By Freestone Wilson

Yes hello everyone!!

I read ... too .... that autism is on the increase, that more and more people seem to be diagnosed, today. There is ONE reason, I think, why this is so,. only one reason, out of many.

I spent the last five years in my home town of 600 people, it was a time warp back to 1950, or even
before ... not a fast food franchise for 20 miles ... the one cafe is owned by a human being. There was a small factory, right in a storefront, across the street from this caf, one of the workers, who lived ten houses away ... he would often come in for lunch. The same people would come for coffee at the same time each and every day. There would be 10 to 15 people in there, at 6 AM ....
how amazing to walk into this cafe at 6 AM and see not a single car on the street or road ... for the TWO miles each way in and out of town! The side streets are lined with maple trees, there
are no leafblowers or lawn maintenance people's noises ... only a small lawnmower can be heard!
Church is the center of social life: marriage is the goal of every lady.

Today, I live in a city of 150,000, this last weekend I went to their wonderful ... "springtime Tallahassee" parade and festival .... never again, the sensory overload was to to too much!! 50,000 people to watch a parade ... the numbers of human beings were so so great, on the streets, in the tent craft show area ... that i never DID even see what was IN those tents, let alone enter one of them!!

W-e-l-l .... in the 1950s, the slow pace of these little ole towns that had farming or industry to support them, why the PACE of living was much much slower, people got up and went to work at the same time each and every day, "routines" were the way of life, and slow at that. In my home town, a man was a bank teller for over 40 years ... I once met a man who worked in the very same small building for about 60 years and he lived next door, and still does after he retired, same time to bed ... to eat ... to arise .... a small universe.

Today???

Well ..... ADD and HYPERACTIVITY is a MUST, a strength! Why ... I had a lady tell me, once, how impressed she was with another lady at the checkout counter at the supermarket! this clerk lady was ...

AT THE SAME TIME

-- totalling up some person's groceries.
--- talking on the phone.
--- giving someone directions.
--- talking to a salesman about some product.
--- talking with the manager.

All at the very same moment!!

I once went to a Ithaca ny super super supermarket with my aunt, "wegman's superstore" I think.
oh it was a wonderful store...but i was "psychotic" for hours afterward ... my aunt wondered about my sanity as i rode back home with her...the sense overload in that store was too tooo much...the bright lights, the buzzing of all the clerks...noise, lights, hummms ... and the psychedelics splat of 90,734 colors of can goods and vegies!

My POINT is, folks .... that back in the slower days of the 1950s, or thereabouts, a High level autistic person could COPE!! The pace of life was such that a sheltered niche could be found, and no one would ever know that person is autistic. Why even the "shadow of autistic" person might not EVEN KNOW there was a brain problem at all, to his life! He would naturally gravitate to a sheltered way of life in a little town where all his relatives live and he would work at some low key industry job ... maybe for 30 or more years! Why ... both of my aunts still live in their houses that they bought back in the early 1950s!! Imagine, folks ... 40 years sitting at the same kitchen window at the breakfast table...the same view out of that window! These days....anyone with even a "touch" of autism is UTTERLY behind the curve of adaptions to the pace of our stress-filled life ways!! I mean ... on the cell phone in traffic; I see it from the bus window everyday ... --- when a cereal company puts out 24 flavors of POPTARTS, as who actually has the TIME to l-a-b-o-i-o-u-s-l-y pour milk into a bowl of cereal, these days: why they cram the warm poptart into their mouths, direct from toaster, as they RUN from the kitchen with briefcase in hand, to jump into their car for that 30 mile power-commute at 6 am!! Gotta talk that cell phone on the Commuter train with laptop next to ya with the wall street Journal on the seat, open, the sensory overload that is becoming the norm, for this society, why that overload could even cause a "normal" person to have a kind of "nervious breakdown" --immediately during a super-stress period, like when i was in that supermarket, above ... --- or after a period of time, after months and years at some stress-filled job! And one of the ways a brain comes apart?? ... Why that could very well be in autistic symptoms ... especally in a person with a genetic predisposition to autism.

And this begins at a VERY early age, this sense bombardment. kids in school...why the tv way of life
demands that each tv-image only is on the screen for about one second. yes...ADD and autism...
since even sports are not played for "fun" anymore...even they are high exTreme and Competitive,
even in the early grades...there is no more nice "recess" slow time for kids of a different pace.

"Miners canaries"

This is a term used sometimes for how some people react to food additives and chemicals in our
environments ... a warning to us all about what our way of life is doing to our bodies .... they are a prophetic warning to us all. Well .... this could hold for our minds and our SOULS too!
ADD and Autism...could be a miners canary for what our way of living is doing to us in our minds and in our souls! [take a modern teen-ager and take him to that peacefull heaven after death and he will be bored to spouting in .004 seconds as there IS nothing going on there --- only "peace and traquillity" is there!!]

So we autistics are at the tail end of those 700 joggers at the "springtime Marathon Run".
--- the "run" that the people at the forefront DEFINE as winners, those people at the front...the winners must be the type of fitness that wins the race. They define what constitutes a winner, of course... all other types of fitnesses do not count, here, in this "run"! --- just about the only race in town, nowadays!!

Thus ... I think that this is why there are more autistic people today! The way of live of this age is ever more demanding of a certain way of living that is the WORST case of livings, for many autistic people, and there are fewer and fewer places to hide, to be sheltered from the media Storms .... And even the "normal" kid may become mind-fractured into Autism ... under all the sense stress and overloads!

[feel free to quote or pass this article on to others!!]