Mastodawn

People treated "as a joke"

My whole life from as young an age as I can recall, mocking and "making fun of" mentally disabled people has been encouraged by parents / adults /leaders in society. I was born in 1969 in Georgia. Family from Ohio, started grade school in Indiana.

Making fun of ugly people, "make a joke out of" ugly people, fat people, mentally disabled people, sexual differences, calling men "pussy" and praising ignorance, stupidity, anti-intellectual, anti-understanding, anti-comprehension, anti-goodness.

I have lived in South America (Arica, Chile) - in North Africa (Algeria), Middle East (Jordan), Indonesia, Malaysia in my adulthood and I have witnessed people mock and "make a joke of" those that are poor, mentally disabled, immgrants, outsiders, all over.

I think it is a big part of #OutGroupHate

I have come to the conclusion that the hate equations Dr. Martin Luther King Jr shared in February 1954 are true. No matter the geography or time period, hate is always bad and should be seen as something to leave behind in history and not carried forward.

I think "turning people into a joke" is a form of hate and dehumanization, encouraged at the youngest age.

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Stephen Gutknecht May 14, 2025

#FWakeCriticalThinking

I also have grown to dislike how people throw around the term "Critical Thinking".

I have been far more focused since 2009 when I learned bout my #Autism : "Tower of Babel metaphor", #FWakeBabelTower

I think #ComprehensiveUnderstanding is probably a better phrase than "Critical Thinking", and I also think "Goodness Itself" #Goodnessitself is important, moral goodness. And the network behaviors, interactive outcomes of the Tower of Babel metaphor, the egoism and warfare over misunderstandings.

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Stephen Gutknecht

#Autism #AutismSpectrumDisorder
#AspergersSyndrome
#ActuallyAutistic

Study of autism, world travel, media ecology study and experience has lead me to some very different conclusions than what most clergy / teachers teach about #TheBible #HolyBible #BibleLiteracyCrisis

In particular, #SarahLawrenceCollege professor Joseph Campbell's equations of all #religions being true, I think he under-emphaiszes one important thing that people don't seem to discuss about #JamesJoyce / #FinnegansWake and Joseph Campbell's foundation of a lifetime of work based on Joyce...

1. Religions are metaphor languages (Campbell emphasizes this)

2. Religions have common human brain / human biological roots like languages do.

3. You can translate religion to religion at metaphor level. Similar to how written and spoken human languages can be translated.

4. Some things don't translate because they are unique experiences. For example, a spoken / written language for cooking a food that does not grow in other parts of the world. There may be language words for that food, to describe that food, tools to cook that food - that do not simply translate to a language from another part of the world.

5. The Tower of Babel metaphor is also applicable to "Tower of Religions", #FWakeForkBomb forking of religions into branches. Shia vs. Sunni / Catholic vs. Protestant (sub-branches, Lutheran Christian vs. Baptist Christian, etc, etc).

6. Marriage shows that people raised in different languages and different food systems and different religions can marry together and work as a family. That it is indeed possible to translate religion to region at metaphor level. If Love and Compassion are treated as "common ground" between religions, people can do choice marriage. #FWakeChoiceMarriage

EMPHASIS point, back to start of this post: Autism Spectrum Disorder

Tower of Babel, Tower of Religions, is very much an experience like "Autism Spectrum", how hard it is to describe what autism has been since 1940. The ever-changing diagnosis criteria and global differences in comprehension and understanding across time (such as "Asperger's Syndrome" not being translated to English and popular topic until early 1980's).

A lot more I've said on the hashtags of these subjects.