© Copyright 2020 by Ronald Thomas West

Unpublished draft manuscript. This draft chapter for inclusion in ‘A Tribal Perspective Pre-Columbian Concept Translated to Modern: Radical Ethnographic Contrasts & Related Politics of Collusion’ (a nearly completed work in progress) may be reproduced for educational & research purposes. For profit & mass paper media redistribution prohibited. Send inquiries, questions & private comments to:

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Natural Selection for Autistic Traits

“For the Western world, the Schumann resonance represents the frequency of the Earth’s electromagnetic field. It has always concentrated at 7.83 Hz, with few variations since 1952, but in June 2014 there was a change. This when the Russian Space Observatory System showed a sudden increase in activity with a varied elongation from 8.5 Hz to 16.5 Hz.

“The researchers were amazed at these values, something that had never been recorded that way. More recently, other peaks have been detected, increasing the planet’s frequency to more than 30 Hz. It is concluded that these changes clearly show that the planet is changing. Some scholars also believe that humans, when acting on a “collective consciousness” level, can affect the structure of the magnetic field.

“This speculation is based on the fact that Schumann’s frequency is “in tune” with the human brain states alpha and theta. These increasing resonances correspond, of course, to the activity of human brain waves, which means that the Earth would be adjusting its frequency of vibration”

The scientific observation taken together with the proposed conclusion…

“Some scholars also believe that humans, when acting on a “collective consciousness” level, can affect the structure of the magnetic field”

…poses problems at several levels, mostly with undesirable outcome.

Undesirable, that is, if you are a stakeholder in the future of humanity. This is because, when humanity has become a cancer upon the cosmos, humanity will be written off by the cosmos like the Western science writes off and discards a failed laboratory experiment. You don’t believe this? That’s fine, the Cartesian-Platonic mentality may then approach the larger points in what follows as a social science fiction, in which the ‘brighter’ minds of Western culture might find some real entertainment value.

To begin, “… scholars also believe that humans, when acting on a “collective consciousness” level, can affect the structure…” or physical characteristics and behavior of the planet itself but this information is isolated or ‘exiled’ from mainstream, recalling theoretical physicist d’Espagnat’s largely (one is tempted to say ‘entirely’) ignored…

“The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment”

…pointing directly to the lived unreality of Western science; where its own quantum mechanics has directly established the foundation of Western science itself (objectivity) is patently mistaken. Yet these scientists go on ‘building’ on the now proven to be false assumption of ‘objectivity’ while behaving as though in polite company one dare not mention the aroma of a particularly pungent fart. In short, the most ‘primal & salient’ fact is ignored.

What to do with a culture that is capable of tattooing a swastika on its forehead and denying there could be any perceptual problem with it?

Now, we will have a brief look at some comparative oddities in relation to the ‘other’ intelligence, the so-called ‘primitive’ or pre-Western (pre-Indo-European, pre-civilized) environment giving rise to indigenous thought.

“Both solitary mammals and autistic individuals are low on measures of gregariousness, socialization, direct gazing, eye contact, facial expression, facial recognition, emotional engagement, affiliative need and other social behaviors. The evolution of the neurological tendencies in solitary species that predispose them toward being introverted and reclusive may hold important clues for the evolution of the autism spectrum and the natural selection of autism genes”

What is interesting in this preceding quote from ‘Conceptualizing the Autism Spectrum in Terms of Natural Selection and Behavioral Ecology: The Solitary Forager Hypothesis’ is the fact it simply and accurately describes the behavior of any individual with intact pre-Columbian mental structure removed from their cosmos or social foundation. You can still see this behavior today; take just about any one of the more culturally intact Native American Indians described in the chapter ‘Stick Game (The Witches)’ out of that highly vibrant, community social interaction, and place them, for instance, in any Western setting of personal ego projection such as a large party, and the Indian’s behavior would present just as described in autism.

This phenomenon of two entirely different Indians in one person is reflected in the American frontier stereotype of the ‘taciturn’ Indian where the one side only had been observed; that stone-faced (expressionless) ‘savage’ that did not look at you, rather past or through you and has nothing to say.

Relevant to the preceding is the experience of the modern American lawyer, when laws had changed allowing these non-tribal law advocates to practice in today’s tribal (imposed Western) courts. “You can’t read them” was the initial reaction of the White lawyers during the procedure of jury selection; where the opposing sides are entitled to question and move to dismiss prospective jurors. This recalls the expressionless (stone) faces of the players hiding the bones at the Stick Game while ‘looking through’ the game pointer in the midst of a social event that otherwise exhibits anything except symptoms of autism; vibrant, alive, affiliative, in every sense social.

This brings up a question; how is it people who are perfectly, normally functional in their own social setting actually appear to manifest classic symptoms of autism in certain circumstance and generally elsewhere?

One factor is training. Generation upon generation of training that is finally become millennia of socialization that is uniquely different to Western; simply described as ‘there is no pretense to understand and know what is unknown.’ “I don’t know you” explains it all. There is no posturing, no social niceties involving deceits or hypocrisy concealing environmental ignorance.

Here it could be noted there had been no lie involved in the indigenous ‘mating game’ when contrasted to Western culture where one or both parties ‘put on’ their ‘best face’ (lie) in a courtship that too often sees the liar relax into their actual (inferior) selves once the ‘hook has been set’ and the romance morphs into a typical dysfunctional nightmare of ‘marriage.’ In the Native way, mating was established via consistently growing a mutually respectful friendship that is honest from the outset; in a culture where millennia of developing truthful reporting had been paramount to survival.

Related to the preceding is the fact facial recognition comes second to knowledge; knowledge of kinship in the first instance, that is to say immersion in one’s community (cosmos) determines whether you are recognized or able to recognize others; a survival ‘technique’ evolved to weed out danger that perfectly mimics autism. Without an established sense of kinship, when dislocated from one’s community, facial recognition is shut down by the brain where other, more important factors take over, threat assessment is paramount. Facial recognition, finally, is assigned to persons with certain qualities in an environment one knows & understands.

At least, that is the end result. But there is more (there is always more but this book will conclude soon, everything must end someday, somewhere.)

“Infrasound frequencies can .. enter the brain without passing through the hearing organ, entraining the brainwave rhythm into an Alpha-Theta state”

This preceding quote, from the study ‘Fireplace and Holy Altar in Curiceta at Apuan Alps, Italy’, demonstrates ‘pre-civilized’ peoples separated by vast distances were aware of the alpha-theta states’ relationship to physical reality in a macro-cosmic sense. The so-called (by the Western culture) ‘altered’ states of consciousness had been an integral part and parcel of cognitive human intelligence development since the dawn of time; and only recently became finally subverted since Plato’s misapprehension of reality (objectivity via Western science) had overtaken the world. What is this modern mentality missing, where is the organic deficit to be identified?

“Their ability to keep time gives them an intuitive understanding of the rhythmic patterns they perceive all around them”

Or so it is asserted by the article ‘The Neuro-Science of Drumming’ which goes on to note:

“…drumming ultimately has therapeutic value, providing the emotional and physical benefits collectively known as “drummer’s high,” an endorphin rush that can only be stimulated by playing music, not simply listening to it. In addition to increasing people’s pain thresholds, Oxford psychologists found, the endorphin-filled act of drumming increases positive emotions and leads people to work together in a more cooperative fashion”

Do the Western cultures ‘collectively’ drum? Other than some minority (very small) movements of ‘feminized’ Western masculine mentalities, along the lines of the phony anthropology movement generated by Robert Bly, not really. Besides, what would the split psyche of the Indo-European do with the so-called ‘shamanic’ (New Age, actually) drumming into the theta state? Insofar as a practical matter, the Western shaped individual ego drumming into altered state doesn’t come any closer to reality than an adolescent boy masturbating to pornography; the endorphin rush is a fleeting high and that’s the all of it. They experience orgasm and it’s done, the story’s end.

The misassumptions are astounding wherein another article’s title asserts ‘Experiment Proves Why Staying In Tune With The Earth’s Pulse Is Key To Our Well Being’ whilst noting:

“the frequency of the earth was an exact match with the frequency of the human brain”

The automatic assumption is the Earth is providing the pulse, not the reverse, but in fact the collective drive of human consciousness is perfectly (or imperfectly, as the case may be) capable of establishing (or corrupting, as the case may be) the Earth’s frequency and this brings us to ‘Native’ drumming and how it differs from that of the Western assumptions. Rather the article’s title might have been ‘keeping ourselves tuned to a healthy pulse is key to the Earth’s wellbeing’ or highlighting that pesky problem Western culture has with assuming responsibility where all is not forgiven.

Excepting certain forms of Stick Game, e.g. a form historically related to training for manhunting in inter-tribal combats (devolved into gambling), altogether differing from other forms such as intra-tribal dispute resolution, an indigenous COLLECTIVE mentality drums into a single COLLECTIVE conscious state where it is perfectly understood by this COLLECTIVE intelligence that this is NOT an ‘altered’ state (Western concept) but an enhanced state of creating reality that is typical of everyday life. Most indigenous ceremony, with its attending drumming, is as simple as recalibration, or fine tuning to the concept of life itself, in all of its larger complexity, to what is invariably demanded to be sensible outcome for the whole of the cosmos. Robert Bly’s Jungian ‘wild man’ notwithstanding, there is precisely zero individual imperative can become part of this.

In the fall of 1983, I was listening to a couple of four year old Indian kids who were Blackfeet Head Start Program (preschool) classmates. They were ‘arguing’ (if it can be called that) over a girl at school. The one kid finally said “There’s nothing can be done about it, she chose me.” The other boy’s reply was “I’d punch you out, but you’re my best friend.”

It was a recent communication with one of those kids, these days a ‘light skinned Indian’ immersed in the dominant culture where people automatically assume he is ‘white’, recalled the conversation.

This acquaintance had now related to me his cross-cultural experience of discovering the well adapted psychopath is the sanest person one could know in the Western culture, nearly everyone else, at some level, seems to be loud, space invading aliens, or worse, energy draining ‘emo traps’ in close relationships of most sort, whether at work, in so-called ’friendships’ or otherwise. The socially well adapted psychopaths weren’t trapped in affective empathy or its’ close relative, sympathy. This tripped some sort of switch in my head and I started looking more closely at an inter-cultural cultural phenomenon that is a radical contrast I’ve yet to see written about anywhere: Why is it Native American Indians grieve from the belly as opposed to ‘white people’ (Western mentalities generally) grieve from the heart? Moreover, the Indians seldom grieve but when they do, it makes the Westerner’s grieving look like ‘mourning lite.’ Meanwhile, the stereotype is the primitive, ‘stoic Indian’ versus ‘civilized humanity.’

Now, back to the kids. That very short conversation, of which I’ve only given the last two sentences before the subject was dropped and the kids’ play moved on to other subject, points to a process in cultural shaping that more resembles training to be well adjusted, culturally integrated psychopaths than anything else (from Western psychology point of view.) In the Indians, LOYALTY TO YOUR FRIENDSHIPS (a clone of the socially well adjusted psychopath’s unwavering-unforgiving loyalty demand in close association) in community is paramount and supersedes all else in governing oneself in relation to everything in one’s human social surroundings. “There’s nothing to be done about it, she chose me” is the end of the story, no broken heart is experienced by the second kid, there is no ‘affective’ anything, no real anger, no self-pity. Preserving the loyalty and respect entailed in authentic friendship (indistinguishable from kinship) is paramount.

What’s more is, practical friendship (experienced as a principled, hyper-respectful and ethics driven loyalty in the Indian social experience) governs conjugal relationships as well, Western romance is an alien and strange concept that finds no traction in the culturally intact native community.

The ancient indigenous culture provides ZERO space for self pity or any emotion that is supportive of sympathy in a Western sense. In the true native pidgin English, the word ‘pity’ is purely and only pejorative. In a cultural philosophy of what works versus what doesn’t work (as opposed the moralizing ‘right & wrong’) feeling sorry for people is a non-starter.

No excuses! Does this mean the ‘stoic Indian’ doesn’t mature into a being experiencing emotion? Well, yes and no, let’s say (if only to be brief in this moment) they’re wired differently and emotion is triggered differently, experienced differently and utilized differently.

As it happened, when this line of thinking took off in my head, I had been pondering how it is autism, in some of it’s forms, are pretty much non-events insofar as areas of concern in Indian country but rather reflect predilection to a certain intelligence that is useful. In fact, it should be said the culturally intact Native American is shaped, through socialization & training, to SELECT FOR autism, albeit a high functioning autism.

In Western culture, on the other hand, body language and facial expression often (very often) do not line up with spoken language in environment where actions very frequently do not match words. This pervasive deceit triggers paramount survival instinct in the Indian, mimicking autistic traits.

Because the ancient indigenous psychology cannot reconcile the Western ‘split’ (does not possess the same mental structure & constructs stemming from the Indo-European psychology of ‘duality’), there is vocal and other communications shut-down when exposed to (sometimes in casual interactions with, and especially immersion in) the Western culture that does not occur within the culturally intact indigenous social context.

Historically, from the outside (Western) view, this is the origin of the ‘Taciturn Indian’ stereotype. This raises questions in my thinking:

Is Asperger’s actually ‘genetic’ or is it simply an inter-generational phenomenon that might have genetic predisposition and socialization elements that could derive solely from either depending on circumstance?

Would the otherwise healthy but triggered ’taciturn’ native phenomenon be diagnosed as a form of autism from a clinical Western perspective if subjected to alien cultural immersion that ‘blinds’ the Western researcher?

Would there be other identifiable markers, such as the indigenous community phenomenon of families and extended families (clans) countless generations cultivating a peculiar (to that clan) intelligence that can be related to a more classical observation of Asperger’s repetitive behaviors & interests? Recalling the Western perception of hunter-gatherers they clearly do not understand when making comparisons…

“Both solitary mammals and autistic individuals are low on measures of gregariousness, socialization, direct gazing, eye contact, facial expression, facial recognition, emotional engagement, affiliative need and other social behaviors”

…this IS really interesting but more than 1/2 wrong, due to missing information from the (non-existent) inter-cultural transmission of understanding or social organization in the hunter-gathering context.

Gregariousness and socialization should register as normal if the subject is not separated from the indigenous context, which is, of course, different. Direct gazing (staring eye contact as opposed to eye contact that is not ‘locked on’) is construed as aggressive (literally predatory) behavior as would be experienced between predators of different species (especially) or enemy (territorial competition) groups. Aversion of eye contact is a behavior meant to deescalate tension. There is no point in taking on a panther if it is in any way unnecessary, example given. Also avoidance of eye contact is a form of submission and respect, such as when a young man would seek & listen to the advice of a matriarch (grandmother) where he would put his head down to demonstrate he is intently listening.

The eye contact and facial expression within the social group is there but qualified; this hunter-gatherer DOES NOT SMILE SHOWING TEETH.

Facial recognition is misconstrued by the Western anthropological researcher, wherein this aspect of the indigenous requires understanding of relationships (kinship) to receive, and then must be in a socially intelligent way, for instance at the Stick Game the stone faces presented to the opposing players within the larger context of the easily expressed joy of community entertainment; with lots of eye contact and facial recognition surrounding the stone-faced (expressionless) ‘combatants.’ In this context, the onlookers emotional engagement (joking, laughing) is quite free and uninhibited in HAPPINESS (grief is expressed in entirely different context, of course.) Any anger arising from the game play (misunderstanding and/or cheating) is immediately diffused by those present recognized as qualified judges (I held this social rank of a judge at stick game, requiring not only master level understanding of the game, but also indelible good character.)

It follows, the ‘affiliative need’ of the ancient hunter-gatherer when assessing for traits would be entirely missed in any assessment when studied from outside the indigenous social context. Perhaps related to this, in the more unassimilated (culturally intact) families, to recent times there had been literal ‘grooming’ in the anthropological sense, fairly identical to other ‘higher primates.’ This would never be observed by any outsider due to the automatic tension (however subtle) present in unaffiliated persons presence (no recognizable kinship.) This ‘grooming’ phenomenon was prevalent with/between the women, a very interesting cultural marker perhaps reinforcing a principle within the nuclear family units of an ancient culture originating within the devolved hierarchal principles of matriarchy.

“As a result of their special interests, strong focus, hyperfocus, and perseverance, people with ASD [autism spectrum disorder] can have encyclopedic knowledge in a particular area, and tend to be autodidacts with a lot of self-acquired skills. Their particular—often novel—way of thinking combined with their fixations result in many people with ASD being considered experts in very particular subjects”

This preceding quote from the Forbes article ‘Research Shows That People With Autism Have A Stronger Aptitude For Focusing On Tasks’

Autodidact is practically a pillar of Native American education; where people are trained from the youngest age to pursue independent problem solving; in circumstance of children given the tools to understand (opportunity to observe complex process) and expected to initiate correct solutions of their own accord. Upon millennia continuity, one might expect genetic predisposition should play in this socially shaped characterization.

In short, the evolutionary selection for a community that actually cannot be penetrated in any effective sense of study by a Western culture that factually shuts off access for the fact of triggering threat assessment mechanisms that are as old as the evolution of intelligence itself, points to the native view of the Western peoples as devoid of fundamental tools of survival at the meta level; in short, as dumbed down as the domesticated animals they have bred to point of helpless without hands on caregivers.

In a system where the ‘un-split’ brain is organized into the androgynous intelligence of integration to the larger sentient awareness of its surroundings, it should make sense Indian people would be aware of the danger inherent in mistaken ‘collective’ thinking and the consequences.

it would also make sense that simply encountering such people as the Westerners would trigger a HEALTHY state of threat assessment.

The foundation for the preceding paragraph had been laid throughout the text of this work; where from a tribal perspective it should be easy to see evidence all around us, example given, the creation of an artificial ‘super-consciousness’ determines the collective belief of fundamental Western monotheism is marching the world to Armageddon. But this is a minor example of possibilities where it is also realistic to expect in the absence of a proper & healthy pulse, the planet itself will convulse in such a way as to absolutely cleanse itself and begin again. Or perhaps be pronounced dead.

*

A former Sergeant of Operations and Intelligence for Special Forces, Ronald Thomas West is a retired investigator (living in exile) whose work focus had been anti-corruption. Ronald had lived over thirty years in close association with Blackfeet Indians (those who still speak their language), and is published in international law as a layman: The Right of Self- Determination of Peoples and It’s Application to Indigenous People in The USA or The Mueller-Wilson Report, co-authored with Dr Mark D Cole. Ronald has been adjunct professor of American Constitutional Law at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany (for English credit, summer semester 2008.) Ronald’s formal educational background (no degree) is social psychology. His therapeutic device is satire.

Contact: penucquemspeaks@googlemail.com