The Oxytocin Deficit: One of My Best Autistic Traits

One of the primary specific neurochemical symptoms of my Asperger’s seems to be a deficit of oxytocin. Ironically, it is the presence of oxytocin that has caused significant problems for my people. As I study cognitive biases and social psychology, oxytocin is one of the primary neurochemicals responsible for social conformity. When it comes to the positive effects of being Asperger’s, the lack of oxytocin is among the best. It was formerly heralded as the “moral molecule” by people with only feeble understanding of it. Arguably, it is a very immoral molecule. It is among the principal biological agents the archetypal Regina George uses to maintain the loyalty of her minions. It doesn’t make people more moral, it makes people in small groups closer. One may either posit that as storge love but I would rather say that it is an ignoble fidelity.

 Love is a philosophical concept mostly disconnected from the material world and it is inappropriate to label anything a hormone directly does as love. Love is not an emotion but is a substance that exists in the purely abstract realms where morals, philosophy, and spirituality reside. Universal, unconditional, love is the categorical imperative of all sentient beings in the multiverse, an unwavering moral duty existent regardless of the biology of any of those beings. Maimonides said it best: it’s not pity, it’s duty. Which is not to say that the feelings of grace and honor associated with acting one’s duty out are immaterial. It is to emphasize that crying over cute posterchildren and worthy victims is the lowest form of charity.

The oxytocin is a significant factor in people bonding with those victims and that may seem great but the inverse of that is the anger felt toward the perpetrator. An anger that is likely to be irrational and disproportionate to the crime, if there was any at all. My lack of oxytocin may have impeded my ability to make friends early on (while my lifelong excess of serotonin made me friendly) but what it did do was make me instantly forgive anyone who did anything to me or anyone else. When all of the disgusting acts of bullying happened to me, it triggered norepinephrine, sure, and depressed my serotonin levels in certain brain regions for long periods. Yet, anxiety and depression are not anger. I never felt angry at them.

Another weird thing is I have never had a real crush and I’m glad. You see, while I have had fixations on girls. Those were primarily caused by norepinephrine burning trauma signals into my amygdala. I also used to use the term “crush” anytime I found a girl attractive which led to me saying I had crushes on girls that I didn’t. As the primary form of bullying I endured was being a circus monkey, I chose various attractive girls to feign crushing on as a part of my act after I had become cognizant of the truth of the circus monkey bullying. Real crushing is what makes guys do things that are gross and startling. Oxytocin is what makes guys romantically obsess over girls, sometimes to the point of stalking. The latter, especially, since oxytocin induces jealousy which they would feel after a breakup and then start plotting revenge.

Lastly, politically, oxytocin is one of the primary neurochemicals responsible for ingroup bias and group identity which makes it one of the materials most responsible for people irrationally believing and accepting ideas, misinterpetations, and falsehoods that align with the interests of their identity and their group. That is to say, it is the reason supporters of Donald Trump, Marine la Pen, Nerenda Modi, and other expressions of nationalism seemlessly suspend their syllogistic logic for alternate realities and to hate members of outgroups, emotional hatred which oxytocin has been clinically demostrated to increase with regards to nationality and also extends to any other outgroup one perceives. I am largely immune to all of that.

The lack of oxytocin is one of the main factors in my immunity to social pressure and that combines with the excess of serotonin to make me eccentric, innocent, and playful. In a world that sees me as a man, I am not a man. I’m a man-child but in a good way. I don’t feel anger and I don’t feel strong bonding. It’s a part of the reason I’m an orphan. But it gives me the ability to love unconditionally, be eccentric despite a society wanting to censor it, and makes me innocent in a world where boys frighteningly attach to women and vigilantes frighteningly attach to causes. When somebody does something offensive, I don’t feel any hatred but I do feel horror when I see the vigilantes grab their pitchforks and start marching. Oxytocin is a chemical I have in very low supply and I want to keep it that way, forever.