Learning How to Be a Person [Promethean: The Created]

Open Development, Promethean: The Created

This past week, we got an email from a guy who found a particular resonance in Promethean. He’d been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome (a form of high-functioning autism), and his story of how he’d struggle for years to fit in with people struck us as particularly poignant. You can read the email here.

If you don’t know, in my day job I’m a speech-language pathologist (or speech therapist) for the Cleveland school district. Over the years I’ve had occasion to work with a lot of folks on the autism spectrum, both high and low functioning (and even that’s an oversimplification, but I don’t have all night), and it’s often struck me how much deliberation goes into learning social interaction – something that those of us who aren’t on the spectrum kind of take for granted.

But what that tells me is that empathy can be learned. Maybe it comes easier for some folks than others, but you can teach yourself to feel and care for other people. The Monkeysphere might only hold 150 people comfortably, but you can stretch it.

Prometheans are, in part, that struggle in a metaphorical kind of way, Naturally the Great Work isn’t just about empathy, it’s about a lot of other facets of being human, too. But you know me: I’m a humanist, and I’m kind of an optimist, so that lesson of learning how other people work tends to show up in the Pilgrimages of my players’ characters.

Anyway, I just thought that was cool and worth sharing.

Now, for Tuesday’s update, would you prefer:

Milestones or qashmallim?