Were we the Artisans of Old?

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The only problem with that is I'm self employed or as I like to call it "self unemployed". And anyway I haven't told anyone at that firm that I'm an Aspie. Interestingly the last person to be told I had Aspergers she said "Great, does that mean he swears a lot". It also turns out that her husband had some kind of disease when he was a child which almost killed him and left him with a brain disorder which left him with no empathy and as she put it, if you gave him a gun and asked him to shoot someone there was a good chance he would do it. He's a computer nerd who travels the world writing computer programs for Steel Plants. So she said talking to me was very much like talking to her husband.

Sorry, went a bit off topic there but I always do.

I think my father might be an aspie. He shows many of the traits. Back in his day most people got married. The incentive was strong. In the 1940s he dated actively. He was in the Navy as an officer. He became an engineer and was in charge of an office. Two of his best friends never married. One would do things like go to plays by himself. These people were part of the main stream in an age where talent mattered, before the go go eighties and the greedy nineties. I think they were aspies but nobody knew it or cared.

That sounds very much like my dad. He's now 84 and he knows it would've been a lot more difficult for him in this era.

Just out of curiosity, what is this decade called, as opposed to the greedy nineties?

I've read through this whole thread, and to answer the question first presented at the beginning of it, my answer would be...well, it sure wouldn't surprise me.

I've been told a number of times by various doctors I've worked with that I deserve far better than the mundane, dead-end jobs I've been stuck in. I want to do something more closely related to my creative interests. But when the jobs better suited to me require all sorts of hoops to jump through that we on the spectrum are not as good at handling--whether it be additional schooling (that forces socialising and/or learning methods not suited to us), the insipid interview process (that effectively weeds out anyone who isn't NT), or whatever--it's really hard to get to that point.

And even in those mundane, dead-end jobs (retail in my case), being social seemed to be more important than getting the job done. The "employee of the month" nonsense at my last one was nothing more than a popularity contest anyway and not a true acknowledgment of one's capabilities. I busted my backside constantly there to keep things in order and do things the right way, I was stuck doing a lot of the tasks that no one else wanted to do, and I never got any true recognition from it. Instead it was always the twits who were little more than shrieking harpies (to my ears, at least) in the breakroom getting all the recognition while I spent my breaks listening to my iPod and doing my own thing. (Yeah, manager, you could tell me yourself how good a job you thought I was doing, but when no one else is recognising it, how's that supposed to make me feel better?) Being social (read: being a cashier rather than just a plain old floor person/shelf-stocker like I was) was rewarded more often; if you pushed people enough to sign up for this or that, you'd get a little extra on your next paycheck or earn some other kind of prize. What did I get? Customers who routinely treated me like a lower life form because I wasn't a social butterfly. Oh...and an infraction for missing three days of work in a small period of time (two of those days being due to severe meltdowns largely brought on by work-related stress). And they still probably wonder why I quit.

I never fit in at school either because I would rather have been writing or drawing or doing something along those lines than going to dances or parties. I had my own personal fashion sense, even though I tried my hardest to look just like everyone else. My grades were above average, and I flourished in my art and language classes, but that never seemed to matter to anyone else because I wasn't on any sports teams and/or didn't have any older siblings that all my teachers had known (I'm an only child), nor did I like to go to the big social events that everyone else was going to. I was bullied mercilessly all throughout school and then told I was the one with the problem when I pleaded with administrators to do something about it. (15-20 years later, the state of Wisconsin still has no real anti-bullying measures in place.) So much for true education when the learning aspect is secondary to the social aspect.

The comment further up about being overqualified/an overachiever? Yeah, I'd agree. They don't want someone like me pointing out the flaws and incompetence, whether it's co-workers who slack off and don't do things right, teachers who can't control problem students. Never mind that I'm good at stuff, that I have a "big brain" (as my therapist has put it). No...I have to lower myself to their level in order to get anywhere. Much earlier in the thread, someone else mentioned the unfortunate fate of Michelangelo (who, according to an article I found years ago, may have had AS as well) were he living in this day and age instead of hundreds of years ago...fated to be a nobody because his talents were shunned by society instead of being allowed to flourish while some random no-talent shmuck gets all the attention. It disgusts me, and we deserve far better.

Apologies for my rambling, but some of this has really touched a nerve to some extent.

I know perfectly how it feels, Khandri. (It was I, by the way, that made that comment about Michelangelo).

Millennial Social Bubble?

Since the 80's I have been calling people Yuppi Scum, from the old, "Only bastards and cream rise." They were not cream, and would do anything to get something.

Thirty years later the results come in, corporate raiders, sending jobs abroad, looting the Savings and Loans, Enron, Worldcom, busness not to fill a need or provide a service, but just for the sake of fees generated. Anyone coud get a house loan, for the fees were packaged in the deal, then passed on.

The latest results come from the FBI, most housing deals done recently were FHA, and the buyer made only one or no payments before it went back to the government, realtors, bankers, dumping their property on the government, at peak market value. Deals are going through at $500,000 where the house across the street is not selling at $200,000. That takes teamwork.

The reason they want a social workforce, with rapid turnover, is so they do not have someone who can spot the fact that he books are cooked, and the company is running what used to be called organized crime.

The guilty do not like thinkers.

The government and media are spreading lies. The government gave an amount of money equal to the whole value of the stock market to the investment bankers. So they bought it, and drove up the price. Layoffs, cost cutting, only work for a while, sooner or later only a good product with a market lasts.

Gain control of exports, then devalue the dollar, and sell to the world cheap. Locally it reduces wages, the value of property and savings, so it is stealing from everyone to benefit a few.

It is the problem of an economic system that works, wealth grows beyond the total value of real estate, stocks, debt, and there is still more money looking to invest. There are no new products, markets, so great piles of cash look to join and buy something, then loot it.

Then there is more cash, looking to invest. The last buyout was government. Congress makes about a million a year each, we the people only supply $200,000. Goldman Sachs has been supplying $500,000 each for years, got the laws changed, made trillions on an investment of $250 million a year, not a bad return. When the bubble popped the government covered Goldman's losses, and gave them money to buy the stocks on the market.

The Federal Reserve system holds the deposits from banks, they spent them to buy Treasury Bonds to finance the deal. In a two step process all the people's money in banks was transfered to Goldman, at zero interest, and the people now owe it. It was all legal, for Congress are Lawmakers.

They robbed everyone at once, and left them to pay the damages.

I think it is a good time to be a social outcast. I do not see monatary wealth as value, and what I do value, the means of production, has gotten much cheaper.

In the old days one had to buy slaves, in the near future only feed them. I have no love for the sheared sheep. They are the ones who drove me from the job market, and went on to make my life a problem. There will be no lifetime security in the new slavery. They will be migratory slaves.

It reminds me of the good old days, like after the Black Death, lots of assets laying around, social disruption, and and it was all available for my kind to see systems that could be.

Having seen the role we played in the Guild System, developing technology, then factories, I would chose the Feudal System again. If we each keep a stable of a hundred serfs bound to the land it will work again.

Paris and London come about a thousand years after the fall of Rome. There have been four waves of city building, they all failed, and and were followed by a long rural or migratory period, here we go again.

America is falling apart, is several trillion behind in deferred maintanince, and the tax base is falling to where water, sewer, garbage, will have to be cut. After a few years of unemployed squatters living in the ruins, they will be abandoned. Vast areas of New Orleans and Detroit have already been reclaimed by nature.

My first plan is to be able to go in the mountains for a while. I would skip the armed looter phase. Then it will be time to produce food, gather serfs, and produce everything needed. Rural hunters seem the best survivors, who then return with a knowledge of weapons and protect serfs.

As the best in social isolation, and with technology and systems, we can direct the lost sheep into a self supporting life.

Following the past fall of cities, there were a lot less people a few years later.

Die Yuppi Scum!

Rapid turnover...there's another issue that I don't fully understand the advantages of for the modern companies. What you say may be true, but then again if the employee discovers fraud, he'll do nothing about it because he doesn't want to lose his job, so I don't see that as a risk...

Oh, I see.

A typical example of the success of today's choices in HR:

A few months ago I applied for a job. I passed the professional interview with great excitement from the prospective manager, who asked me to take the job immediately. I was then made to undergo a "personality" interview that was more like a police interrogation. I didn't pass, and they didn't even send me a note to let me know. They took someone else. The position was urgent because the person had to be in full functioning at 3 months, when the manager was leaving on maternity leave. The day the manager gave birth, the new employee, already in full functioning, resigned. They begged her to stay, at least a couple months. She totally refused and didn't even give a reason to resign. Now they're left without a manager or an employee. The dept. is a disaster zone. This is how she was better than me according to the personality interview. I would've never done such a thing as she did, no matter what, no matter how badly I wanted to resign.

I've gone back to school and I've noticed how most of the kid's right out of high school just expect the "A" grade to be given to them. They just can't seem to grasp the concept that they have to actually work at it. They are all dumbfounded as to how I know the material and always have my assignments done. When I tell them I know it because I studied it they just give me a blank stare. It seems like anyone under the age of 35 really doesn't understand the concept of actually working. It's all about making social connections now.