Who Are the Outliers?

The Pyramid Structure

The vast majority of societies are constructed in a particular way and have been so in one form or another since the writing of records began. It involves having leaders, supported and advised by a cluster of experts, who dominate, control and care for the masses of ordinary people.

It doesn’t matter, for the purposes of this argument, whether that structure is a nation, a city, a company or a school. It doesn’t matter whether the leaders are elected, self-imposed, benign or despotic. It doesn’t matter whether they are loved, loathed or feared by their people. All that matters is that this is the structure we, and all those around us, were born and socialised into — so much so that we-the-people find it difficult to visualise our way out of this system.

What has this to do with autistic perception? Well, such societies, with their triangular power system, rely on the few controlling the many. Clearly, that has inherent challenges. To maintain the structure successfully, the leaders and their enforcers must keep the masses as ‘mass-like’ as possible.

Through the ages, free-thinking, independent and unusual individuals or those showing abilities which might challenge the status quo have been punished, ostracised or suppressed. We have extreme examples of this scapegoating in witch-burning, religious persecution etc.

In the Victorian era, being left-handed was considered threateningly deviant by the authorities. Such children had their left hands strapped down and were forced to conform to ‘normal’ behaviour — using the right hand — which often resulted in stammering, nervous tics or other responses to this barbarity as their natural tendencies were suppressed.

Today an individual who can perform superhuman feats, like playing a concerto after hearing it once, drawing an accurate representation of a scene after one glimpse, or one who can perform incredible mental calculations — is somewhat feared by the experts.

They can’t account for that person’s abilities, so they go to great pains to emphasise the ‘negative’ aspects of such people, such as a perceived lack of self-care, and social or interpersonal skills. Such people are not, by and large, welcome in a society which seeks to reward complicity and punish autonomy.

Similarly, people with psychic skills are often treated with disdain, branded charlatans and fraudsters or laughingly marginalised as weird or eccentric. Although the police, corporations and government intelligence systems utilise the skills of such people, this is kept very quiet. Publicly, they are ostracised.

So the neurodiverse are marginalised, and the attitude of the ‘experts’ rubs off not just on the typical members of society, but on those with autistic perception as well. Like the little Victorian left-handers, they can easily see themselves as deviant and wrong, and embark on a tremendous, difficult and ultimately unwinnable battle to live up to society’s standards of normality in order to be accepted.

It is often, in my experience as a teacher and mentor, this pressure to conform to patterns that don’t fit their natural way of being which cause the secondary problems that beset so many — anxiety, depression and other psychological difficulties.

Another way?

As I mentioned at the start, a triangular power structure has held sway in many societies since written records began. Humanity is far older than writing, though, so by thinking back to a time before scribes and civil servants organised us all, we may find something different.

Despite the earnest efforts of social anthropologists, archaeologists and academics, very little is known, and far less understood, about our distant ancestors — the people who migrated vast distances across continents.

For millennia, the hunter-gatherers moved gently across the landscape. They would take refuge in caves or build temporary shelters, but they often needed to follow the food supply, so movement was their natural way of life. A tribe which is constantly on the move and living a hand-to-mouth existence has no need for leaders or experts. Consequently, I think it safe to assume that their society would have been structured very differently from ours.

In order to safeguard the youngest, oldest and otherwise vulnerable members of their group, they would have to form a protective framework as they moved. The pace of the group would, then, probably be slow and steady.

Certainly, there is safety in numbers, and it isn’t hard to see the advantages to the group travelling in this way. Fairly obviously, though, there are certain shortcomings. What this culture would need is for certain individuals to move slightly away from the central group and to perform a different function. The hunter-gatherers would need outliers.

An outlier is someone with a relationship to the general group, but somewhat apart from it — on the periphery.

Such individuals purposely take themselves to the edges and beyond. Theirs is a more exposed and potentially dangerous situation, but they serve the valuable purpose of scouting for possible hazards or useful food sources that would be missed by the main group. Without the outliers, the entire colony would stand less chance of survival.

If you think about it, the skills these outliers develop will be very different from those of the rest of the population. Imagine a group of humans on a long journey, with most crowded into a central group and a few staying on the edges and heading off to scout around. Who would have the highest levels of sensory stimulation — a member of the mass or an outlier?

Clearly, it would be the outlier. Any form of extrasensory perception would be a distinct advantage. They would certainly need highly developed senses of sight, smell, hearing and touch in order to be alert for danger or sanctuary, while members of the central group would have little sensory stimulation beyond the sound, smell and sight of their fellow travellers.

By contrast, an outlier would not need to be involved in everyday, low-level interactions with others, since they would remain on the fringes of the group and only need to communicate about matters of urgency. The central group, on the other hand, would require the ability to engage in ‘small talk’ and general chatter to maintain a peaceful co-existence.

As will no doubt have already been noticed, the characteristics of an outlier in a migratory group resemble some classic features of autistic perception — heightened senses, often to the point where they can be uncomfortable, and limited social and communication skills.

In other words, those with autistic perception could be ideally suited to the role of an outlier.

Status

It would seem highly likely that the ancient outliers held a position of very high status within nomadic or migrating groups since they were responsible for everyone’s safety and the success of the journey. What happened to them, though, when the travellers decided to settle and build permanent homes? I suspect that they retained their revered status within the tribe.

In many primal societies people with this special skills-set — heightened senses, an ability to link telepathically to other times or places, other dimensions, even, and a degree of separation from the everyday life of the tribe — have been appointed as shamans, healers and seers.

Their role could be to travel between worlds, to care for the psychological health of the group, to look into the future or past to provide the answers they need or to uncover the reasons for sickness or misfortune. They would be the psychic equivalent to the outlier — visiting regions the rest can’t reach and feeding back necessary information.

Moving forward

Humanity is always journeying and progressing in certain ways. We have seen that these talented and unusual individuals are not particularly popular with leaders and experts in our society’s current structure. Some, though, manage to have a profound effect despite officialdom.

When they do, they are responsible for creating huge shifts in perception that move society into new areas. These people work silently, compulsively, and alone and are able to make huge leaps to a higher level of understanding of how the universe really works.

I have a strong suspicion that the outlier will, once more, be recognised as vital to societies of the future, as the pyramids crumble.