Okay, let's try a more constructive post

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No doubt, it can (and has been) abused. Have you heard the theories that Sirhan Sirhan, James Earl Ray, Lee Harvey Oswald John Hinkley Jr and Mark Chapman were all manchurian candidates?

Hey can you discuss privately? I'm really trying to have a more positive kind of thread

Sure...go for it

A harrowing thought struck me recently that it might just be the case that the evolutionary function for forging friendships simply reaches a natural expiration around the mid 20s because this is typically the time people reproduce and then literally are taking care of their own little world where friendship just isn't as relevant. Sure, you will find parents clump together as a way to bond over the challenges of parenthood, but creating deeply satisfying, soul affirming friendships becomes less and less relevant because people are getting that largely from the families they've brought into the world...

Last edited by adromedanblackhole on 17 Oct 2020, 1:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

Actually this makes sense...we re-allocate those energies toward a biological partner to procreate with....

You really are very insightful

I put the N in INFJ
Intuitive
Also, Meyers-Briggs is mostly make believe but enough people buy into it so therefore it's relevant

I am also from a different country. In my case I am from Russia, and I came to the US at 14. I would say bullying was worse in Russia, ostracism is worse in the USA.

What about yourself? What country are you from?



That is interesting observation that I never thought of. But this leads to the new question. You used the word Asperger when you said your Asperger became more noticeable in USA. But why would you count ostracism as "Asperger being noticeable" if ostracism happens to "everyone" past the age of 25? Or are you saying that the role of Asperger is failure to make friends before 25 -- and, as a result, one no longer has those people to fall back on?

By the way I don't have my own yes or no opinion, so that is honestly a question.

I want to know this too, she seems too worldly to be an American

Offtopic, but there is a great video, by Derren Brown, the hypnotist, who delved into the Sirhan Sirhan incident.
I can find the vid if people are interested.

I think it is called "The Assassin" and it involved creating an assassination through hypnosis.
Contextual buggery was involved.

And along with those guys...me too! But then I started to wear my tinfoil hat to ward off the hypnosis beams coming down from that CIA satellite from above! So am good now!

I'm from America, went to university in Canada where the beginnings of exclusion became more prominent, most recently lived in Israel for a few years. The Israeli culture has considerably less rules of engagement for socialization - it's by and large a generally more abrupt and direct culture. My quirks weren't shunned and most English speakers living there are glad to make a new English speaking friend that even if people suspected I can be categorized as a person with Asperger's, it didn't necessarily exclude me from socializing or making friends. The mentality is there are only so many of us Anglos (what people refer to as a person coming from an English speaking country: US, Canada, England, South Africa and Australia are the most common) that people will just kind of make due and accept your idiosyncrasies and quirks. To also be fair, when assessed I score within a grey area between neurotypical behavior and the spectrum. I see myself as your standard left-handed person: by default different from the broader population who sits on the sidelines and wryly observes much of the arbitrariness of human interaction. So much to say, there is a difference to me that with a bit of effort I can hide and more or less blend. When I'm not blending, I've been called an eccentric all of my life. It is only within the past year that it was decided I deserved to be branded within the Asperger's/High Functioning Autism category.


My basic social functioning is noticeably impaired. It used to be considered kind of funny or zany, I used to be able to make friends with people on the basis of being amusingly odd, and I'm finding this is just not an option anymore. Neurotypical people aren't ostracized past the age of 25, their abilities to pass the time with surface level socialization doesn't change, just the openness and receptivity to form deeper, more meaningful friendships just seems to be something people outgrow around this age. It makes me think of an episode of Seinfeld where he says making friends as an adult is like being a company with no open positions. "It's fine, you can leave your resume and if we have an opening we can be in touch."

Last edited by adromedanblackhole on 17 Oct 2020, 2:26 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Okay okay calm down with the hypnosis conspiracies. I'm referring to this woman. Have a watch without following her into hypnosis so you can see there's nothing to be afraid of and then a second time where you can follow along and get the benefits.

So I was just wondering, are you Jewish?

In my case I am, although I believe in Jesus and observe Jewish law at the same time (so I am Messianic Jew). I been to Birthright Israel tour for 10 days. It was in 2006 and the first day of the tour coincided with the first day of the war with Lebanon so we had to change plans. Our first plan was to go see north Israel first and south israel later, but due to bombing we had to go see south Israel. The interesting thing is that I never saw any bombing, I pretty much just had to take their word for it. So I felt pretty safe actually.

But, other than that 10 day trip, I haven't been to Israel otherwise. My mom has her friends who live in Israel though.

What about yourself? What brought you to Israel?



Thats interesting observation. Back in my late teens I came up with a theory that Judaism was founded by autistics and that Jews in general are genetically more predisposed to autism. No, I was not thinking of Israeli culture being abrupt-- I didn't even know that was the case. What I was thinking of was

a) Jews rock back and forth during prayers, and autistics rock back and forth as well

b) Judaism have very strict rules that often are described in terms of exact numbers. And autistics like to come up with such rules as well

c) Some studies show that autistics have bigger brain than NT. Other studies show that Jews have bigger brain than non-Jews.

So the theory that I came up with was this. There is no binary yes or no question to whether you are autistic or not. There is such a thing as "shaddow symptoms". So, as a result of autism-related genes being more prominant in Jewish population than elsewhere, two things happen:

(i) The majority of Jews are NT-s, but they have more shaddow symptoms of autism than others

(ii) The minority of Jews that ARE autistic is, in proportion to Jewish population, larger than the majority of people in general that are autistic in proportion to population in general.

Now, this MINORITY of Jews -- mentioned in (ii) -- is who wrote those rules of Judaism. I mean, having shaddow symptoms won't be sufficient to make you want to rock or invent all those strict rules -- you have to be clinically autistic to do it. But then the rest of the Jewish population, due to the shaddow symptoms talked about in (i), was receptive to those rules. So those rules fell on fertile soil so to speak.

In principle this is possible for such scenario to happen. Much more recent example of this are "blessed fools" in the 19-th century Russia. By today's standards, they were probably autistic. But, back in the 19-th century, autism was unheard of, so they interpretted them as being led by God in some way. So maybe the same thing happened in Jewish culture too.

Now, as far as Russian population goes, there is no reason to believe that they are more affected by autism than others. The reason it had blessed fools is simply because *any* population has some proportion of autistics, so Russian population can have it too. But what distinguishes Jews from Russians is that Jews have a lot *more* blessed fools than Russians do. Thats why Jews at some point "ran across the situation" when blessed fools invented religious rituals while Russians haven't "ran across it" because they didn't have as many blessed fools. Kind of like the more you drop a coin the more likely you will run across something interesting one of those days.

But anyway, I digressed. The point is that, while I was making all those theories, I had *no idea* that Israelis are more direct than others. But now that you told me that, its like a confirmation of my theory.

What are your thoughts on that though? Do you think they are more autistic than others?



Were they mostly Jews or non-Jews?



In America I see something similar when it comes to Russian speakers. If I run across Russian speaking person then my Asperger won't be such a hinderance since they would just bond with me over the fact that we both speak Russian. And it doesn't even matter that some Russian speaking countries don't get along with each other (such as Russia and Ukraine for example). If I were to meet someone from Ukraine (and I am from Russia) we would still bond over the fact that we both speak Russian.

I guess maybe it was my mistake that I just took this for granted and let those opportunities pass. When I think of friends I exclusively focus on English speaking friends. Maybe I should have bonded with those Russian speakers and then who knows maybe English speakers would have liked me better once they saw that I was not always by myself. But oh well, I guess I have to wait till covid is over to do this.



I was told that too, and thats what bothers me so much. That I seem to have far *more* serious problems than most aspies even though I was told I was supposed to be less affected than them. I guess I finally found few ways to answer my question:

a) I was told that I was less affected back in 1997, and right now a lot more people are diagnosed than back then. So maybe I was less affected compared to people diagnosed back then but not the ones diagnosed today. But then again I have to take this reasoning with a grain of salt, because the threshold for diagnosis for ASD under DSM 5 is higher than the one for Asperger under DSM 4 (and I was diagnosed under DSM 4; I don't have any DSM 5 diagnosis). But perhaps even though "theoretically" the threshold is higher, "on practice" doctors catch more stuff since they pay more attention.

b) The one who told me I was mild was Brina Siegel, and Brina Siegel likes to undiagnose a lot of people. So if "she" thinks I still have it, just mild, then maybe others would think I am severe.

c) The areas where I am severe are social interaction problems as well as obsessive interests (overanalyzing things, etc). On the other hand, I don't have any sensory issues and I don't have desire for sameness. So maybe the latter issues which I don't have is what ultimately made me mild overall.

But in any case, it took me many years to figure out those answers to my question. But back at the time when I didn't know those answers I was upset about it quite a bit.



But you said a bit earlier you can blend in. So can you draw a line between "social functioning" and inability to blend in?



Thats interesting that you put it this way. I remember people were telling me that I don't miss out much since the interaction among younger adults isn't meaningful. But I was disagreeing and saying that I saw how they interact and it looks meaningful to me. I am glad you agree with me!



But if older adult is the analogue of a company then it would imply that an adult is the one who has no time for friends rather than others being the ones not having time to take adult as a friend. But if thats the case, then "solving" the friendship problem would boil down to time management. But thats not what happens to me. In my case it feels like others don't want me as a friend no matter whether I have time or not.

You do realise you are simply continuing the "Tinfoil" trope of disinformation and that you are a simple tool of discreditation practices, right?
I would be uncomfortable with that.

Yes, mistress.

Replace negative internal dialogue with positive internal dialogue.