the thing is my interests aren't actually about what theyre about , if that makes sense. ill get obsessed with a book or whatever (and sometimes go down rabbit holes along the way) but it isn't about the thing itself it's my way of engaging with broader questions indirectly. thats also why i feel kind of detached from the concept of autistic special interests. my interests are intense and absolutely identity defining but their purpose isn't information gathering. i dont like the franklin expedition because of the historical facts, i dont even particularly care about the event itself, in a sense. but the setup of it allows me to more easily engage with abstract ideas . a lot of it comes down to ethics, thats a thing that ties most of my disparate interests together. for the terror it's what do medical ethics look like in extremis? when the confines and expectations of civilization are discarded what remains? when survival is off the table what then do we owe each other? it is anthropological almost. and thats why my obsessions last no longer than a few months, it's not because the novelty wears off or anything like that, it's because what look like specific interests are actually just vehicles for examining philosophical questions, and they naturally lead into other interests which deal with related questions, and so on.
