On Autism

The world of autism research went wild when in 2014, Jerry Seinfeld relayed in an interview that on a very drawn-out scale he finds himself on the Autism Spectrum. The importance of this tidbit couldn’t be more exciting for professionals in the field who have been arguing that outstanding talent shown in people with autism does not develop despite their social inhibitions but because of them. Case in point, while average viewers of the Oprah Winfrey Show were enthralled at her knack to elicit raw emotion in her guest’s story that led to their “Aha moment,” Seinfeld drew ire in the phrase Aha moment, suggesting revelatory, a more pointed word that’s already in the dictionary. This is his talent, to look at mundane things that people do from a point so truthful that it makes us laugh at ourselves. What we view as detached, idiosyncratic, and inharmonious behavior in people with autism, some decades from now will look back at as thoroughly misunderstood. That the Spectrum isn’t of social deficiency as much as it is a class of senses that is overstimulated.