Asperger’s #Breivik

Hmm, trial by Powerpoint. Not sure the clinical descriptions (with my limited Norwegian) stack up as conclusive, but Apserger’s Syndrome, as one of three possible diagnoses, is getting close to the mark. Total rationality is autism, as I’ve already suggested several times, and Asperger’s is one form of that.

Ill but not psychotic (Reuters in English). Sounds about right, doesn’t seem psychotic or paranoid schizophrenic – just hyper-rational (autistic / Asperger’s) without normal human emotion. Sick. Half a human – the dangerous half.

Forget the expert, stick to the facts about #Breivik – on his own admission, by his own design – totally rational, selective empathy – not sane – sick.

And, on balance, this is about right too. My initial reaction was they should not invest in special prison quarters for #Breivik, but as I also said earlier, good that the conclusion is that his insanity / sickness is irrelevant to his sentence. Whatever the questionable aspect of the verdict he will be incarcerated – if he wants treatment for his illness he can have it, if not his brain can fester.

[Post Note 12 June – Yes, “not psychotic“, but that’s not the same as being sane. Mental illness is more complex.]

4 thoughts on “Asperger’s #Breivik”

  1. Hello Ian, I have Asperger’s and am fascinated as to how society will react to Anders Breivik if he is certified to have Asperger’s.
    People who don’t get me sometimes say “i will excuse you because of your illness”. The problem is that I am not ill and there is no treatment to make me “less ill”. It is all to do with a difference of opinion and thought processes based on observations of the world we live in.
    For example, if it is legal for a state to execute a criminal, why is it a criminal offence for me to kill a criminal myself? When the state does it, it’s the law. When i do it, it’s murder. Different rules for different social groups in the same problem. I suppose trust and empathy are key to the Breivik case and just because others don’t agree with his thought processes, is it right for him to be punished for being in a minority?
    Whatever happens, his views will never change and he will be living in an institution for some time to come. Does responding to his thoughts necessarily make him inclined to kill everybody and thus be a danger to society, or is it just certain aspects of the world who he has a bad reaction to? I am affraid of dogs and if I were allowed to carry a gun around in a world with no laws, i’d be inclined to shoot them to protect myself. The reason why i don’t go shooting dogs in real life is because the law exists to stop me owning a gun, it promotes the safe domestication of dogs and it fosters the belief that killing a creation of God is not acceptable and has negative consequences for all involved. However, sometimes the law supports double standards where not everybody is punished for wrong doing; thus it raises the moral question of can the Police and the courts be trusted. It is known that, as humans, the Police and the courts are capable of being wrong but at the end of the day, a majority is not ncessarily right.

  2. Hi Chris, firstly, your points about who has the “right” to kill another human, and rights to hold minority beliefs, have nothing to do with my interest in Aspergers and hyper-rationality. We can come back to that. But for now:

    (1) You say you have Aspergers, so that means you are aware of it and presumably deal with it as part of your life. At some earlier point in your life, you didn’t know this. The therapy – diagnosis and explanation – that made you aware of the condition has helped you live your life. Whatever problems it may have caused you and those around you are lessened.

    (2) States have rights to protect states, that are different to human individuals rights. (One reason why states and their laws must be built by free consent of individuals – eg democracy, etc.) This is nothing to do with pejorative accusations of “double-standards” – just reality. (PS whatever – I’m not proposing death sentence for this crime in this democratic society anyway.)

    (3) Breivik did kill 77 people. You and most other Aspergers didn’t. different cases. He’s guilty for a start – that’s one key point.

    (4) My point – my main point that is – is that rationality alone – hyper-rationality – is no justification for crime against humans (whatever one’s “beliefs”). No justification for anything in fact. Unlike you, he fails to understand that. Punishment or therapy, it’s something he needs to learn before he can be considered a free member of society.

  3. I agree with Chris Williams – I’m also an aspie and NT’s have no right to judge aspies. The entire law/punishment fetish is medial prefrontal cortex functioning. Hence aspies don’t have it. Hence exposing us to this system is like expecting blind people to read visual writing. In addition, normal prison conditions amount to inhuman treatment of aspies because they violate sensory needs. Also, solitary confinement is a human rights violation whoever it’s against.

    It’s also patently obvious to anyone who isn’t corrupted by bias that statists being allowed to do things that other people can’t is simply discrimination. If an NT soldier had massacred 77 people because a commander told him to, nobody would care. Therefore, Breivik is not being jailed for killing 77 people. He’s being jailed for not having the proper authorisation according to NT’s.

    I’d add that I’m completely opposed to Breivik’s ideology, but I don’t think the fetish of personal responsibility gets us anywhere. It’s just a mass delusion of NT’s arising from their own lack of empathy for people who don’t conform to their behavioural codes. Let’s look at the facts. Look up deviance amplification theory, look up Libet’s experiments, look up Just World Fallacy. Does punishment help the victims? Every source on trauma says that revenge fantasies do not heal trauma. Punishment is just a result of a herd reaction which psychology and other sciences should be working to falsify.

  4. Hi liberationist, not sure what your agreement with Chris has to do with the points I made.

    Question – you see personal responsibility as a “fetish”. Do you not even recognise the concept of “guilty” ?

    Question – you adopt the label “aspie”. Are you referring to “NTs” in the Myers- Briggs sense – the opposite of TJ’s ?

    Question – you also see law / punishment as a fetish. Leaving aside the punishment, do you see the law having any right to deny personal freedoms as part of protecting the rest of society ?

    Question – I’m very familiar with Liibet – what point are you making ? How is it relevant here ?

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.