For parts 1-4, click here
Let’s do a quick summary. Here are some key points from part 4 regarding the premise of Forming Horizons:
ASD diagnoses are on the rise, and there’s no way around it: There are a lot more of us coming. (. . .) All of society will feel the impact, not just those most directly affected.
(. . .)
But this is not a reality to be feared. On the contrary, I believe it holds great promise for the future of our society (. . .)
So while the term “forming horizons” certainly refers to the horizons of people with ASDs, it is also about forming the horizons of a society that should ready itself to meet – nay, embrace – this joyful challenge.
Okay. So much for that. What about Into the Dance?
For a more robust picture, I would recommend reading Why ‘Into the Dance’?, the introductory post I wrote for this blog way-back-when. But here is a snapshot that will prove useful for our purposes:
[L]ife, in both its seen and unseen elements, (. . .) is a wonderful, terrible, exalting, humbling, heartwarming, terrifying, comforting, challenging [if I could rewrite this I think I’d say sobering], community-building, isolating, healing, ferociously painful, mysterious dance. And for better or worse, we are all in it together…not just we who are alive today but we as in the whole of humankind, past, present and future. As the great British writer G.K. Chesterton once said, “We’re all in the same boat, and we are all seasick.”
(Brackets added)
The act of forming horizons is ingredient in the dance. It’s important to realize this, because otherwise we risk seeing the dance as some impersonal cosmic process in which we take part as mere cogs in a machine.
Not so. Free will is inextricably part of the dance.
A quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church will be helpful here:
Creation has its own goodness and proper perfection, but it did not spring forth complete from the hands of the Creator. [T]he universe was created “in a state of journeying” (in statu viae) toward an ultimate perfection yet to be attained, to which God has destined it. We call “divine providence” the dispositions by which God guides his creation toward this perfection
(CCC 302)
Jumping ahead a little bit…
God is the sovereign master of his plan. But to carry it out he also makes use of his creatures’ co-operation.
(CCC 306)
To human beings God even gives the power of freely sharing in his providence (. . .) Though often unconscious collaborators with God’s will, they can also enter deliberately into the divine plan by their actions, their prayers and their sufferings. They then fully become “God’s fellow workers” and co-workers for his kingdom.
(CCC 307)
While this is valid for all times and places, each historical period presents its own unique challenges and opportunities.
I don’t think we can look at the prevalence of autism in our time, or the massive emergence of interest in the subject in the last twenty years or so, and not conclude that ASDs fall into the ambit of our “unique challenges and opportunities.”
If I may borrow a time-honored phrase, it is a “sign of the times.”
Still less should we ignore this phenomenon when we observe that ASDs have made their way into our mainstream storytelling — from books like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time to TV shows like Parenthood and The Good Doctor to movies like The Accountant and The Imitation Game.
(Granted, the ASD-like traits of the main character in that last movie are said to be exaggerated. Still, the fact that their application has become more of a “thing” tells us a lot).
So what precisely does autism mean for our time? I don’t exactly know. But I’d love to find out.
To that end, I’ve made it part of Into the Dance. I hope you’ll join me, and perhaps help me in making a small contribution to forming of autism’s horizons.
I’ll end with another quote from Why ‘Into the Dance’?:
And so onward, upward, and into the dance!
Acknowledgements
Top photo obtained through a Google Advanced Image Search
Second photo: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54028354
Third photo: By Artist is Charles Sprague Pearce (1851–1914). Photographed 2007 by Carol Highsmith (1946–), who explicitly placed the photograph in the public domain. – Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-highsm-02029 (original digital file), uncompressed archival TIFF version (103 MB), cropped and converted to JPEG with the GIMP 2.4.5, image quality 88., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4034573
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