Sooner or later, these autism researchers will realize that showing little interest in mother’s voice is not a “deficit” but simply a different way that some people’s brains are connected, which results in having different priorities in life. Their assumption is that being hyper-interested in humans is a superior trait. It’s not. Autistics are not uninterested in humans; they just don’t find them any more interesting than other things in this world. And, there are many interesting things in this world besides humans. The problem is that the average people are fanatical about humans. They are completely obsessed with other humans. (Just think of the tabloids and why human faces sell magazines in general, and why most people don’t listen to instrumental music.) When you compare to these fanatical people, autistic people seem completely uninterested in humans, but that is not true. They too are interested in humans but they are not fanatical about them. If an autistic person is sitting at a table and sees interesting-looking flatware, he might pay attention to it first before he pays attention to the person who is sitting across from him. There is nothing wrong with this. The average people think it’s wrong because they are obsessed with other people, and someone is not. It’s like heroin addicts having a hard time believing that other people don’t crave heroin, and considering their aloofness to heroin as a “deficit.” It’s a form of ethnocentrism where people believe whatever is more similar to themselves is superior.
