaker:really, really important. And if I lie to you which I'm not sure if I've ever done.
Speaker:I'm I'm sure I must have. Maybe.
Speaker:I don't know. I'm sure I must've,
Speaker:but I don't know. But if I lie s to you about something really,
Speaker:really, really big, or if I lied to you about,
Speaker:you know, if you say to me, Did you have breakfast this morning?
Speaker:And I'll say no, when really cheekly I had a
Speaker:You know, a fantastic how many croissant has it has it has it happening to me.
Speaker:Then the pain you see, this is the thing.
Speaker:I'm w I'm already needing to tell you the truth.
Speaker:Who cares what I eat for breakfast?
Speaker:I don't. I'm sure you don't. But I because I've mentioned it,
Speaker:I now need you know, my brain's already going down that path of,
Speaker:you know, just make sure it's all truthful,
Speaker:Hebrews, just make you've got your basis copy.
Speaker:Not because I'm gonna get trouble,
Speaker:because I don't want to feel the tinge of pain.
Speaker:So maybe I will get into trouble in that way.
Speaker:It's like so again, this is what I mean about
Speaker:us not being on any high horse.
Speaker:We can look like, you we're on a high horse.
Speaker:Pr pretty sure Joan of Arc was autistic,
Speaker:so and she was on a pretty high horse.
Speaker:But but but that's just the way we're per s again,
Speaker:that's a positive perception and just like we can be negatively perceived
Speaker:for being self obsessed or, you know,
Speaker:non empathetic or whatever else people decide that our behaviour points towards.
Speaker:So e the positive stuff can be untrue and the negative stuff is i can be
Speaker:the can be untrue. And most most of those observations
Speaker:are in that sense and true. I think it it it is hard to c hard to comprehend,
Speaker:but that doesn't negate the fact that that's that's the experience.
Speaker:And I think I mean that's that's one of the reasons for this this conversation
Speaker:is just to get an inkling that there is a very different way of being
Speaker:and that's what people autists are are dealing with.
Speaker:You know, and you you're you're coping in this world.
Speaker:Maybe not very well, but you're coping.
Speaker:You've you've had several jobs.
Speaker:I mean I'd like to know what you've done.
Speaker:You're here, you're talking, you're not one of these savants who can see
Speaker:a s fly over London and then five minutes later draw it can't.
Speaker:No, I can't draw at all actually.
Speaker:You could put me in that plane for for for for you know six years,
Speaker:I still wouldn't be able to draw.
Speaker:You draw a couple of stick men and then and a really bad version of Big Ben.
Speaker:No, no, no. Yeah. ~ no,
Speaker:I'm definitely not a savant. although I have
Speaker:aspects, for example, of memory recall from ~ the past,
Speaker:etcetera, which makes me imagine what it would be what it would be like
Speaker:to be a salmon and my god must their life be difficult.
Speaker:I yeah, a lot of a lot of challenges there.
Speaker:To the neurotypical world that they're not.
Speaker:I heard someone wisely say that what high functioning actually means,
Speaker:and you know, I would be described as high functioning.
Speaker:Basically it means that you're you can le lead an independent life,
Speaker:you've got a job, you've got a family,
Speaker:you're normal, whatever that means.
Speaker:But
Speaker:So I'm I'm sure we can all appreciate what that's meant to mean.
Speaker:But really what a high functioning autist is,
Speaker:is someone who's just as autistic as every other autist,
Speaker:but someone who can hide it more for the benefit of neurotypical people.
Speaker:Now you could obviously say it's for the benefit of that person because they
Speaker:can make more money, be independent,
Speaker:you know, maybe you get a attractive girlfriend.
Speaker:But the point is that from my perspective obviously ~ that last comment.
Speaker:But the the point is that it the the pressure that comes with it is
Speaker:soul crushing and I would say there will not be a larger I know studies show this
Speaker:now, there is no group of people at higher risk
Speaker:of suicide than a mid aged autistic person.
Speaker:High so called high functioning.
Speaker:So, you know, we pay the the old we can pay the ultimate price
Speaker:for fitting in apparently so well when actually inside we're feeling absolutely
Speaker:out of sync with the rest of society.
Speaker:So yes, I have been independent in my life,
Speaker:and yes, I've worked in an incredible array of jobs.
Speaker:You know, I've been an intern in the European Parliament,
Speaker:I've been an award winning entrepreneur,
Speaker:I have been a consultant in the football industry,
Speaker:helping to set up football academies.
Speaker:But at the same time I've also and this is very common with
Speaker:so called high functioning autistic people,
Speaker:because we're so focused on creating our own little world.
Speaker:that we can kind of semi-manage and survive in,
Speaker:that we often struggle to survive long term in these environments because they
Speaker:are so toxic in so many ways. And so in my case,
Speaker:you know, there were spells that I was an Uber driver,
Speaker:for example. I was thinking actually on my way here of a job I had.
Speaker:Clearly I must have been here with that job in the area of a mobile bookseller.
Speaker:I've I've been a van man. So basically
Speaker:I've experienced the highs of success up to a certain point.
Speaker:And I've also done what would be considered as,
Speaker:you know, menial physical labour.
Speaker:So I've done it all in that sense,
Speaker:without pushing it, but a much more varied working career than most.
Speaker:I've you know, I've had properties I've had a number of po I've owned
Speaker:a number of properties. My flat was was was in a interior design magazine
Speaker:as a show flat. And I've also spent years living with my mum.
Speaker:as a as a as an older adult. So,
Speaker:you know, I've had spells of having you know,
Speaker:the most w certainly a a a a partner that was desired by many a man
Speaker:in my peer group. And I've had long years of being single.
Speaker:~ obviously living with my mum didn't help me in that particular area.
Speaker:The the story of a of a of a high functioning worthless is usually a story
Speaker:of of extremes. We can be you know,
Speaker:very often we're very often I don't have the stats,
Speaker:but I I I feel that very often we we have a high intelligence level.
Speaker:We're very good with some of us are very good with words,
Speaker:some of us are very good with numbers.
Speaker:But at the same time, we're fighting an internal battle which is a never ending war.
Speaker:You know, since the age of thirteen,
Speaker:since I stood on that windowsill,
Speaker:I've been in a battle with myself.
Speaker:And now I'm forty four. And so that's a long battle.
Speaker:Before we go there, I want to go back to all these I mean,
Speaker:all those jobs. There was eight,
Speaker:nine jobs. What happened? You know,
Speaker:you were you were in the in the European Parliament
Speaker:Why are you still not there? What what what happened in in each of these jobs?
Speaker:The European Parliament was actually well,
Speaker:it's always a good example because of I study political science and my vision was
Speaker:to go into public service on that,
Speaker:let's say, political level, international relations level.
Speaker:You know, I was I I am perfectly bilingual.
Speaker:I speak two languages at native level.
Speaker:So I wanted to use that to make the world a better place,
Speaker:literally. And and you know,
Speaker:This is very autistic, by the way.
Speaker:So I there I am, you know, my career being decided in these grand halls
Speaker:of of the European Parliament at the grand old age of twenty one.
Speaker:My MEP, me and this Polish observer MP,
Speaker:Mr. Lewandowski, hello.
Speaker:So my MEP's introducing me to him and he's looking at
Speaker:me with this blank expression.
Speaker:I felt so sorry for my MEP. I know sh I I guess she was wise enough to know this
Speaker:is not gonna go anywhere. I was,
Speaker:you know, dumb to the ways of the world,
Speaker:but even even
Speaker:Being as naive as I was, I knew this was not gonna go anywhere.
Speaker:Sorry, my gut was telling me that.
Speaker:My head was telling me all kinds of things,
Speaker:but my gut was saying this ain't gonna go an nowhere.
Speaker:that that's me then then. So political science degree down the can.
Speaker:Student loan. We'll deal with that later.
Speaker:What's next? Welcome to the autism,
Speaker:you know. ~ merry go round of jobs.
Speaker:It gets to a point where it's too much and then you draw a line and jump
Speaker:out rather than stay there for another five years,
Speaker:bored strings, stupid, drinking,
Speaker:getting stuck in it, hating it,
Speaker:feeling sorry for yourself. So there is there is a good thing there
Speaker:I mean there is a part of that.
Speaker:Now I know I have the f words to use now.
Speaker:I was breaking down. From the age of thirteen,
Speaker:there would be systematic moments where I would break down into what I
Speaker:now know are periods of either autistic meltdown or autistic burnout.
Speaker:So these are now official phrases that I can use that describe these periods
Speaker:of time. These are horrendous.
Speaker:An autistic person, ~ during a meltdown starts to lose
Speaker:all their skills. I mean from high end skills to low end skills,
Speaker:let's call it that way. So this is this is really interesting.
Speaker:I want because I wanted to talk to you about that.
Speaker:Describe to me that whole process of of the meltdown,
Speaker:you know, s from let's say feelings,
Speaker:from what's going on, so we can really hit that point.
Speaker:Because J just to finish the point about jobs,
Speaker:this is why we can't carry on because we even,
Speaker:you know, I didn't know I was autistic,
Speaker:but I knew there was the risk of me having these very dark episodes.
Speaker:And I knew that if I stay in a job over a a certain line,
Speaker:I'm gonna I'm gonna be a dead man walking anyway.
Speaker:So that's why I make these decisions.
Speaker:I mean to break it down, it it feels like so we are carrying this this this this
Speaker:very, very heav heavy mask. sometimes it's heavier,
Speaker:sometimes it's lots, you know,
Speaker:alcohol made things as usual easier at that stage.
Speaker:you know, on a Monday morning at six o'clock.
Speaker:~ I mean, just to be clear, from the age of well,
Speaker:around from the age of thirteen,
Speaker:waking up to school and you know,
Speaker:everybody doesn't like to get up in the morning,
Speaker:it doesn't like it
Speaker:w would would be a holiday for me.
Speaker:Waking up in the morning to go to school,
Speaker:an institution I fundamentally understood was not there for my for my benefits,
Speaker:was like someone taking a hammer and banging on my head every single day times five.
Speaker:And it took me until Saturday afternoon really to kind of semi recover from
Speaker:the previous week of that. Obviously by that stage it was Sunday and and
Speaker:you get the Sunday blues because from Monday it was it was all going
Speaker:to happen all over again. So
Speaker:you and I went to a Half Eastern school for the time and I had some good friends
Speaker:and you know, it it wasn't the most horrendous experience of my life,
Speaker:but because I knew it was you know fundamentally good for me,
Speaker:doing these things, whether it's education or work,
Speaker:are just yeah. ~ so what happens is you have you go into yeah,
Speaker:you start to lose your skills and then in the end you have so for example
Speaker:I speak two languages perfectly.
Speaker:I can lose those languages during ~ both or one.
Speaker:~ sometimes I lose one till midday and sometimes I can pick up the other
Speaker:one again from midday onwards,
Speaker:you know, sometimes I can write in one but I can't speak in one and i it you know,
Speaker:the brain is a mysterious thing and and so this hyper connected brain
Speaker:of ours shuts down from overload,
Speaker:which is by the way why people observed autistic people are self obsessed,
Speaker:because it looked like we were just so,
Speaker:you know, in our own body and not caring about the world.
Speaker:The truth is we care so much.
Speaker:And we pick up so much from the external world that we just become over it's like
Speaker:a computer that's overheating and stuff,
Speaker:you know, the the mouse thing starts to jump from place to place
Speaker:and suddenly there's like a mmm and it's not moving at all.
Speaker:That's autism for you. And then meltdown,
Speaker:you know, is is a kind of a live emotional roller coaster,
Speaker:scary sensations, scary thoughts,
Speaker:weird physical sensations. And then burnout is
Speaker:Hubert. And I can hear, you know,
Speaker:so for example, when I had a major burnout incident and I knew it's coming.
Speaker:So I asked my mum for help, because at this stage I I still didn't know
Speaker:I was autistic, but I knew I'm gonna have a dark period.
Speaker:And so I said to my mum, you know,
Speaker:watch out for me because this is not gonna be pretty.
Speaker:So my mum would speak to me during burnout.
Speaker:So she was like, Hubert, and I can hear her talk,
Speaker:but I'm not gonna respond to her.
Speaker:Because if I respond to her, then I need to kick in my whole system and
Speaker:I don't have the energy to hold my whole my entire system,
Speaker:my whole operating system for that.
Speaker:So she could be there, you know,
Speaker:going Hubert, Hubert, you prodding me and and me just being non-responsive
Speaker:for however long. Sometimes minutes,
Speaker:sometimes hours, in the most extreme case days.
Speaker:So then, you know, my mum, for example,
Speaker:learning about me, this was again,
Speaker:we dad no idea about autism, for some but then she would try to find ways into
Speaker:my soul. It's a it's quite a deep experience actually.
Speaker:And she would, you know, read Nietzsche to me and my mum,
Speaker:you know, didn't know who Nietzsche was.
Speaker:But she would read Nietzsche to me and and and that would somehow he was autistic,
Speaker:I'm pretty sure. And his words,
Speaker:for example, would kind of come in and that would kick start something in me,
Speaker:like a program of, I don't know,
Speaker:global awareness and and through that I would somehow,
Speaker:you know, be able to go into the living room and eat dinner.
Speaker:Because again, in an autistic
Speaker:Being all of these programs are kind of equally important.
Speaker:So me going to the bathroom and me reading Nietzsche is they're intertwined.
Speaker:It's incredible. That that's in my case.
Speaker:I mean, for every autistic person,
Speaker:it will be slightly different.
Speaker:But there'll be things that are,
Speaker:you know, the way are relatively,
Speaker:I think, complicated by neurotypical standards,
Speaker:internal algorithms run. And by the way,
Speaker:I had a a neurodiversity expert explain this to me very well.
Speaker:So they said to me,
Speaker:This was not that long ago, so I was post forty,
Speaker:obviously because I was I didn't know I was autistic till forty two.
Speaker:He said to me, Listen, you've got to understand your body,
Speaker:your operating system is like a Formula One car.
Speaker:And what you've been doing is you've been putting diesel in it for thirty years.
Speaker:All you actually need is high end fuel and a pit crew.
Speaker:I was like, Well, considering the autism tax,
Speaker:which is another topic which I've had to pay all my life,
Speaker:I don't think I can afford a pit crew and I'm not sure I can afford that that level
Speaker:of petrol quality either.
Speaker:So maybe I'll just kind of, you know,
Speaker:have to s and this is what we have to do in the end.
Speaker:We have to buy a small amount of this petrol,
Speaker:ration it, and do a lot less.
Speaker:Because if we carry on at the rate that we carry on.
Speaker:And there is a long t long d longitudinal study in Sweden.
Speaker:I think this would need to be verified by other studies.
Speaker:I don't want to c over quote it,
Speaker:but it would point to us having a life expectancy significantly lower.
Speaker:as as an autistic community compared to our neurotypical peers,
Speaker:in particular so called high functioning autistic people.
Speaker:And I think really here we would be talking about pretty much
Speaker:the earliest dying group of people in our in our society,
Speaker:either through suicide or through our bodies just giving up on
Speaker:us because we're always in fights or flights.
Speaker:Another autistic topic. We're always in fights or flights.
Speaker:So you know that that takes its toll on our nervous system.
Speaker:It takes its toll on our bodies.
Speaker:So if we don't kill ourselves
Speaker:you know, our body will do it for us because it'll go,
Speaker:I'm I can't take this any longer,
Speaker:mate. So we do need to slow down and we do need to to to to really start managing
Speaker:our life in a very in a very ~ careful way.
Speaker:I hope as autism becomes more well known,
Speaker:as hopefully it changes the narrative around it,
Speaker:the terms that we use around it,
Speaker:younger people know about it, far younger.
Speaker:I hope this is not the outcome for future autists.
Speaker:But obviously I'm talking from a a late diagnose perspective.
Speaker:And I say that because maybe counterintuitively,
Speaker:because I think actually autism is a is an incredible leveller.
Speaker:Don't get me wrong, that you know,
Speaker:of course there are privileges of I don't know being in Western Europe
Speaker:or being male. But those I think the gap between,
Speaker:you know, the the the the most privileged autist and the least privileged autist
Speaker:is is is is low. I think autism levels the playing ground for for across gender,
Speaker:race
Speaker:you know, all the other areas that can ~ bring inequality because it's such
Speaker:an intensely inner experience and it's very difficult to know if
Speaker:you don't go through the autism journey in a in a in a conscious way what
Speaker:is the best environment. You know,
Speaker:some of my best days are have been when I didn't have companies
Speaker:and beautiful girlfriends and it was just me in a van driving on a motorway.
Speaker:You know, so I think autism is a great lever in that in that in that respect.
Speaker:I hope that makes sense. It makes a lot of sense.
Speaker:Every every answer you give us six more questions and ~ it's already Thursday
Speaker:and we started on Monday. So, you know,
Speaker:we've we've we we can go so far,
Speaker:but I think what's fascinating,
Speaker:I just want to reflect one or two things back,
Speaker:is it's kinda hard to choose what to do,
Speaker:hard to decide what's important,
Speaker:hard to decide what's not important.
Speaker:Is that right? It would be easy if it was
Speaker:You know, if our rules were the rules of of of society,
Speaker:let's put it that way. And actually I think very often we I think we've helped
Speaker:create many of the rules of society.
Speaker:I think many autistic people in the past were our great social reformers,
Speaker:some of our great scientists, some of our great literary figures.
Speaker:As I said, the spiritual world and and you know the the the impregnation
Speaker:of our society with ethics and morality,
Speaker:I think autistic people have had a huge role within that.
Speaker:But I think that you know the s we we often kind of
Speaker:create our own n noose around our neck.
Speaker:And I d the great example, for example,
Speaker:is email, which I'm pretty sure I mean,
Speaker:computers in general, you know,
Speaker:most of the great ~ computer related figures will be neurodivergent
Speaker:and specifically autistic, you from your Alan Turings to your Bill Gates
Speaker:to your st to your Steve Jobs.
Speaker:And again, you know, don't quote me,
Speaker:you know, I don't have all the proof,
Speaker:but look at their behaviours, look how they're perceived by the outside world.
Speaker:There's a lot of autistic trades there.
Speaker:I think we as autistic people created a lot of these fantastic technologies
Speaker:and then they kind of became our so for example now email,
Speaker:which I despise. I c I I I really appreciate the autistic nature of a of a
Speaker:of of an online communication system.
Speaker:But then because we're zero one,
Speaker:you know, when I get an email from an automatic email from Vodafone,
Speaker:I treat it obviously equally important as an email,
Speaker:I don't know, from my employer with a new contract.
Speaker:Now, getting all of these emails,
Speaker:thank God for the spam filter.
Speaker:And I'm sure an autistic person th thought of that because otherwise
Speaker:I'd have to physically go for every single one of these emails.
Speaker:So I'd never ever s I would never leave my computer.
Speaker:~ now you can see some of the problems because it's it's very difficult
Speaker:to make decisions in a world which,
Speaker:as I said, w I think we've had a huge impact on creating,
Speaker:but at the same time it then gets kind of taken over by what I would
Speaker:say are more neurotypical agendas,
Speaker:whether it's financial, whether it's
Speaker:And again, I think that autistic people played a huge part in creating
Speaker:the concept of money. But then it goes runs down its own course and and very often
Speaker:I feel it goes down avenues which are then very detrimental to us.
Speaker:That's what I mean about us very often creating the noose that is then tied around
Speaker:our neck. Inadvertently, of course.
Speaker:So it's very difficult to make decisions,
Speaker:especially in the 21st century when there are already I mean,
Speaker:neurotypical people are complaining about decision overload.
Speaker:when every single decision, including whether to go to the toilet,
Speaker:is is, you know, being made at a strategic level,
Speaker:you know, on board Air Force One with all your advisors,
Speaker:there's not enough hours in the day really to to deal with the very many things that
Speaker:we have to deal with. So yes, that's why we're drawn to uniform roles.
Speaker:That's what so we d for example,
Speaker:we're automatically not focused on having to pick out what we're wearing that
Speaker:morning.
Speaker:That's why we're drawn to routines,
Speaker:to make sure we're we're making as few conscious decisions at per day because
Speaker:it it drives us mad. That's why we get incredibly angry when someone gets
Speaker:in the way of our routine. That's not because we're,
Speaker:you know, arrogant and ignorant.
Speaker:It's because we know that by the end of the day we may not be able to speak
Speaker:~ if if someone gets in the way of our routine.
Speaker:Usually obviously inadvertently.
Speaker:You know, we try all the tricks in the book to try to make life automatic,
Speaker:because if we don't
Speaker:We go mad. Literally, we go mad.
Speaker:You know, and many of my autistic heroes did go mad,
Speaker:so well, we have to be very careful with that.
Speaker:I'm just trying to work out why everything's so hard,
Speaker:why there's only so much energy,
Speaker:why there's so many decisions to be made.
Speaker:I mean, you said it's as difficult to make a decision about going to
Speaker:the bathroom as it is to do something horrendously complex.
Speaker:I would caveat that by saying it's not equally as difficult every day.
Speaker:You know, there is something called autistic flow and when we are in that state
Speaker:we we we may find something much far easier and and even I would call neurotypically
Speaker:comfortably automatic. But the trouble is,
Speaker:and especially with age and and and and and and you know,
Speaker:this this operating system being kind of worn out of it.
Speaker:Zero oneness, ~ you know, we're often called an an investigator type.
Speaker:Many of us are detectives by by trade,
Speaker:I would say.
Speaker:And I don't mean that only in the in the law enforcement sense.
Speaker:I mean we can be auditors, we can be people who check write and
Speaker:or check computer code. Because the point is we approach everything as
Speaker:a zero one truth game. So, you know,
Speaker:when I went on a spiritual journey,
Speaker:this was me sitting in a Land Rover on a on a Swiss mountain watching
Speaker:my own thoughts, you know, I would you know,
Speaker:I need to go to the toilet now.
Speaker:Yeah, but do I?
Speaker:What will happen if I don't? Let's run that experiment.
Speaker:I'm not gonna go into details of these experiments and I would I haven't taken them
Speaker:maybe to the extreme ~ that some imaginations may may imagine,
Speaker:but I have experimented to a certain degree with everything in life
Speaker:in terms of really?
Speaker:Is it definitely this way? Let's check,
Speaker:shall we? And some of this is very interesting and some of it's very this
Speaker:is why autistic people break down barriers social,
Speaker:scientific, literary, artistic,
Speaker:because we take experiments to the extreme.
Speaker:But you can't have that and then not on the other side have some difficulties,
Speaker:like for example, you know, this is obvious,
Speaker:Hubert. Don't think don't worry about it.
Speaker:We're going back to, you know,
Speaker:the advice you just just relax.
Speaker:Well, if I relax, then I'm not an investigator.
Speaker:Because you to the level that I am,
Speaker:because you can't just turn this off.
Speaker:I mean, of course it's not constant at that level,
Speaker:but it's in the background. It's somewhere there in the background at all times.
Speaker:And especially when you're tired,
Speaker:especially when your operating s operating system has been running for
Speaker:for for very long, especially if there's some a large amount
Speaker:of external challenges facing you,
Speaker:you start to misfire. You start to use the wrong you start
Speaker:to over investigate things that currently don't need investigation because you're
Speaker:in that
Speaker:constant problem solving mode because you're running,
Speaker:and I think you know I've heard this very well described as autistic people approach
Speaker:life top down. So we are always looking at context.
Speaker:We are look always looking at the bigger picture.
Speaker:And this includes sometimes very minor,
Speaker:usually in on a day-to-day level,
Speaker:very minor topics. The neurotypical brain,
Speaker:wisely, in the from an evolutionary perspective,
Speaker:I believe, looks at things bottom up.
Speaker:How can I get the maximum result?
Speaker:For the minimum minimum effort.
Speaker:Why? Because effort costs energy.
Speaker:And traditionally energy was difficult to get because you needed to eat
Speaker:and food was scarce. So that all makes sense.
Speaker:But it also makes sense that there's a small group of people that are looking
Speaker:at it top down. Because that's why we can appear selfless.
Speaker:That's why we can appear odd. That's why we you know,
Speaker:I would say that the the traditional shaman in the village was was an autist.
Speaker:So this would be a person who'd be sitting slightly outside,
Speaker:you know, wearing a a wolf skin on their back,
Speaker:trying to understand what it is to be,
Speaker:you know, doing the investigation.
Speaker:What is it like to be a wolf, smelling the air?
Speaker:And then, you know, people from the village would come and say,
Speaker:you know, will it rain tomorrow?
Speaker:Well, from my observation, when it rains,
Speaker:you do get this kind of feeling in the air.
Speaker:And they'd be like, Wow, you know.
Speaker:You must be in connection with some higher spirit.
Speaker:Well, maybe, but
Speaker:I think more so it's just a case of observ very,
Speaker:very honest, truthful, dedicated observation.
Speaker:Yeah, I think that's something which has been around for as long as our society,
Speaker:more or less, or our vision of civilization.
Speaker:And as I said, going back to the earliest settlements,
Speaker:I think we've been here. I think we are glorified to a certain extent.
Speaker:You know, if you look at the films,
Speaker:even from when I was growing up,
Speaker:~ whether it's dancing with war dances with wolves,
Speaker:or whether it's Shawshack Redemption or
Speaker:You know, all of these films that we were kind of brought up on,
Speaker:for me these were autistic figures,
Speaker:you know, out in the wilderness by themselves,
Speaker:whatever that wilderness looked like,
Speaker:trying to create a new pattern,
Speaker:a new system to take things forward,
Speaker:the redemption story. So I think we're we play a very important role in society.
Speaker:The trouble is that the vast majority of autists,
Speaker:if not all, are leading very challenging lives.
Speaker:I think a large amount are leading horrendous lives.
Speaker:Now I'm okay about that from an evolutionary global perspective.
Speaker:Of course I would say that because I'm autistic and I take a global view.
Speaker:We're needed, we're necessary.
Speaker:But we never choose it. So I guess from an empathy perspective,
Speaker:from a quality perspective, from a kindness perspective,
Speaker:I'm very big now. And not really for me,
Speaker:because it's kind of too late.
Speaker:You I'll I'll I'll write out whatever's left.
Speaker:It's not going to be comfortable either way.
Speaker:You I'm I'll try to make it as comfortable as possible.
Speaker:But for future generation of autists,
Speaker:what I'd like would be awareness of who we really are.
Speaker:Yes, we are nature's problem solvers.
Speaker:And that's great. So let's use that fact because we've got a hell of
Speaker:a lot of problems to solve as a as a species.
Speaker:So let's make sure we, you know,
Speaker:give the aut give autistic people the tools and the environment,
Speaker:you know.
Speaker:the environment, a quiet environment,
Speaker:an orderly environment, a fair environment to ~ to to help solve some
Speaker:of those problems. But also just from a human perspective,
Speaker:you know, we've rightfully fought for the rights of everybody.
Speaker:Women, different races,
Speaker:different sexuality, ~ and as ~ a journalist author,
Speaker:Nikki Stevenson, I believe, put it in 2015,
Speaker:In The Guardian, I believe it was,
Speaker:you know, the last great prejudice in our society that we are undertaking
Speaker:is against neurodiverse people.
Speaker:This may be the last barrier to be broken.
Speaker:And if neurodiverse people are recognised for who they are,
Speaker:not sick people, not ill people,
Speaker:we're we're twenty five percent of the population at least.
Speaker:We're not a mistake. We're meant to be here.
Speaker:We're doing our job. It would be just nice for environments to be,
Speaker:you know, also adapted to our needs and
Speaker:And for our challenges to be recognized,
Speaker:because there are plenty of them.
Speaker:And just because we can be outstanding in something,
Speaker:doesn't mean we we're not horrendous at something else.
Speaker:You know, we can be a great inventor,
Speaker:you know, Nicholas Tesla, obviously,
Speaker:I'm I I'm sure that's why Elon Musk,
Speaker:you know, highlighted him by calling a company in his name.
Speaker:You know, this is a person who whose legacy is in every electrical socket,
Speaker:including in this room, and he died penniless.
Speaker:Talking to a pigeons. The point is you we can we we have so much to give,
Speaker:but we have these challenges and I hope if Nicholas Tester was alive today that we'd
Speaker:look after him. Because by God does does he have plenty to give us.
Speaker:So it'll be nice just to give him I don't know,
Speaker:maybe a nice little flat, you know,
Speaker:cable T V, I don't know, meals on wheels.
Speaker:We're not great at cooking, most of us,
Speaker:many of us. You know, just the basics just to help help our everyday life.
Speaker:So yeah, ~
Speaker:I hope that makes sense, but ~ there's a lot there,
Speaker:I know. There is a huge amount there.
Speaker:There there there absolutely is.
Speaker:You know, we've we've we've touched some really interesting topics.
Speaker:Do you think somebody listening would get an un get an idea
Speaker:of the complex complexity, the difficulties?
Speaker:'Cause you know, you and I have gone into much deeper.
Speaker:We've touched on onto veracity,
Speaker:on the fact that every decision preys on you.
Speaker:I mean, go back to that lying,
Speaker:you know, there is a
Speaker:There is a feeling for that lie.
Speaker:So a decision, there is a a cognitive weight for a decision making and
Speaker:and for some reason y you are processing every single thing rather than this like
Speaker:that's not important, that's not important,
Speaker:that's not important that I do.
Speaker:Neurotypical people do. Why is that?
Speaker:I mean, obviously wiring's slightly different.
Speaker:Yes. What about your interface between your soul,
Speaker:you as a person, and the outside world?
Speaker:I know some people touch, hearing,
Speaker:senses are
Speaker:Slightly different. I mean, is that is that a a thing or is that just a sort
Speaker:of a speculation? Yeah, I'm gonna borrow from a fantastic ~ autistic YouTuber
Speaker:who runs a YouTube chat YouTube channel called Autistomatic,
Speaker:who very rightfully pointed out the three main traits
Speaker:of an autistic person, or potentially the differences between and
Speaker:~ the fundamental differences between an autistic person and a neurotypical person.
Speaker:One would be the way we process emotion.
Speaker:Specifically the fact that we process it at a different time than could be imagined.
Speaker:This is why very many autistic people are imprisoned,
Speaker:because we if we do end up in court,
Speaker:we are not usually showing the same signs of remorse as that a neurotypical person,
Speaker:because we can process things,
Speaker:you know, a year, a decade, 30 years later.
Speaker:So we're not even if we have done something wrong,
Speaker:and I think very often we we're put in court because we're suspected
Speaker:of doing something wrong, because again,
Speaker:we're not behaving in a way which
Speaker:someone would expect, for example,
Speaker:when caught by by when met by the police or whatever.
Speaker:It f it feels like this emotional the way we process emotions is very different
Speaker:and certainly the timing of it.
Speaker:The second major area of difference is is this the way we pick up all of the
Speaker:sights, sounds, smells, etc., of the world.
Speaker:You know, we have five senses.
Speaker:There is now this theory put forward by our,
Speaker:amongst others, by our common friend Tim Frigg,
Speaker:that we actually now have a sixth sense that's developing our size sense,
Speaker:the our ability to pick up non-physical inputs,
Speaker:~ let's say by our soul or however you want to call it.
Speaker:Again, this very much still is is is if we have however many senses we have,
Speaker:five or six,
Speaker:Or maybe you seven or eight by this stage,
Speaker:or however many we're gonna have in evolution in in evolutionary terms
Speaker:in the future, we as autistic people will be picking up those things most probably
Speaker:more intensely than the neurotypical average.
Speaker:So whether it's a conversation in a coffee shop that's probably taking place
Speaker:on the other side of that coffee shop,
Speaker:a baby crying, a the perfume or the not so pleasant smell of somebody,
Speaker:you know, I can sometimes smell when someone is ill.
Speaker:So someone is sitting next to me,
Speaker:I'm like, Yeah, that person's got a stuffed they haven't coughed yet,
Speaker:but I know that they've got, you know,
Speaker:mucus buildup because I can smell it.
Speaker:You know, this is this is not practically useful on a day to day level.
Speaker:It it gets in the way because it it's not just that I can smell it,
Speaker:it impacts me. So, you know, I I'll sit down in a in a in a waiting room
Speaker:and then I'm impacted by everybody else's issues,
Speaker:whether they're
Speaker:whatever those issues are, sometimes I'm I'm impacted by someone's emotional state,
Speaker:sometimes I'm impacted by someone else's illness.
Speaker:And I've got my own shit that I need to deal with.
Speaker:But I'm already dealing with all of these these these external input which
Speaker:I don't want to be processing,
Speaker:but I but I'm forced to. So yeah,
Speaker:so so that's the second item, the the the way that we process information coming in.
Speaker:And the third is this this this concept of veracity.
Speaker:So so and that has that's linked to zero one thinking,
Speaker:that's linked to truth and lies,
Speaker:that's linked to order.
Speaker:That's linked to things making sense.
Speaker:It's so important for us for things to make sense.
Speaker:It's the infamous banker in Monopoly.
Speaker:It's it's you know, as children,
Speaker:I would be the banker in Monopoly.
Speaker:I'll be the one not only for me it would be more important that the rules
Speaker:of the game were played fairly than me winning a game.
Speaker:Hubert, I want to ask you about veracity,
Speaker:because this is something you mentioned to me and I did a lot of research on it.
Speaker:And to my mind, it's kind of equating a finite amount of energy for
Speaker:a day, a week, a moment or whatever.
Speaker:But explain explain this to me,
Speaker:to us, so we can understand why it is such a I guess an integral part
Speaker:of being an autist. So this is a concept put forward again by my virtual friend.
Speaker:I've never spoken to him but someone who I very much admire,
Speaker:Quinn from the autismatic YouTube channel.
Speaker:So veracity, why I love the word is because it brings together so many aspects of
Speaker:The autistic need for truth,
Speaker:however that is perceived in the moment,
Speaker:order, things making sense,
Speaker:and the physical discomfort that we feel to varying degrees.
Speaker:So on all those three elements,
Speaker:emotions, processing of the world around us,
Speaker:and veracity, you'll find different autists are particularly
Speaker:intense and or challenged by all of them,
Speaker:but in different to to varying degrees.
Speaker:For me, veracity is a huge one.
Speaker:I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm i it's absolutely massive,
Speaker:also because of my personality type.
Speaker:For me, injustice at every level is something that makes it very difficult
Speaker:to to sleep at night. So yeah,
Speaker:it brings together all of these concepts in one.
Speaker:Veracity is the need for truth,
Speaker:order, and things making sense.
Speaker:Okay then. So when things don't make sense
Speaker:There's a cost when things are disorganized,
Speaker:disordered. I mean, huge internal suffering.
Speaker:Okay. So if I walk you know, if if a film is meant to start
Speaker:at nine and I mean,
Speaker:let's hope it starts at all, but you know,
Speaker:if it's delayed for reasons well,
Speaker:you know, airplanes are a great example these days.
Speaker:You know, technical issues. You know,
Speaker:I'd really want to report on that for me to be calm.
Speaker:If someone gave me a report, you know,
Speaker:on the plane's condition, what exactly is the issue?
Speaker:What is that true that there was a technical issue,
Speaker:or is that just being given as an excuse for a plane to be late?
Speaker:I'd like to you know understand the d the basics.
Speaker:I don't need to become an engineer,
Speaker:but I'd like to know the basics,
Speaker:be to Google it, just to understand,
Speaker:okay, there is a technical issue,
Speaker:you know, it requires this amount of time to repair.
Speaker:I can deal with that. It's fine,
Speaker:no problem. But if
Speaker:Disorder comes in for unknown reasons,
Speaker:reasons that I, you know, I'm not fully sure are honest.
Speaker:And usually these r these reasons are people being lazy andor badly organized
Speaker:and or how the way I would perceive it.
Speaker:So it's a judgment call. It's not the truth,
Speaker:maybe in that sense, but that would be you know.
Speaker:And by the way, this has a huge cost on us on the flip side,
Speaker:because we hold people to very high standard.
Speaker:We can hold people to very standards,
Speaker:which means we hold ourselves to an even higher standard.
Speaker:So we are our own greatest I would even say to a point slave driver.
Speaker:You know, I've been a slave driver to myself.
Speaker:Because I need to make sure, you know,
Speaker:if I I I was an owner of a company,
Speaker:which means it's you know, the level that I held myself to for that company
Speaker:to be run properly, for all my staff to be fully informed of everything,
Speaker:for everything to run the way it should do,
Speaker:which is impossible because you you know,
Speaker:y you don't know.
Speaker:~ and and and and theoretically the goal of an entrepreneur should be to make money,
Speaker:you know, not to be a a judge
Speaker:~ of everything, mostly themselves.
Speaker:So ~ which I guess is the reason why I never took that next level in terms
Speaker:of being able to secure a a a larger financial platform for myself
Speaker:~ beyond the initial success ~ that I had.
Speaker:Because we're forever and certainly again I'm talking about an autist such
Speaker:as myself where the veracity aspect is is so strong,
Speaker:we're forever judging ourselves and the rest of the world to an impossible stand.
Speaker:And I see the value of it from an evolutionary perspective.
Speaker:There need to be people who do this because if we don't,
Speaker:then you know, no one will pick out the injustices,
Speaker:no one will try to make sure that everything works properly.
Speaker:But the cost to that person I mean the cost to other people around,
Speaker:you know, I I've tired many a person around me because of my sense of veracity.
Speaker:I've lost most probably my partners,
Speaker:you know, close friends because of it.
Speaker:There's I've paid all kinds of costs for it.
Speaker:But n the biggest cost that I've had to pay is is is is within myself because I've
Speaker:held myself to a standard which you know,
Speaker:we hate education, for example,
Speaker:because we in many ways, because we
Speaker:expect of ourselves already to know everything before we even enter
Speaker:an educational space. Because how can we,
Speaker:you know how can I give a fair appraisal of the teacher
Speaker:if I don't know everything already?
Speaker:I mean it's it's literally this as I said,
Speaker:an impossible standard. And I really think it's necessary at a species
Speaker:~ wide level, it's a horrendous way to live.
Speaker:And it impacts many people negatively on a personal level,
Speaker:I think, as well. But I think it's really important.
Speaker:So I'll defend the I I'm I'll never defend my own behavior,
Speaker:but I'll defend the the fact that there are people who have such a high level
Speaker:of veracity. There's a pursuit for something.
Speaker:There's a pursuit for excellence.
Speaker:There's a pursuit for Exactly right.
Speaker:And it's it's not merely obsessive.
Speaker:It's it's making obsessive look like a quiet walk in the park.
Speaker:Yeah. Obsessive is
Speaker:So I don't feel it is obsessive,
Speaker:but I can understand from a neurotypical perspective,
Speaker:someone observing me, labeling it as obsessive.
Speaker:For me, it's process driven and it's logical.
Speaker:From the outside, it can be perceived as obsessive.
Speaker:Yeah. And so you're just taking it to research,
Speaker:to learn something, to get curious,
Speaker:to understand, to to grok, to make sense of.
Speaker:You're it's it's a process of comprehending something.
Speaker:Yeah, I I'm w we're touching on two aspects of autism.
Speaker:One is hyper focus, so we have this concept concept of special interest
Speaker:and and so we can become very,
Speaker:very focused on you know on fully understanding the English civil war
Speaker:and we will research the English Civil War to the absolute maximum
Speaker:and then we'll leave it. It was like that well,
Speaker:that's done. We're done now with that.
Speaker:Now we're moving on to you know,
Speaker:English Premier League between nineteen ninety four and and two thousand,
Speaker:which was my own specialist subject growing up.
Speaker:So
Speaker:We'll we'll have these these moments.
Speaker:Now I don't even watch football.
Speaker:But I can I'm probably I can still tell you,
Speaker:you know, seventy percent of the players who are on the field during you know,
Speaker:Manchester United versus Wimbledon match in August of nineteen ninety six.
Speaker:I don't watch football anymore.
Speaker:So what you know, this is very,
Speaker:very autistic. So we can have these very intense ~ hyper focuses.
Speaker:In terms of veracity, I would say that's a constant aspect.
Speaker:So I am voracious.
Speaker:I'm not sure if there is such a verb but I like it.
Speaker:Maybe maybe we've invented one now.
Speaker:I I have to I'll I will have to speak to Quinn from that channel to see if
Speaker:I can ~ use that as a verb. ~ we can be ver I can be voracious.
Speaker:I am voracious about everything from the moment I wake up.
Speaker:Which is why I try to limit the amount of things that I do because everything
Speaker:I will do will be, you know, the ~ this shirt better be clean,
Speaker:my car better be clean, the route to get here better make sense.
Speaker:No one better break any, you know,
Speaker:road laws around me when I'm doing it.
Speaker:Everything I will do today will be impacted by the sense of veracity.
Speaker:~ is it, you know, is it the way I planned it?
Speaker:Is it the correct quality? ~ is it fair?
Speaker:Is it just? What I'm what I'm seeing from a neurotypical
Speaker:but it doesn't make any sense.
Speaker:It doesn't it doesn't make it doesn't make any sense,
Speaker:and I I know you well enough to for you to understand that that's
Speaker:not from ignorance, it's it's a question because
Speaker:There's gonna people listening going,
Speaker:Well, just get over it. Relax,
Speaker:man. Just relax. ~ Well, that's like me saying to you,
Speaker:focus all the time. Just focus all the time,
Speaker:Amish. Why are you not focusing all the time?
Speaker:Too bloody tiring. You for me that's mad that you're not doing it.
Speaker:So this is exactly the the the the the bridge that if we build and obviously
Speaker:we can b you know, we can build that in families,
Speaker:we can build that in friends in friendship groups,
Speaker:we can build that at in at work.
Speaker:And by the way, I believe that bridge is where the greatest
Speaker:Beauty, truth, future of the beautiful future of the human race lies.
Speaker:I believe it's on the bridge between neurotypical and neurodiverse people.
Speaker:You can't make it on your own.
Speaker:We can't make it on your own. We're all human.
Speaker:So we all have our, as I said,
Speaker:the carnal aspects, the the the personality aspects.
Speaker:They are the same. So we have this one difference,
Speaker:our neurological makeup. I mean,
Speaker:again, we have our sexual differences and our gender differences
Speaker:and our race differences.
Speaker:We have those differences and we have this new neurological difference.
Speaker:But on that bridge of oneness,
Speaker:if we're speaking specifically about neurodivergence and neurotypicality,
Speaker:let's call it, if we have if we combine our powers,
Speaker:so the efficiency
Speaker:of energy usage on the part of neurotypical people,
Speaker:and the attention to detail and pattern spotting of neurodiverse people.
Speaker:And also the energy level that AD for example,
Speaker:the energy level that ADHD people bring to the table,
Speaker:the creativity, the again, the hyper focus,
Speaker:the if we bring all of that together,
Speaker:you know, we're we can we can scale the summits that are ahead of us.
Speaker:And there are some pretty big summits,
Speaker:you know, we need to really start you know,
Speaker:w we don't need to be autistic to know that we're there are some areas
Speaker:of our life that are not I'm talking about on a on a on a global level that
Speaker:are not going that I'm not
Speaker:I'm not even saying that I think they are going to plan because I think they
Speaker:are changing, but we we certainly need to carry on that trajectory of change.
Speaker:I'm I'm seeing you've got the pen,
Speaker:neurotypical got the paper, and it's got to come together.
Speaker:That bridge is where the writing happens.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, exactly right. Beautiful.
Speaker:You've you've got that beautiful absolute focus of that beautiful cursive.
Speaker:Beautiful. And you've got the neurotypical bringing a piece of paper.
Speaker:Yeah, and I think that that I I actually think that the whole
Speaker:I believe that many of the people within the individual groups of people that have
Speaker:fought for change. So I believe many a woman in the suffragette movement would have
Speaker:been autistic. I certainly know many of the lit of the female literary figures
Speaker:in England, I'm highly Jane Austen,
Speaker:Virginia Woolf, for these are these are very much autistic figures in terms
Speaker:of their behaviour and trends.
Speaker:I believe that many of the people within downtrodden racial groups
Speaker:who fought for rights
Speaker:were autistic. I believe ~ Nelson Mandela was autistic.
Speaker:I believe that many of the figures of the sixties of all ~ colours
Speaker:and creeds were autistic that were changing society at that time.
Speaker:So I believe that this is so the you know getting,
Speaker:for example, in England sorry,
Speaker:getting in the in the UK, getting to the Equality Act 2010,
Speaker:I believe that that is part of the process that we're already on
Speaker:and I believe autistic people have already played a huge part.
Speaker:within that without actually fighting for autistic rights,
Speaker:let's put it that way, but actually doing that within their
Speaker:own categories of whether, as I said,
Speaker:whether it be sexuality or race or gender.
Speaker:So this is just the next step.
Speaker:Because we are a minority, I believe.
Speaker:I don't know what the exact number is,
Speaker:you know, whether it's twenty five percent,
Speaker:maybe it's greater, but let's assume that it's less than fifty if we can
Speaker:get to a point where we run a society,
Speaker:we live a life
Speaker:That is not based on majority rule.
Speaker:I think that's an incredible step for humanity because it's kind of illogical.
Speaker:It's like, well, the majority should rule.
Speaker:Why, you know, why should the majority adapt to the minority?
Speaker:On the one level, that's a very illogical argument.
Speaker:But if you take it to the if if that minority has has things to give that
Speaker:are critical, then suddenly it's like,
Speaker:well, maybe we should be finding ways that everybody is more comfortable.
Speaker:So everyone gives away a little bit of comfort to make sure that everyone
Speaker:is is a little bit more comfortable.
Speaker:Because then all of the trades can come to the fore.
Speaker:And as I said, it's happening.
Speaker:I mean, it's i w we're in London.
Speaker:This is the place that it's happening more than most.
Speaker:You know, the the way that this country is changing,
Speaker:with even within the UK, is at the forefront of the way the world is going.
Speaker:We are becoming you want it, you don't want it,
Speaker:you support it, you don't support it,
Speaker:doesn't matter. It's happening.
Speaker:We are becoming what?
Speaker:You've got all your colours and creeds,
Speaker:you've got all your genders, you've got all your sexualities,
Speaker:you've got it's all there walking up and down the street.
Speaker:So it's happening. There's kind of two futures that you can imagine,
Speaker:one being the kind of depressing,
Speaker:you know, blade runner version of it kind of working,
Speaker:but not really. But I think there's a second version there because I think
Speaker:if we and I'm not talking about,
Speaker:you know, blind acceptance of things and just,
Speaker:you know, everything's gonna work out by itself.
Speaker:No, actually engaging with this,
Speaker:actually making sure that
Speaker:The people who are the most enthusiastic within each of those groups that want
Speaker:to really come together and move forward do come together and move forward,
Speaker:and the rest will follow, which is exactly what's happened over the last couple
Speaker:of thousand years. We are in this process of moving towards something that
Speaker:is much more universal. And that's obviously my Star Trek hyper focus.
Speaker:But it we we're going there and we will need to go there because we will
Speaker:not solve global challenges.
Speaker:By being in in silos. However attractive silos are,
Speaker:and I like a silo once in a while.
Speaker:You can't live in the past. It's we are where we are.
Speaker:And we have global problems and we need global solutions.
Speaker:And these the global solutions will come from places like England where where
Speaker:the world is meeting. Literally.
Speaker:We're becoming a transnational nation.
Speaker:So you'd like to think that this is the greatest place to
Speaker:be also thinking consciously about changing the narrative about neurodiversity.
Speaker:This is not a medical condition.
Speaker:Are we challenged in certain parts of our life?
Speaker:Yes. Are we even disabled in certain parts of our life?
Speaker:Yes. But are we an illness? No.
Speaker:Are we an accident? No. Are we a you know,
Speaker:some sort of experiment gone wrong?
Speaker:I don't think so, because it looks like we've been around pretty much as
Speaker:as as long as our civilization has.
Speaker:Is our civilization an accident?
Speaker:Doesn't feel like it. So, you know,
Speaker:it if we can now consciously you know,
Speaker:and don't get me wrong, I'm sure again,
Speaker:don't quote me, but if you look at the people like Thomas More and Erasmus and,
Speaker:you know, these medieval figures.
Speaker:Who were advising kings of the time.
Speaker:You know, I believe that we have played a role already,
Speaker:but we live in a society now that needs to have everything defined.
Speaker:Because in the nineteenth century we decided that the written word is king,
Speaker:and now we need to make sure that everything is so in that s in that case,
Speaker:we neurodivergent people who could I'm sure do many things from behind the scenes,
Speaker:we need s to stand up for ourselves,
Speaker:not to, you know, f fight equality battles for the sake of it,
Speaker:but to
Speaker:Come forward and say, look, we are a group of people that have these challenges,
Speaker:we have these advantages, this is who we are.
Speaker:We're quite a big bunch. Think about us as well,
Speaker:and we're all we're all gonna win from that.
Speaker:But the key thing that I would want people to understand is that,
Speaker:you know, I'm I'm not at that level of of ingenuity,
Speaker:etc. So I have a comfortable position of being autistic,
Speaker:but you know, I'm not Nicholas Tesla.
Speaker:I understand part of Tesla's, for example.
Speaker:way of thinking and being. The reason he didn't have money in the end
Speaker:is because he didn't care about money.
Speaker:And that means he could give a hundred percent of his energy
Speaker:to thinking about electricity,
Speaker:which is pretty crucial today,
Speaker:I would say. I think Jane Austen,
Speaker:great example from the other female ~ autist or Mary Curie,
Speaker:you know, we're talking about people who are wholly dedicated to their art.
Speaker:Whatever that art was, whatever the science was,
Speaker:whatever the we use Nelson Mandela as a as a modern day saint.
Speaker:Power for power's sake is a waste of time.
Speaker:Our relationship with money is abstract.
Speaker:I don't really get it. When I'm hungry I eat.
Speaker:When I need to buy petrol, I put petrol in,
Speaker:and that's why very often I run out of money because I just do things that
Speaker:I need to do. And so it turns out that money can be a finite concept.
Speaker:So the we don't have the same need to to to to amass.
Speaker:Again, we're not playing some of the healthy neurotypical games from a from
Speaker:a you know longitudinal species perspective of
Speaker:you know, looking better than our neighbour and,
Speaker:you know, playing the mating game in that way.
Speaker:I get all of that. It all makes sense.
Speaker:But we as a s as a minority, and I think,
Speaker:you know, as I said, on purpose so,
Speaker:don't have those needs. We have greater we we may even have those needs,
Speaker:but we have a greater need of veracity.
Speaker:Because I'm sure Tesla's need for veracity was to get that concept right.
Speaker:Run that experiment to its end.
Speaker:I think Edison's priority was something slightly different.
Speaker:I think that's why Edison got the money and Tesla got the the pigeon.
Speaker:And and there's no wrong or right here.
Speaker:It's like we we're all needed.
Speaker:We need people who can create relationships.
Speaker:We need people that can create the social bonds that hold us together as a society.
Speaker:And we also need the people who hyper focus on something and come
Speaker:up with whether it's antibiotics or or flight.
Speaker:You know, I don't quote me, I don't know if the right brothers were autistic,
Speaker:but I'd bet one of them at least was.
Speaker:But anyway, why? Because you know,
Speaker:because you need that level of focus to and not only
Speaker:To invent this stuff, you'd need that level of focus to be able to deal with
Speaker:the criticism. You're a mad person.
Speaker:What are you doing? You know, and and and the average neurotypical person will go,
Speaker:Well, you know, the crowd is saying no,
Speaker:so I will wisely go with the crowd because that's my greatest chance of survival.
Speaker:Makes sense to me. So then you've got these mad people on the side going,
Speaker:Well, I don't really care about survival.
Speaker:That's mad. I hate that about myself.
Speaker:The way I started my entrepreneurial career,
Speaker:I'd be a
Speaker:multimillionaire by now if I carried on with certain,
Speaker:you know, if I had more neurotypical traits.
Speaker:So I've just, you know, fucked myself up.
Speaker:Because I'm autistic. Great. Well,
Speaker:I'd like to think that there is a global reason for that.
Speaker:And even though I may not influence the world,
Speaker:I know autistic people in the past have have have done.
Speaker:And I know they will in the future.
Speaker:And what I'm convinced about is that if autistic people are not involved in
Speaker:the great projects of our time,
Speaker:then then then our species will lose out from it.
Speaker:And that's what I believe they will.
Speaker:And I believe that evolution is doing whatever you want to call it is doing
Speaker:its job in in and and I think neurodiversity coming to the forefront is
Speaker:a part of that. We're talking about this.
Speaker:I didn't know I was autistic. Now I do.
Speaker:I'm not responsible for that. There's a there's a bigger there's
Speaker:a bigger thing going on here. well we had better stop otherwise we'll
Speaker:be we'll be talking until Friday.
Speaker:Considering autists have a very strange relationship with time,
Speaker:I'm I'm definitely going to hand over to you at this at this stage.
Speaker:Lots to think about, lots to consider,
Speaker:you know. And I think, Hubert I think we've had a great conversation.
Speaker:I think there's an awful lot there that people can unpack and think about
Speaker:and wonder about and probably go and find Quinn and various other people
Speaker:who are actively talking about autism and about
Speaker:the strengths and the wisdom and the integrity and
Speaker:And going read Nietzsche. Thank you for listening.
Speaker:And if you're curious about whether you're autistic,
Speaker:if you know you are, if you've got some thoughts on this,
Speaker:contact me, contact us, look up the stuff in the show notes,
Speaker:because this has been a really important conversation.
Speaker:And I think as recently diagnosed as neurodiverse,
Speaker:there are a lot of people who are really questioning what's going on with life.
Speaker:And I think this conversation has just touched on something that allows eyes
Speaker:to open, ears to listen.
Speaker:And yeah, there's a difference to be made because everyone's got huge input
Speaker:for this life. Thank you very much,
Speaker:till next time.
