Justin Schwan

I think, read, and write.

[Justin Schwan @JustinSchwan]

What someone sees first and what they learn to see are seldom the same. The face or the vase is an optical illusion, and you can learn to see both. Are people with autism even capable of learning the figurative, or is it just that they see literal first?

[Justin Schwan @JustinSchwan]

If people with autism see an idiom and take it literally, can people sans autism understand the literal interpretation? I never knew what a blue moon even was, rare or not, I never got it. I don't understand how you can't learn both the figurative and literal meanings of phrases.

[Justin Schwan @JustinSchwan]

When I think of the straw that broke the camel's back, I know it means one step too far, because that's what I learned. But I still always see a tan camel with a golden piece of straw on his back (always one single piece). I have no idea what other people see.

[Justin Schwan @JustinSchwan]

I have fun with wordplay because I immediately understand both the literal and figurative meaning of a phrase or word, given its contextual usage. People who take everything literally or figuratively just cannot keep up with these dad jokes.

[Justin Schwan @JustinSchwan]

The way regular people see the world: autism diagnoses have increased over the past 40 years so something must be causing this. The way I see the world: Science has gradually refined what autism is and we are better able to define autistic behavior in children and adults. Eat me.

[Justin Schwan @JustinSchwan]

The other side of the debate is vital to coherency. You really have to question movements that attempt to silence people's ability to dissent, to think differently, to hold other views and opinions, or have varied interpretations of the same facts.

[Justin Schwan @JustinSchwan]

Sodom was never a realistic biblical story. God expected Abraham to find 10 good people in Sodom when God knew damn well there weren't 10 good people in the whole wide world (or the world wide web). You can take it as pessimism, or as a challenge.

[Justin Schwan @JustinSchwan]

People should have freedom to live their lives. Pro-choice, LGBT, anti-slavery, religious freedom, anti-war, government assistance, right-to-die. But that doesn't extend to dictating to people what to believe and how to act. That isn't freedom. Not a means to an end.

[Justin Schwan @JustinSchwan]

There are numerous examples of bad people claiming to stand for good things, and they all have in common that they're too serious about everything and have no sense of humor. The Christian Right, the Spanish Inquisition, Joseph McCarthy.

[Justin Schwan @JustinSchwan]

The "Me Too" movement effectively ended when it went after Pepe Le Pew, a skunk who thought a cat was a skunk because of a wet paint accident, and a cat who didn't want him because he was actually a skunk. People who take parody too seriously cannot be taken seriously themselves.

[Justin Schwan @JustinSchwan]

Through technology we will gain a great deal, namely knowledge of our world and efficiencies, but these efficiencies will continue to remove us from reality, and we will live more and more in our heads, but worse, in the heads of others as our communication grows more immediate.

[Justin Schwan @JustinSchwan]

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tower of Babel aren't myths or depictions of the past, but should be treated as warnings of the future, a future in which humans lose their humanity in their wanting of more. Technology has become the machine of this madness.

[Justin Schwan @JustinSchwan]

Hundreds of thousands of Native Americans live in poverty, abandoned to either assimilate or continue to live without ownership on government imposed and government owned reservations. All because we cannot see beyond icons to see real people.

[Justin Schwan @JustinSchwan]

White Americans are so uncomfortable with race that even when we try to do the right thing, we are clumsy, reactive, and don't really think far enough into the future to create real equity or diversity. We never see beyond superficiality. We still desire the melting pot.

[Justin Schwan @JustinSchwan]

It's sad to see in our PC culture that when we attempt to remove negative icons we're actually in a process of whitewashing Native Americans from our own culture, failing to replace these icons with anything accurate or mindful. That it's primarily whites doing this is ironic.

[Justin Schwan @JustinSchwan]

Americans have a poor relationship with peoples' cultures, their own (European or African cultures) and others (Hispanic, Asian). When it comes to Native American culture, I find that we're so far off base that even people who fight to restore it are fighting for caricatures.

[Justin Schwan @JustinSchwan]

I have the privilege and pleasure of being immersed in Puerto Rican culture and it's actually nothing like the distilled version depicted by parties, music, or represented by icons (it's not all coffee and merengue), being an outsider able to appreciate how people live there.

[Justin Schwan @JustinSchwan]

The way we perceive and transmit culture is painfully erroneous and does nothing to accurately depict what life is/was like for another person. Remember that during Thanksgiving when you argue over whether Indian headdresses are appropriate or not. Both sides fail to be genuine.

[Justin Schwan @JustinSchwan]

Isn't Stanely Kubrick one of the greatest horror directors of all time? We immediately go to The Shining, but Eyes Wide Shut, A Clockwork Orange, Space Odyssey, and Full Metal Jacket have incredible horror elements to them, and though are not slasher films, are horrifying!

[Justin Schwan @JustinSchwan]

The allure of death is that it is mercy for the harshness of life.