People with Aspergers under Communist regimes.

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I don't mean this post to be really about Communism totally as an ideology. As in, the theoretics of the ideology. What I'm really interested in is what day to day life was like under Communism in Russia, East Germany, etc. Specifically, what I'm wondering is, would life in such a communistic society be better for people with Aspergers?

It seems to me Communism is a double edged sword. There's the possibility you could... I dunno, piss someone off and become a political prisoner somewhere or something. You know, for having different ideas than everyone else. So in some sense there is a fear that "differentness" would be stamped out in such a regime, including Aspergers. Obviously there's the extreme cases like North Korea or something, but if you look at life in, say, East Germany, it's pretty "blah" but not really obviously terrible. Some people with Aspergers really hated Communism, take Ayn Rand for example, though she had her own craziness besides Aspergers (as much as I do like some of her ideas...)
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But here's the positives... First off, on a more minor point, that I can see as a positive of Communism is, the "community" aspect of it. I always struggle to be part of groups and stuff like that. But Communism at least in theory tries to make group dynamics work well, by basically clearcut assigning you a place in society. IE, picking a place for you to work, etc. But also, the "togetherness" a Communist society gives (ie, calling people comrade) because it's basically a religious idea.

But in a weird dichotomy, I feel Communist societies almost appreciated individual efforts more because all individual efforts helped the group? America for example, in American schools, you're considered unathletic and terrible if you suck at team sports. Despite America's strong emphasis on individuality/etc, there's no state funding or supports for individual sports in America. If you wanna be a gymnast, for example, you need cash, and lots of it. There's no state funding for the sport. However, in the former Com-bloc countries, there was, and the main deciding factor wasn't the amount of money your parents had that decided your gymnastics progression. In America, though, It's either football, baseball, basketball, etc. Yeah, occasionally a school will have an individual sport, but it is rare. Reading about in Communist countries, though, they'd just send sports scouts, and then recruit people not based on that, but just individual attributes and abilities. It again goes to "roles" in society, going with Aspergers, I wonder how many kids with Aspergers in former USSR had some abilities related to Aspergers, and then the authorities groomed them (not implying in a bad way) to be, say...scientists or something?

Now obviously, in America, it's perfectly possible for someone with Aspergers to have a cool job like that, and do great things. But what's readily apparent in America/Western Society is that many people with Aspergers that fall through the cracks, and we're a board full of people who get told "you're so smart, you should be a doctor/scientist/lawyer/etc." It seems to me, that in Communist societies (again, we're not talking about theoretical communist utopias, we're talking actual Communist societies like USSR) this didn't happen as much. This is where the Communistic "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." gets appealing.

At the same time, the Western gambling society sounds great, too. Hey, you could be Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, right? Have more money than you could possibly know what to do with? But it seems for every Steve Jobs or Bill Gates in Western society, there's thousands of people as smart as them who just didn't have circumstances work out for them, and didn't have the level of success they did. And yes, some of those people might have an OK level of success and may work in an IT firm making 100K a year. But other people have drastically worse lives and...work at McDonalds or something, or are even homeless or on disability/etc.

Basically, my premise is, would people with Aspergers be less likely to "fall through the cracks" in Communist societies? Despite being a theoretical question, I'd like the conjecture to be based on the Communist societies that have existed. Not based on theoretical perfect Marxist-utopias. Would quality of life, despite crappy Lada cars that take years to get, expensive coffee, etc, be better because your place in society compared to everyone else could be higher?

Again, I could be wrong about all this, and if someone has personal experience living in a former Communist country and wants to tell me I'm full of s**t about all this, I'd be happy to hear why. But I do wonder about this subject, if I and others I know would have been better off. I'm not arguing that things would be better for the common people, or even society as a whole, but just for people with Aspergers.

Thoughts? Is this crazy? I've heard it said on this forum that many people with Aspergers see Communism as ideal because of things like clearcut roles in society/etc. I myself, until completely recently, was completely horrified of any communist/collectivist type ideology at all, but paradoxically, I've always loved USSR memorabilia and see a...romanticism, in it? Sorry if I'm a bit all over with this post, I just kinda wanna explore this idea.

Thanks.

I think you're onto something. I consider myself a Marxist though maybe not a full on communist (the "casino economy" IMO has a place, but it's a place that is much too vast in today's world ... hell you are FORCED to be part of it or accept poverty).

I also notice libertarian free market types tend to have little sympathy/empathy for non-NT people. They have a Spartan/Social Darwinist look at things and see people with mental disabilities as a drain upon society. So yes I think we'd do better in a more socialist society.

Until very recently, I was staunchly libertarian. Now I'm less so. For me, it was more that I thought society was just evil and I wanted to do whatever I want secluded away from society and libertarianism was the best means to accomplish this goal. Basically I wanted to be the guy from Anthem. In fact I associate libertarianism with Aspergers quite well, because of basically the amount of misanthrophy in it's doctrines. Idealist Aspies seem to be Communists, Aspies that are jaded and hate everything seem to be libertarians, with no inbetween.

But the whole thing with libertarianism is, like the Communists, they proclaim "well it's never been tried, so how do we know it doesn't work?" The fact is, besides some small examples (I think there's a small fairly libertarian island, San Marino iirc?) libertarian=Afghanistan or Tribal Pakistan. Just like Communist=USSR.

I completely understand libertarian thought process, as I as I said, I was one, and in many ways still find it preferable, and still want government mostly out of people's personal lives, and don't like needless bureaucracy, and...really, government in general. I still view government as the Mafia, however, even the Mafia did nice things sometimes, and the Mafia ruling your streets is better than Crips and Bloods ruling your streets.

But yes, this is just brainstorming. I've had this on my mind for a while. I'd REALLY love for someone that's grown up in a former Soviet state to speak up about this, as that's what I'm interested in.

I am not east-german, but german speaking. In the german speaking Aspie-forum, there have been some older east-german Aspies, telling about their experiences. While rather none of them was officially diagnosed, still life seemed for them to be far more relaxing. Jobs seemed to be less stressful, so not that "Gogogogo....you need to bring 130% maximum effort, or you loose your job!" Kindergarten and school experiences seemed as well to have been better, because of less stress to acchieve this or that. Somehow, somewhere, according to your abilities, there would have been something fitting job found for you and if you were horrible in almost everything, then you became stuff like the guy, watering the plants, and gathering the leafs in the parks. Because of health system anyway being available for all citizens, just like normal average food or flats (They were given free, but there was a system about it, so if being alone it took years waiting for one, while if you were a fresh married couple with your first child coming, you were preferred and so on...as far as I know, that was as well one of the reasons, why east-german married very early in comparison to the neighbor countries.) So you could have an rather "easy" job, but still life necessary stuff was available for you. I have normal NT coworkers as well, that were raised in east-germany, and as far as they described their experience, living in east germany was rather ok. So basic stuff was available, therefor for special stuff you needed to wait for years and do documents stuff and so on (As example if you wanted to build an house for yourself, then getting the material official was a pain in the ass.) The bad thing for them was simply that leechersystem, that you were forced to kiss their ass, never give anyone a clue on not being 100% believing into the politics, because elseway gaining benefits like being allowed to visit universitiy, getting a flat, ... got so much harder. And the burden of spying upon almost everything, even in totally private areas and among friend groups.

But thats only about east germany, so you hardly cannot compare countries, only because of them being communistic. So while everyday life seemed to pretty normal in east-germany, according to the Aspies in the german forum and my coworkers, from my relatives in Romania I know that life there was in comparison horror.

Um define Communism, if you are talking about a totalitarian dictatorship IE the iron curtain states, china, north korea etc non of whom by any rational understanding of the term could ever be called communist, then I would think having ASD would either turn you into a member of the Stasi and have others wetting themselves in fear or you would be in constant trouble and the one wetting your pants. If it were a truly communist society then who knows what you might achieve, but I would imagine support and care would be freely and readily available

Here is an interesting perspective

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLqHv0xgOlc[/youtube]

It is interesting that, even though Russia isn't "communist" any more, the exact same folks are very much in charge.

But, possibly the people who just did what they were told and feigned appropriate patriotism were better off during the communist days.

At least our owners allow us SSDI to keep us in line.

I was just thinking that the fellow in the above video might have been out to destabilize America through encouraging the excesses of Reaganomics.

Of course, with the end of the Cold War, our military-industrial complex desperately needed a new insidious enemy to keep treasure flowing its way. Enter Islam. Before the end of the Cold War, individual Islamic countries were either with us or against us in our struggle against Communism. Now, they're all against us, as Communism is no longer relevant.

With Communism as our enemy, our owners had an incentive to provide us with welfare, food stamps, social security, etc., as trifling concessions, so that we would be less apt to compare our situations unfavorably with those living in Communist countries. With Islam as our enemy, our owners are under less of an onus to throw any concessions our way. Which means that we may start seeing various entitlement programs drying up. Particularly as the Repugs start increasingly getting their way.

So, the Cold War may in fact have wrought us a few good things, even if we did have to recite "One Nation Under God" as part of our daily pledge to our flag.

Most likely, the Repugs will sooner-or-later change that part of our pledge to "One Nation Under Jesus", to emphasize our differences from Islam.

i often look at old video montages of life from the Soviet Union and East Germany and regard it with a certain envy because of the class awareness, brotherly altruism, community spirit and lack of corporate cynicism of advertising billboards plastered everywhere.

I still want to visit North Korea one day,

Last edited by thomas81 on 18 Oct 2013, 10:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

You agree with me then that the victory of capitalism in the cold war was a bad thing for ordinary people.

The original poster certainly raises a very good question and it is an issue that I have thought about. Answers will probably have to come from people with AS who had first hand experience of living under communism and they will be at least 30 years old now.

AS was not a known or recognised condition in the communist world prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall because Hans Asperger's papers were not publicised there and neither was AS co-discovered. If the communist Soviet Union and its satellite states lasted another 20 years then would information about AS from the west published after 1991 have penetrated the Iron Curtain? What would the reaction have been? Would it have fitted in with communist ideology and psychology?

Some information

http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/ ... -in-Russia

Looks like it wasn't very pleasant.

I have not lived within a totalitarian Communist state for more than a couple of weeks. I did not see ANY openly disabled people in North Korea. I have a couple of friends who grew up in Kazakhstan and their experience was quite negative, getting ahead in a Soviet style system, at least to them, seemed to involve as much networking and socialisation as in the west. This thread seems to have a real grass is greener view of life in the Soviet Union, but go spend a night in one of their made by the dozen uncomfortable apartment blocks or stand in a bread line and it might change your mind.

As to the poster who said he would like to visit NK, I seriously discourage it. I went on academic exchange, it was an eye opening experience but if you expect a positive one, then you don't know enough about the place.

I've heard mixed opinions about the place, and there seems to be sights there that would interest me like the mass games, the military parades, the underground railways and the monuments and museums about the war. Its historical enquiry as much as anything else. I've also read reviews saying that for tourists at least the hospitality and cuisine is second to none. As for whether or not it would be a positive experience, I've been to developing capitalist countries which left me longing for the flight home.

I'd rather give NK a go with my own senses before i make any judgements. It seems to me that the people who go their let their personal politics skew their reviews.

By definition this is an impossibility, Totalitarian State yes Totalitarian Communist no, the two are mutually exclusive terms, Even Communist State is a bit of a stretch as Communism requires the removal of the state apparatus.

Well I did eat relatively well but you have to understand that you and the leadership are the only ones that are doing so plus every dollar spent on food there goes straight to the regime. I have seen the Mass Games and the Subway, in the latter when I bordered a train he locals all ran when my guide entered. The Museums about the war made me want to actually hurt someone, especially when I was at Panmunjom and they had put the axe from the axe murder incident on display. Although it was eye opening the whole thing left me feeling morally compromised. I came to a firm conclusion that anyone even remotely positively disposed to the regime needs a head exam and should not go there. The chaps I met from the Korean Friendship Association were total scum.



That would only be true if we accept that the term applies strictly to Marx's utopia. It has been used by socialists to refer to totalitarian aims since the time of Marx (take a look at Louis Auguste Blanqui). During that time socialism split between the utopians and the revolutionaries, both of whom referred to both their groups and the their aims as communist. Communism can also be a totalitarian process as in the case of war communism. There is no single definition.

I understand. What prompted this was I was reading about life in East Germany. Honestly, of all the Combloc states, East Germany seemed to be one of the more functional ones.

http://www.ironcurtainkid.com/
That guy's site, there. He seemed to have a positive life in East Germany, he wasn't "elite" but he was a model and on TV and stuff, so better than average I guess. He had a friend who apparently could go to the West to visit family and bring him back stuff, too. Worked nice office jobs. Interestingly, too, if you read his vacation reports, he describes Hungary as being really nice, basically every place he went on vacation as being good/reasonable EXCEPT for the USSR itself, when he went to Crimea he had people trying to buy the clothes off his back and got his Adidas sandals stolen.

So, so far we're 1 and 1 for actual people's experiences in Commie-land. Which is what I'm interested in, not "Well true communism you see..." or whatever.