In the days before contact lenses people who wore glasses were in the minority. Sometimes they were ridiculed. Today it seems rare to find somebody who doesn't benefit from corrective lenses. I don't think human optic abilities have deteriorated so much as human culture has shifted. But we still think people with 20/20 vision have ideal vision. We don't consider them to have a condition with a label like "myopia".
If 90% of people exhibit some characteristics of the autism spectrum, shouldn't we start to consider the people with none as the ones worthy of a label? Like people with true pitch. We give them a label, not people with less than perfect pitch.
Perhaps pedantry is like true pitch or "perfect" vision. It's actually a good thing. Even if it annoys people who don't have it. I wonder if people with true pitch go through life cringing on the inside every time they hear a wrong note. But they learn to never let on that they notice.
Perhaps the part of pedantry that puts a person on the autism spectrum is not so much the noticing as it is the voicing--the seeming inability to control the expression and calling out a correction instead of just letting it slide.
If 90% of people exhibit some characteristics of the autism spectrum, shouldn't we start to consider the people with none as the ones worthy of a label? Like people with true pitch. We give them a label, not people with less than perfect pitch.
Perhaps pedantry is like true pitch or "perfect" vision. It's actually a good thing. Even if it annoys people who don't have it. I wonder if people with true pitch go through life cringing on the inside every time they hear a wrong note. But they learn to never let on that they notice.
Perhaps the part of pedantry that puts a person on the autism spectrum is not so much the noticing as it is the voicing--the seeming inability to control the expression and calling out a correction instead of just letting it slide.