On the Will to Power and Self-Overcoming

In Genealogy, Nietzsche talks about how most of society is run on shame. When you harm someone more powerful than you, they collect their "debt" for that harm by instilling you with a sense of shame for doing something wrong. Society then organized itself around this idea that being powerful means getting to collect on the debt that is owed to you. It is a weakness to not be able to get revenge if you are hurt, and nobody wants to be weak.

Indeed, we all have a fundamental desire in us that prevents us from being able to just let go when hurt, and any psychology that tells you to suppress that just makes it worse, hidden, and leak out and hurt others more. Suppressing one's desire for power is as harmful as suppressing stimming or special interests, though neurotypical people often disguise it better due to their reliance on herd-behavior.  

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So what is one to do if one desires to be a good person?

Nietzsche proposes a radical revaluation of values. Instead of trying to suppress your desire to get power through revenge and instilling shame, you use it to motivate you. Everyone has something that they feel strongly about, whether it's how caring they are, how disciplined they are, how much honor they have, how smart they are, how rich they are, etc. Modern psychology would tell you to confront the shame that is causing this, but that would be unsuccessful and you would just be left with suppressed shame and repressed anger. You must fight for the thing you care about, and then only when you are ready, confront it. Because it is impossible to suppress one's desires for achieving these things, it is only through confronting it when you already have already fought for it that you can free yourself from needing validation from others. At that point you don't need validation because you have realized that you had become that thing in the process.

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By having gone through this process yourself, you are then equipped to guide others as they fight for what is important to them, without getting upset when they become distressed by their journey. You stop needing them to behave correctly in order to soothe your emotions, and can instead lead them, which is much more effective for improving behavior.

Children are never something to be overcome. Children are the reason we overcome our own challenges so that we have the skills to raise them and skills to guide them through their challenges. We raise them so that they may be able to do the same for the next generation.

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Many of the reasons that autistic students struggle is that they are so often being taught by people who haven't yet chosen to go through this process. Additionally, neurotypical people who feel powerless will often take it out on autistic people because they view them as socially weaker. Many people working in ABA or parents of autistic children feel triggered when the child becomes upset, as if the child is threatening the parent's self-perception of being a kind and caring person. The child then absorbs the emotions of the parent as shame, leading to further behavioral and developmental challenges. The autistic child, with nobody engaging with them through shared sensory interactions, then feels alone and without anyone to guide them.

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It is impossible to ask someone to go this process, as the act of asking itself is an expression of power. Thus Spoke Zarathustra is therefore written in a very story-like way. In fact, probably one of the best ways to read Zarathustra is to imagine him as an anime character. One of the reasons autistic people are drawn to anime and fantasy (such as Avatar, Demon Slayer, and Lord of the Rings, as depicted on the right) is that it teaches this kind of value system, which allows them access to the world.

 

As an example of how poorly equipped ABA is to teach via this radical revaluation of values, consider the scene in the movie version of Return of the King, where Frodo gets upset with Sam and tells him to go home. ABA would say that Frodo's behavior is bad and needs to be trained out of him (or replaced with functional communication). They would collect data on his behavior and prevent him from continuing to Mordor "until he is ready to behave." Nietzschean philosophy would say that that is a human (or hobbit) reaction to the stress of the journey, and going through the journey is what will help solve the conditions leading to the behavior. 

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