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Quote by Kae Tempest

“Words on a page are incomplete. The poem, the novel or the non-fiction pamphlet are finished when they are taken up and engaged with. Connection is collaborative. For words to have meaning, they have to be read.”

Quote by Kae Tempest

Work

On Connection

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Kae Tempest

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“What I mean is, you should not have to have a business in a Jewish neighborhood to be interested in Jewish problems, or own a spaghetti stand to be interested in Italians, or a bar to care about the Irish. In a democracy, everybody's problems are related, and it's up to all of us to help solve them." "If I did not have a business reason to be interested in their business," said Simple, "then what business would I have being interested in their business?" "Just a human reason," I said. "It's all human business." "Maybe that is why they don't join the N.A.A.C.P.," said Simple. "Because they do not think a Negro is human.”

“Against this catalog of social difficulties, we must keep in mind that AS involves a different kind of intelligence. The strong drive to systemize means that the person with AS becomes a specialist in something, or even in everything they delve into. One man with AS in Denmark who I met put it this way: “You people [without AS] are generalists, content to know a little bit about a lot of subjects. We people [with AS] are specialists. Once we start to explore a subject, we do not leave it until we have gathered as much information as we can.” In effect, the systemizing drive in AS is often a drive to identify the underlying structure in the world.”

“On the Monster in the Light: Mental illness is not an airborne virus. Monsters hide in the light. They hide in the light. Once you've identified the perp, now you've got to forgive them, right? So you go to phase two of this, which is two parts. That you sort of began to realize that monsters don't make themselves, and in order to be a monster you have to be a victim first. It's a good place to start. You know that there's nothing that releases you from your perp. Nothing better than a little sympathy for the devil. I had to feel sympathy, really understand how she [Mom] became that way.”

“Systemizing and empathizing are wholly different kinds of processes. You use one process—empathizing—for making sense of an individual’s behavior, and you use the other—systemizing—for predicting almost everything else. To systemize you need detachment in order to monitor information and track which factors cause information to vary. To empathize you need some degree of attachment in order to recognize that you are interacting with a person, not an object, but a person with feelings, and whose feelings affect your own.”

“If hyperempathy syndrome were a more common complaint, people couldn’t do such things. They could kill if they had to, and bear the pain of it or be destroyed by it. But if everyone could feel everyone else’s pain, who would torture? Who would cause anyone unnecessary pain? I’ve never thought of my problem as something that might do some good before, but the way things are, I think it would help. I wish I could give it to people. Failing that, I wish I could find other people who have it, and live among them. A biological conscience is better than no conscience at all.”