Last weekend, my girlfriend and I watched a movie called The Accountant. It stars Ben Affleck, and the storyline behind the movie is much different than what we anticipated from the trailer. We thought it was an international crime drama. Instead, it is about a man with autism who is an exceptional mathematician.
As mentioned in a comment on a post by @jrcornel, I watched it twice. One reason was that the storyline does not unfold chronologically. It jumps between the past and present. By the time of the end, it all makes sense. Mind you, the movie is rather violent, as the main character is also a proficient sniper, and excellently skilled in martial arts, thanks to his father. I described it to others as Rambo with autism. Another reason for watching it a second time is due to the fact that I know people with some form of autism, and watching this movie helped me understand life from their point of view. And, it also gave me some insight into my own life.
Much of my young life was a challenge for communicating, and interacting with others. This caused me to start school a year later than my peers. I have also had very few close friends for most of my life. After moving out of state at the age of 22, I recall inviting a co-worker over for dinner one night. After noticing how organized my apartment was, coupled with the fact that I didn’t own any ice cube trays, or salt-n-pepper shakers (since I never used those things), he chided that I was the most anal-retentive person he’d ever met. We almost got into a fight over that because I thought he was accusing me of being gay.
Then, after moving to Pennsylvania in 2012 to be with my dad while he fought colon cancer, I lived with an uncle for 2 ½ years. During that time, he stated on at least two occasions that I should go to a doctor, and be put on medication because he believed I had an adult version of ADD. I didn’t go.
After my dad passed in 2014, I moved back to New Mexico where I had lived for the previous eleven years. Because things didn’t work out after several months, I moved back to AZ in November of 2015. Not long after arriving in AZ, a friend wrote me a letter stating her reasons why she believed I have Asperger’s, which is a form of autism.
Since I’ve never been examined, I don’t know for sure if I have any of these things. It seems that people with these conditions are in a situation where one part of their brain excels at the expense of another part. I’m not convinced that this is my case. But one statement from the movie really spoke to me about why I am as I am. It was when the main character was a boy, and his father told him that people bully him because he is different, and that people fear others who are different.
Another word that came to me for different is peculiar. And that correlation brought to mind the Bible verse, “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.” 1 Peter 2:9. In my case, I can’t help but think that my mental/social challenges have been a gift to help me remain peculiar since it has been my heart’s desire since I was seven to know, and follow the will of God.
But more than that is this issue with people being afraid of those who are different. From my experience, this fear comes out of the natural state of a person not knowing who they are in relationship to the truth of their being. The world’s remedy for this is for people to simply make up their own identity out of their imagination. But in order for a society of such people to operate, there is a need for various middle-men to administer the institutions that are necessary to sustain such a society. Central banking, central religion, central education, and central healthcare are some of the bigger examples.
Those who have been called out of such darkness, and have come to the knowledge of who they are, will not need such crutches to live uprightly. They will know how to interact with their fellow man in a way that is beneficial to all, and edifying to that which is true in contrast to simply winning an argument, or make themselves appear right.
Central institutions profit from disconnection and insanity. When people are sane, such organs become increasingly irrelevant. And those who are supported by those institutions have their jobs threatened due to lack of interest, things can become tumultuous. This is why believers in the first three centuries of the Christian era were persecuted, and fed to lions. It was because the first disciples of Jesus were endowed with the power to make people sane (the Bible refers to it as removing unclean spirits). This is why they were referred to as apostles after the day of Pentecost (around June of 31 AD).
After discussing some of this with my local cryptocurrency meetup group Thursday night, we all agreed that blockchain technology has the potential to remove the middle-man from every dynamic of human interaction. It’s as if to say that the blockchain is a witness that intercession is over, and that the positions of middle-men will become more obsolete from here on out since blockchain isn’t going anywhere apart from shutting down the entire internet. And if that did happen, that would introduce a whole new set of problems apart from the loss of funds, and other records.
With that came up the prospect that such an upheaval can create a tumult as it did in the first centuries. Even if it does, we all agreed that it is worth it because we all see how blockchain is an answer to a cry for freedom.
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