Thank you for that list. I like your ideas. If anyone disagrees with you, let me know and I will run my finger across their throat.

Jan

Yeah, but follow EAJ's link for an article that is like a drink of cold water after a long hike (in the mountains, singing songs whist following the Nazi flag...Jan free associates with later post at this point...). I mean: Can I really learn to make meaningless small talk with boring people and become socially acceptable???!!!

Jan

That is dynamite. Thank you so much EAJ! I have copied that link and sent it to my friends. Wow. I hope that guy writes a whole book - maybe I can get a handle on how to deal with these people some day.

Jan

I figure both were part of Rand's fantasies. But the subject here was Galt.

As with ""Mr. Roark, we're alone here. Why don't you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us."
"But I don't think of you." Chapter XV, p. 413 ; Ellsworth Toohey and Howard Roark" some cues aren't worth considering. Roark GOT all the cues and so did Galt. But their intellects applied a filter.

I don't have any particular reason to assume Galt was autistic, but according to a popular meme, clearly Santa Claus is.

>>>>>
13 REASONS WHY SANTA HAS AUTISM:
1. He lines up & names his reindeer over and over again
2. He wears the same clothes every day
3. He has an extremely limited diet of only milk and cookies
4. He gets stuck in the same routine year after year
5. He avoids social interaction & does all of his work at night when everyone else is sleeping
6. He checks his list over and over and over.....
7. He likes hanging out with people smaller than he is
8. Everything is black or white (naughty or nice) no in-between!
9. He loves squeezing into teeny spaces (chimneys!)
10. He is clueless about the social stigma of creeping into other people's houses
11. He spends an entire year preparing for one night
12. He does things that amaze people & has them wondering how in the heck he did it!
>>>>>>>

All joking aside, if you or a loved one is on the spectrum, and you are looking for a role model in John Galt, why not pretend that he does have it? Since he is a fictional character, you can do that if it helps you. I've read an article that some people with autism have found inspiration in the character from the movie Guardians of the Galaxy who is unable to grasp irony, although that is supposed to be a trait of his alien species, not necessarily a symptom of autism. Hey, whatever you find beneficial. Just don't necessarily assume other people will agree.

You're confusing John Galt, I think, with Howard Roark ("The Fountainhead"). That tunnel scene was tame in comparison to Howard Roark's first wild night with Dominique Francon. John Galt was just being his usual take-charge self.

No. John Galt was a literary anti-villain--one who single-mindedly pursues the cause of justice. Now if he had Asperger's Syndrome, then you could say the same of every literary villain and anti-villain. And especially of the megalomaniacal class of literary villains. You could say that of Dr. Robert Stadler.

Besides: no one ever said that of John Galt the young engineer, pre-strike.

"Asberger's" is actually a recently outdated term, with these symptoms now being part of the "autism spectrum," which is psychobabble for "beats the hell outta me."

My grandson is severely autistic, with the added difficulty of ataxia (inability to properly comprehend speech), and the absolute inability to provide any competent therapy wildly apparent in the medical community. Each mentally challenged person is as unique as their fingerprints, and so-called mental health scientists have failed with diagnosis, causality, and therapy, accomplishing a trifecta of failure.

Surprisingly, contradictory to the claim of inability to read social cues, my grandson is acutely aware of subtle behavioral signs in people he interacts with, which unfortunately often triggers a breakdown if he experiences even subtle forms of repugnance. He seems to be so sensitive to sensory influence that he's overwhelmed by too many inputs, and can't handle crowds.

John Galt was, of course, Ayn Rand's alter ego (gender aside). Many intelligent people practice a form of social editing, eliminating trivial contact to enable them to focus on the important relationships. Unfortunately, in a society obsessively centered on trivial, meaningless interaction, this behavior is considered rude. Labeling such people as damaged is a foil to make the irrelevant (most of self-important society) feel better, since they can call themselves "normal."

John Galt, like many other of A.R.'s characters, both heroic and villainous, are more concepts or ideas than real people. Some are examples of what is. Others are examples of what could be. And still others are examples of what could be and should be. They are for the most part, archetypes. The idea of Galt with Asperger's is rather amusing, but is in no way any part of the thinking behind Atlas.

Rand herself admitted that she knew little about psychology, and Asperger's wasn't even on the horizon then.

maybe zenphany should have just said john galt is a fictitious character made up by Ayn Rand and left it at that.

I would go further and say that in order to convince all those people to strike, without ever being rejected in shocked outrage, Galt's ability to read social cues must have been so great as to be entirely fictional. Rather like his ability to invent a motor that ran on static electicity.

whats the matter with being focused? That seems to me to be a good thing, and it shouldnt be saddled with some disease tag.

I have personal experience with a nephew who has Asperger's and I see no correlation between Galt and my relative.Sexual sociopath maybe. After all, Galt did love to rape or was it rape to love?

Galt clearly could not have achieved his goals -- to target highly successful and capable individuals and convince them that they were working against their own self-interest -- had he been unable to recognize social cues! He watched, he analyzed, he understood their level of frustration, and he approached each of them at the psychologically appropriate time when they would be receptive to the message that he was there to convey. That is diametrically opposed to a person unable to recognize social cues.

Further, you have only to consider Galt's interaction with Dr. Stadler and the other people who question him after his "capture" to realize that he was perfectly capable of understanding social cues. It is also clear from his easy social interactions in the Gulch that he was not only respected and but also liked there.

He was also capable of understanding that to care more about social cues from others than about your own cues, based on intelligence, rationality, and self-awareness, of what is right and good and true, is to place your life in the hands of others rather than in your own hands.

In the third grade, at age 8, when the school system wanted us to read and spell words like "father" and "mother" some of us were learning "allosaurus", and "Alderberan." They wanted us to find Brazil. We found Rigel.

"Fans are slans".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slan

"while they did not agree, the politician was very nice, very likable. Now, in my medical book, that's a "syndrome."
They can remember a long list of people's names and personal traits, but struggle to find an use models for the physical world. They're good at snap decisions. The data often back up their hunches, but they struggle to come up with a proof to verify their hunches and often get confused and unsettled when counter-intuitive things turn out to be true. Basic calculations that other people can do in their heads require them to write it out painstakingly. It's not a stretch to call it a syndrome.

Galt was a literary creation of the author to illustrate a certain perspective, talent, ability, principles, and ethics contrary to the very concept of 'social acceptance' or 'societal guidance' (collectivism and altruism). AR certainly was not attempting to describe Asperger's or any other syndrome, cconversely from the book, one gathers that Galt was very capable of understanding and recognizing 'socialist' cues.

Of course he was willing to recognize it, but then evaluated it and reacted in accordance with what it was.

"...while they did not agree, the politician was very nice, very likable. Now, in my medical book, that's a 'syndrome'."

Which, being taken in by the politician's schmoozing or the politician who has learned to emotionally manipulate people as a way of life?

Asperger syndrome versus social metaphysician is a false alternative.

Why do you think Galt focused on a particular area to the exclusion of many others? He was competent, intelligent and focused across the board. And he knew exactly what other's "social cues" were but knew which to ignore and refuse to pander to.

Wow! I hadn't heard the history of the namesake. No offense intended to any with our cherished visions of who John Galt was, beyond the actual text. Or Rearden or Dagney. Or Roark for that matter. They all share a similar set of traits.
I will admit that I am taller when I read The Fountainhead than in everyday life, if you get me.
I recognize the difference between not recognizing and just not caring about the social cues. I felt like they each were baffled by why someone would choose to live by those restraints. My take on it was that it is a choice, not limited to just those of superior intellect. The Wetnurse shadowing Reardon made a conscious decision to work with him instead of against him. Eddie Willers may have been average in many ways but he chose to be competent and chose to trust competence over expedience.
Careful about attacking strangers. They may not mean you harm. There is, btw, a tongue in cheek article on the hazards of being "neurotypical." http://musingsofanaspie.com/2013/01/1...

Dr. Hans Asperger was a Nazi. He served in the German army after Anschluss and was posted to Croatia, which was a client state of Germany. His "therapy" to socialize the "little professors" who were brought to him was to take them out on long hikes in the mountains, marching behind a flag and singing songs. It is a cultural artifact of Germans. After the war, when he was interviewed by US Army intelligence seeking out Nazis to cull them, Dr. Asperger's "therapy" sounded just like the Boy Scouts, which so many of them enjoyed and benefited from. So, they gave him a free pass to continue harassing children who were smarter than he was.

See ICD-10 here: http://www.iancommunity.org/cs/about_...
The "diagnosis" lacks substance. The core indicator lacks measurability:
"B.Qualitative abnormalities in reciprocal social interaction (criteria as for autism)."

The term "qualitative" is an admission that the diagnosis cannot be objective.

As a description of personality, the most damning indicator is that no "syndrome" exists for the gregarious. I enjoy hearing from my libertarian comrades who actually go to a Congressman's office over some issue, and come back to report that, while they did not agree, the politician was very nice, very likable. Now, in my medical book, that's a "syndrome."

No, are you getting our social cues?