An Autistic World (1)

By Fernando Gomez de Avila

"Imagine means to open our minds and think. The human’s autistic nature is shown in our society’s restricted and repetitive behavior. This book represents a new chapter of human knowledge, economics, sociology and psychology, attracting the reader to an estate of circumstantial conscience with simple words and concise meaning."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fernando Gomez de Avila
• Release date: Nov 30, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452344584

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

BANK OF AMERICA

In September of 1999, a lawsuit was filed by the Utility Consumer’s Action Network, against Bank of America, acting on behalf of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, both in San Diego, U.S. The lawsuit alleged that Bank of America engaged in unlawful, unfair, and fraudulent business practices by disclosing consumer’s personal, private, and confidential information to third parties without consumer’s consent or without making proper disclosure. Particularly, it charged that the Bank disclosed the Social Security numbers, account numbers, and other sensitive data from about thirty five million current and former Bank of America customers, to telemarketers, direct-mail marketers, and other vendors in return for millions of dollars in fees and commissions. The information was released despite assurances in the Bank privacy policy that it will keep the information provided secure and confidential, only sharing customers data for legitimate business purposes.

A settlement was proposed between both sides, for those individuals that were affected between September 9, 1995 and May 31, 2007, based on saving costs of uncertain trials and appeals, after nearly eight years of litigation. In that settlement, Bank of America would provide $10.75 million to be spent on waiving fees for certain products and services, agreeing to contribute an extra $3.25 million to privacy related programs, including $1.5 million for nonprofit groups that seek to protect consumer’s privacy. The lawyers in this case would get millions.

I believe that in July 2007, Bank of America sent a form with an insert to every customer. When I received mine in the mail, I was surprised because I didn’t know anything about the lawsuit. This legal notice, by order of the court, was directed to inform past and present customers about the settlement and its causes, leaving an option for the people that didn’t agree with the settlement. I read the notice, and I was perplexed, not only due to the information that it was revealing, since I was completely unaware, but because of the confusing way in which the notice was written.

It gave me this impression:

-First: This is a paper that you should toss in the garbage as soon as possible, disregarding its content.

-Second: If you decide to read this piece of crap, you will loose valuable time because you are so stupid that you won’t understand a single thing.

-Third: If you decide to spend some time reading what it says and you do not agree with the settlement, it would be a waste of your energy, because everything is under our lawyer’s control and whatever you say or do, will be irrelevant.

-Fourth: If you do something about it, you may get in trouble. It would be a lot better if you take your kids to the park, so they won’t have to visit you in jail.

-Fifth: If you think that this notice is unjust, and unfair, and you decide to claim benefits in a class action settlement, you are an idiot.

From about thirty five million current and former Bank of America customers, only about fifty objected to the settlement. I was one of them.

A few months later, the judge declared in court that the grounds for the actual settlement were valid, since the possibility of being right from the point of view of the objectors, was so infinitesimally small, compared with the overwhelming abstention produced by the rest of the customers.

In my modest opinion the most surprising aspect of this lawsuit, wasn’t that Bank of America disclosed the Social Security numbers, account numbers, and other sensitive data from about thirty five million of its customers, which it denied, but what amazed me was the ambiguous answer from those customers to the settlement. If we could tell the founding fathers that many of their descendants wouldn’t object to the possibility of some bankers sitting in a room in some building, trading the most valuable information that a bank could have, which is the information related to its clients, who after a hard day of work deposit their trust and their money into the bank’s hands, without the chance of severe punishment after exposing the facts in court, they wouldn’t had believed us.

Times have changed and the sacred relation between most banks and its customers has been reduced to mere data. As this example shows, with the help of that notice in the mail, the immense majority of individuals didn’t think that confronting the settlement was a good idea, they probably assumed that their role was an unimportant, insignificant part of a big puzzle. The fact is that it’s not good business for the bank or for the customers to have a meaningless relationship. Somehow, that connection must be improved in the future, and technology could help to close the gap if we find the will to do it. Otherwise, we better change the US Constitution and start thinking about a more realistic approach, adjusting the words We The People, for more adequate ones like We the Numbers.

CHAPTER 2

THE GROCERY STORE

Imagine means to open our minds and think. Imagine going to the grocery store. Imagine that you get a basket at the entrance; walking through gleaming, unpolluted, immaculate aisles, where meticulously arranged products have been placed on the shelves, under the unostentatious presence of very soft music that reaches your ears like a spring rain falls from the cloudy skies and gracefully touches the grass of a silent valley. Imagine choosing some items in this perfectly organized world, placing them in your basket: Cereal, soap, bread… Then you direct yourself towards the cash register in order to pay for this sterile experience. There an apparently dull woman scans with a repetitive motion of her arms, the groceries of a tall man that seems to respond to her questions. For what ever reason, you get close to hear what they are saying, and in doing so, you leave your basket on the counter-top to be checked-out next. That behavior would not be considered polite or even respectful, but she knows that in one way or another, almost everybody does it. Excuses are plentiful; she experiences them every day; like space and time constrains, curiosity, or maybe the fact that back there, in the cool aisles, people walk up and down without much to say, looking motionless at the pictures of cans and boxes.

Thanks for the warning. Is there anything I can do?, the tall and resolute man enquired, like a newborn gladiator.

I don’t think so, she replayed unperturbed to his empty generosity. But, be careful outside, you never know what kind of creeps may be driving in the parking lot.

Imagine now that your time has come; that you are next; that you are somehow curious and you want to know what in the world they were talking about. It may appear to you a bit superfluous, vain, almost an annoyance to your comfortable, smooth, unobjectionable experience as a shopper; as an individual with an apparent simple goal, but as the woman knows, chances are that you will rearrange your mind quickly. You will unconsciously accept that you have to spend x amount of time wondering what you need, what you can afford, what you think you want, by letting her know that she is there and she has something to say, and you have time to listen, to absorb, like a trapped mouse, like a docile dog.

Hi you say, maybe expecting a smile, a human expression.

They hit somebody outside, in the parking lot and ran away. The woman responds to your salute in a manner that resembles a foot crushing a fat insect; splashing guts, brains and a green substance all over the floor.

Imagine that you are surprised; that you try promptly to remember whatever you understood from the previous conversation, which is not much. Then, pulling yourself together under the watchful eye of that woman, reassembling some words in your head like an inspiring magician, you respond to her with an anticipated, expected question.

What happened? you inquire because she must know. She is there, calmly screening bar codes, adding products to the list you sooner or later will have to pay, will have to take home, placing them back in shelves and drawers, giving you a sense of accomplishment, fulfillment, and safety.

Two guys hit a woman with their car.

Is she OK?

I think so. The police are looking for them. They abandoned the vehicle and ran away.

I hope they catch them. You say a little irritated.

Another lady saw them running up the hill, across the road. I guess they don’t know that the building on top of the hill is the State Training Center for police dogs., the woman insinuates with a hint of a smile.

Is it?

The last item from the basket is been scanned. Then, she prints the total amount for you to pay. Yes, few people know that. She says disregarding your presence; like wiping you in the rear to get rid of you, so she could focus her attention on the next customer.

Imagine grabbing two or three plastic bags with the products you have bought inside and deliberately cut off from the conversation, you walk away from her, perceiving on your way out an unsatisfactory void in yourself. You look back, and you hear the woman asking a question to the next customer. Did you know that they train police dogs across the road, on top of the hill?

Really!, the customer answers.

Yep. Very few people know about it.

You stop in an instant, and you realize that the clerk is revealing to the next person slightly different gossip from the one she just told you. It is a continuation resembling chapter from a progressive tale. You may feel surprised and annoyed at the same time. She is trying to fill the hours of her monotonous job with many broken events, feeding to the customers that happen to walk in front of her, a series of episodes from a story that she probably heard who knows where. She is trying to buy time, and you, like many others, fell on her careful braided net.

CHAPTER 3

WHAT WE DO, IT IS WHO WE ARE

I feel that our society shares many similarities with the previous chapter, if we compare it with the common perception that people obtain from their daily circumstances. Have you ever thought that you are unable of getting the entire picture of what’s happening in today’s world? I believe no one escapes the paradigm. We, as individuals of a free society, are not in command of all the information that we perceive and aspire. Yes, we can choose what we want to hear, see, or feel, but the sensation of missing key data is present at all times, and as we know, the incapability of acquiring every detail can cause a human dilemma. We must make a choice between two schools of thought. The first one is based on our capability to stay and obtain as much information as possible. The second one is founded on our ability to move on; to risk the loss of crucial details, and consequently to forget.

Since the beginning of time, every man has had to deal with those two choices. When is it appropriate to stay? When is it suitable to leave? At what point is it adequate to say enough is enough? These and other similar questions arise from the same controversial dilemma, shaping a great deal of our lives. Curiously, I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of us leave most of the critical decisions to a third party, after all, the world around our bodies also influences our minds. Otherwise, how could we understand the inside without the outside? How could we make a decision without accepting that, even for a split second, most of what we do and what we say, is subjected to an exterior effect?

In the mind of a physicist the definition of force is recognized as an influence that causes motion on a body. The word motion has a clear time and space essence; but the word influence appears problematic, if we consider ourselves as merely individuals forming part of a society. In other words, it is commonly understood that a society is the sum of conditions and activities of individuals that together function as an independent entity; but the effect those individuals have between themselves provides a core of characters that do not necessarily reflect independence or freedom. Yet the outcome differentiates one society from another, like multiple families made-up of children from different partners.

The effect somebody exerts over another individual carries the weight of our civilization. That influence reflects an infinite combination of forces between ourselves, and most of those are directed to achieve the survival of each individual person, developing distinctive single trends on our way which help us to interact with each other. The word motion implies displacement. It suggests attraction or rejection from point A to point B, giving to our lives the necessary time and space to try to comprehend who we are. Without movement it would be