The ‘Others’

It is remarkable to hear the story of the outsider; the scapegoat who attracts the violence and abuse of other children, or the autistic or divergent child whose mere appearance in a classroom (as recently described to me by a teacher) causes utter paralysis (and severe temporal distortion) in the very atmosphere itself.

The realities differ for the child who attracts victimization and the one whose perceived disabilities shock us. In the case of the former, we are rarely granted the opportunity to see deeply into their world, or to directly witness the effects of their presence in their own familiar social contexts. But most of us can remember such a person from our own childhood, and some of us have direct experience of having been the one selected for abuse or cruelty. They, in common with those whose behavior or appearance challenge our expectations, radically alter the social landscape and the thought and behavior of those involved merely by being present as themselves. Although they often suffer horribly due to the abuse or exclusion they may suffer, their ability to radically and suddenly alter the very fabric of local social interaction is actually a form of unrecognized power.

In the case of the sudden appearance of a severe autistic or deformed child, the matter can be astonishingly compressed and amplified. The entire social constellation will often simply go into a form of shock. The children have no idea what to do — the adults are similarly confused, and everyone looks almost helplessly to each other in stupefied or terrified silence for cues on what sort of response is socially or personally sanctioned.

In fact, these people and situations represent a form of power which I can understand as spiritual; they absolutely and radically alter the entire reality system, laying waste to ordinary expectations and behaviors, and even to the basis of time and space itself as others ordinarily experience them.

If only we could more easily hear their experience and feelings, their stories. If only we could see into the world of the outcast, the profoundly alien(ated), the almost purified ‘other’ of the person whose extrinsic appearance or activity is catastrophically unlike our expectations… I suspect we would be profoundly and permanently transformed.

But it is not only their stories that affect us; in fact, most of us live in a sort of narratized hypnosis of which we are entirely unaware. And the power of these ‘others’ who do not exist in this fantasy that owns our consciousness is precisely this: like a flash of living pre-verbal lightning, they -interrupt- the hypnotic process of our narratives and verbal ideas… including language itself. This power, the power to deflower our narratives and expectations… is the very power that spirituality holds forth to our hope and desire. The power of direct, nonverbal experience, insight, and comprehension. The power of touch, the power of visual metaphor, and, in part, the power we experience in its myriad expressions of dreaming and spiritual ecstasy.

But we only tend to recognize this power when it appears in a form that we consider beautiful. And the outcasts, the retarded or autistic child… the malformed or disabled or ugly… go largely unrecognized as the direct transport of these gifts. Yet the startling silence and confusion that erupts in our social games when they appear is a sign. It is a sign that our narratives have overridden our humanity and our capacity for instantaneous connection, insight, and growth. A sign that our ideas about beauty are misfounded, and delusory. A sign of how easily we succumb to the superficial hypnotic offerings of our expectations and culturally-founded fantasies of accomplishment, success, and value.

Of course, many are wise enough to seek such experience with ‘the other’ directly, personally, and go intentionally to these people and situations both as advocates and students. And such people can, when we are willing, lead us beyond our expectations and narrative compulsions into a sense of our own humanity and awareness which wildly rebuts and exceeds all of our common misapprehensions about what is ordinary, normal, true, beautiful, or even reasonably expectable.

Is this not the very promise of spirituality, in a garment unfamiliar and unexpected?

I am insatiably curious about the nature of living beings, intelligence, language, and the origins of our species.

As a cognitive activist, my dream is that my work may contribute to our ability to understand the origins of our strange situation as modern humans, and assemble effective replacements for what our modern cultures are but the broken remnants and falsified costumes of.

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