Launching a communal site to foster both a deeper understanding of what it is to be an aspie, what it means to other people to be an aspie, and how to move through the world as an aspie, requires intense energy. If it fails, some of the worst damage happens because the engine doesn't shut off when the object of its energy does.
Driving through the rubble at speed while in shock is severely damaging exercise. Slowing and reassessing what happened, the facts of it, not the judgment or understanding of it, is a priority one task for the survivors. It is so easy to learn the wrong thing.
The post-apocalyptic support, the contacts that continue, are the midwives of philia, the love of comrades-in-arms. I've written elsewhere that love loves to work, that love serves.
The different types of love, like a cord of many strands, create intense feelings in relationships that can harden into trusted bonds, like diamonds. Or burst like popcorn in the heat.
Say them with me. "Agape. Eros. Ludus. Mania. Philautia. Philia. Phrenia. Pragma. Storge."
I didn't know some of these words when I first read them. Now I have lived them, consciously, and watched the strands wind about each other, and the tattered and frayed ends still have embers glowing.
Agape found a way for us to love us as ourselves, without being bound to standards of social niceties that simply don't make sense or inspire feeling.
Eros provides that rosy glowing gloss that lets us see others at a best they may not already have attained, but might reach, inspired by our regard.
Ludus introduces the playful comedy that lets us test our strength without punishing weakness or failure; a gentle way of finding truth without letting it hurt us.
Mania lends strength at 3AM when the phone rings, or the code breaks, when the problem can't be solved, or a character flaw simply must be overcome. Or it becomes discovered that it cannot be overcome, and the outcome must also be met by another mania.
Philautia, where we make our home, our self-love based on our self-respect, gets racheted down. The famous autie/aspie love of rules makes community policy possible. It also requires the teeth-gritting exercise of accepting the role of discretionary judgement, and learning to master it. As a moderator, as a staff member, I see this as crucial in determining how to find my way in a world of social conventions that are not rules, and yet work: rules are about justice and stability, but roles apply mercy and compassion. Is there any one of us who does not need all four?
Philia draws people who are not friends into trust relationships for a common goal; I don't have to like you to know that we want a success, the same success, and for as long as the goal is common, the trust is real. Philia buys time for all the other loves, between those who do not yet love each other.
Phrenia is the home of thought in love. Love can be treated as a feeling. Love can be treated as a verb: show your love. Love can be studied by itself: anything will give up its secrets if I love it enough. All the details are doors. God, if you believe in a god, is in the details, where the puzzle pieces fit together at last. Phrenia makes Conversation work by giving tongue to the other loves. It is the shape of a mind and loves other minds, and can give philautia a serious case of hiccups.
Pragma goes out for the groceries and does the laundry. It takes the nicks and errors and ill-judgment and misunderstandings in stride, soothes philautia, supports philia, provides intent to phrenia, and puts agape in motion. Nothing endures without it.
Storge sees others in itself, and itself in others, the deep similarities wrought by shared origins in culture, creed, values, experiences; it is the mother of empathy, and the personal right-or-wrong loyalty of the clan and the tribe. I think of Storge as the bass-note for philia; we may not choose our family, but we have too much in common to really let go. An injured storge results in the kind of experience Stevie Smith wrote about in "To Carry the Child."
Studies of peace show, over and over, that people bond in community most tightly when the community is in extremis. Disaster decisively brings about community. We need each other to survive, and discover how we must bend for each other to make survival the outcome.
This has been a hard, hard lesson in where the boundaries are in the taxonomy of love I discovered here (courtesy of Slithytoves) so many months ago. Philia is not forever. Pragma endures, but does not satisfy. Ludus is dead, a casualty of the inability to play during a crisis. And storge emerges for the few whose actual family-of-origin dynamics did not prevent its development.
Family, it transpires, is neither cheap nor easy, and it may depend on real DNA. Family is where "they have to take you in" but for so many of us, family just didn't work that way.
In the aftermath, weak bonds suddenly matter: secondary relationships suddenly count as first. The damaging emotional intensity of aftermath doesn't damage the relationships that were about liking, commonality, empathy, but not passion--these relationships are the ones that heal.
Driving through the rubble at speed while in shock is severely damaging exercise. Slowing and reassessing what happened, the facts of it, not the judgment or understanding of it, is a priority one task for the survivors. It is so easy to learn the wrong thing.
The post-apocalyptic support, the contacts that continue, are the midwives of philia, the love of comrades-in-arms. I've written elsewhere that love loves to work, that love serves.
The different types of love, like a cord of many strands, create intense feelings in relationships that can harden into trusted bonds, like diamonds. Or burst like popcorn in the heat.
Say them with me. "Agape. Eros. Ludus. Mania. Philautia. Philia. Phrenia. Pragma. Storge."
I didn't know some of these words when I first read them. Now I have lived them, consciously, and watched the strands wind about each other, and the tattered and frayed ends still have embers glowing.
Agape found a way for us to love us as ourselves, without being bound to standards of social niceties that simply don't make sense or inspire feeling.
Eros provides that rosy glowing gloss that lets us see others at a best they may not already have attained, but might reach, inspired by our regard.
Ludus introduces the playful comedy that lets us test our strength without punishing weakness or failure; a gentle way of finding truth without letting it hurt us.
Mania lends strength at 3AM when the phone rings, or the code breaks, when the problem can't be solved, or a character flaw simply must be overcome. Or it becomes discovered that it cannot be overcome, and the outcome must also be met by another mania.
Philautia, where we make our home, our self-love based on our self-respect, gets racheted down. The famous autie/aspie love of rules makes community policy possible. It also requires the teeth-gritting exercise of accepting the role of discretionary judgement, and learning to master it. As a moderator, as a staff member, I see this as crucial in determining how to find my way in a world of social conventions that are not rules, and yet work: rules are about justice and stability, but roles apply mercy and compassion. Is there any one of us who does not need all four?
Philia draws people who are not friends into trust relationships for a common goal; I don't have to like you to know that we want a success, the same success, and for as long as the goal is common, the trust is real. Philia buys time for all the other loves, between those who do not yet love each other.
Phrenia is the home of thought in love. Love can be treated as a feeling. Love can be treated as a verb: show your love. Love can be studied by itself: anything will give up its secrets if I love it enough. All the details are doors. God, if you believe in a god, is in the details, where the puzzle pieces fit together at last. Phrenia makes Conversation work by giving tongue to the other loves. It is the shape of a mind and loves other minds, and can give philautia a serious case of hiccups.
Pragma goes out for the groceries and does the laundry. It takes the nicks and errors and ill-judgment and misunderstandings in stride, soothes philautia, supports philia, provides intent to phrenia, and puts agape in motion. Nothing endures without it.
Storge sees others in itself, and itself in others, the deep similarities wrought by shared origins in culture, creed, values, experiences; it is the mother of empathy, and the personal right-or-wrong loyalty of the clan and the tribe. I think of Storge as the bass-note for philia; we may not choose our family, but we have too much in common to really let go. An injured storge results in the kind of experience Stevie Smith wrote about in "To Carry the Child."
Studies of peace show, over and over, that people bond in community most tightly when the community is in extremis. Disaster decisively brings about community. We need each other to survive, and discover how we must bend for each other to make survival the outcome.
This has been a hard, hard lesson in where the boundaries are in the taxonomy of love I discovered here (courtesy of Slithytoves) so many months ago. Philia is not forever. Pragma endures, but does not satisfy. Ludus is dead, a casualty of the inability to play during a crisis. And storge emerges for the few whose actual family-of-origin dynamics did not prevent its development.
Family, it transpires, is neither cheap nor easy, and it may depend on real DNA. Family is where "they have to take you in" but for so many of us, family just didn't work that way.
In the aftermath, weak bonds suddenly matter: secondary relationships suddenly count as first. The damaging emotional intensity of aftermath doesn't damage the relationships that were about liking, commonality, empathy, but not passion--these relationships are the ones that heal.
