Post
by Professor Fairfield » Mon Jun 01, 2009 3:13 pm
Let me clarify a few points. I won't even quote Mike here, since for him it'll be clear to which of his points I am responding at what time. To anybody who didn't read Mike's post, I at least have hopes that they will understand me better than they do.
I have for my whole life opposed any linear hereditarian interpretations of intelligence as unfair and unfounded, so your assumption of me espousing any is incorrect. Never have I felt myself inherrently more blessed with intelligence than most of my peers; I say "most" because in the schools I attended there were some children who genuinely were boneriffic, in the most clinical, non-insulting sense of the word, but I did not feel there to be some sense of cosmic justice for the fact that they wound up lower in intelligence than myself and their other peers. Also, I am by nature a quiet, rather private person, not inclined to make any bold announcements to random strangers, so even if I did hold a bit of a hereditarian superiority complex about myself, I would hardly be atop a soapbox tooting my horn about it.
Hence, your theory that people are seriously calling me a retard because I made myself out to be superior to them is incorrect. The reason various people have assigned me that label is because I am autistic, and there are some low-functioning autistic people that are indeed boneriffic, hence a bit of a hasty correlation is drawn. The most noticeable trait that people find "boneriffic" about me is my voice, which is a little bit like a mix between Krang and Darth Vader.
I do not believe others inherrently stupid, as I have said, but I do subscribe very heavily to the Forrest Gump labeling system. Stupid is, to me, as stupid does. Hence, the reverse of what you thought about me was true: I did not originally get labeled boneriffic because I proclaimed myself superior to people; I proclaimed myself superior to people only after they labeled me boneriffic, and only to those people that called me boneriffic, whereby I had done nothing of the sort to them, merely spoken in the voice with which I was burdened.
That is the outlook that I have carried with myself to the present, and that has now manifested itself here on this forum. In retrospect, I have been too hasty in allowing past scars to cloud my judgement of the forum's behavior, causing me to assume its members a great deal more mallicious than they actually are. I will also grant that I have, myself, saddled Mr. Rayhawk with unfair and slanderous labels, for which I extend to him all due apology. Lack of communication is more the problem here than anything else; had I been here long enough to know sarcasm when I saw it, things may well have transpired in a different manner.
I still stand by one key defense of my conduct here, however, and that is the fact that at its basis, it still has itself been essentially just defense; not a deliberate attempt at rattling anyone's chain. I have always held some disagreements with Mr. Rayhawk about the way a proper Lego wargame ought to be run, but I have also had the prudent courtesy never to grind an egotistical axe in the Rules forum (nor in any other) just to gratuitously express my disagreements in a deliberate and disdainful manner. It is, as I have said, only after I felt that I had posted nothing but a very pro-Brikwars thread, concerning my attempts to do nothing other than further the cause of Mike Rayhawk's brainchild, and saw my efforts get rewarded with nothing more than disdain, that I percieved (even if incorrectly) a need to react strongly in defense of myself and my intentions.
On a similar note, no, the girl I met to chat with about Brikwars did not become turned off to it because of my priggish mindset. In fact, she didn't know or understand nearly enough about the game for me to even be able to discuss rules, lack thereof, or my sentiments about such things, with her. In reality, the correction here is eerily similar to Mike's statements about maintaining the same standards all along. Rather than being disenchanted with Brikwars by any of my behavior, the girl I met at UCSD was, in fact, acting almost entirely out of sympathy for me and my attempts to just get permission to advertise it, something UCSD, for whatever reason (If you think I'm a stuffy academic snob, try looking at the UCSD administrators! On second thought, don't; you may die of shock.), would grant me.
Her actual interest in the game itself, however, was never enthusiastic enough to really belong, something about which she was very frank. You may say Brikwars is not for me, although with various modifications I hold that it can appeal to anybody who loves making things out of Legos (although as Mike said in a few posts prior, maybe not all of them at the same time), but I say I am at least more fit for the game than she was; I actually have continued to play with Legos and build grand things all the way up to my adulthood; her experiences were limited to building walls and towers from Duplo blocks, and she had not done even that for well over a decade.
Having said that all, I am locking this thread, or if users can't lock threads, I doubt the mods will see much reason to leave it open themselves. It has been derailed into a rather unpleasant flamewar, and it is, at this point, not likely I will get to play Brikwars at UCSD, afterall.
The difference between Autism and Optimism? Autism is a mental disorder; Optimism is a SEVERE one.