wavefreak58 wrote:
Zedition wrote:
wavefreak58 wrote:
f**k society. If people can't live with such a simple truth as "I have Asperger's" then they have a problem.
lol! Which is exactly the attitude that causes people with ASD so many problems.
It's all about context. If someone is asking questions then what have I to be embarrassed about? This is not the same as having a belligerent attitude, wearing an Asperger's dx like some spiked armor used to keep the world at arms length.
If someone is asking out of genuine curiosity, then it's a perfect opportunity to take measure of their true nature. And a sincere person will actually benefit from knowing since some of my baffling behaviors are given a meaningful context.
Ok - fully agreed on that point.
The hardest part for me there would be understanding why they want to know? How many times have you told somebody the truth about something and they later tried to use it against you?
I remember being a kid and being mocked and I didn't know I was the but of the joke. If I'm really, really interested in insects Caelifera, and people call me "Grasshopper" all the time, it's a cool nickname, right? No, not really. By societies rules it's mocking and what the children are doing is proving to each other that they have a place higher in the social order than I have. Once I became aware that such a thing as social order existed and had benefits when I was a teenager, being low-man on the ladder bothered me. It's not relevant any more. As an adult social status is based almost entirely on your profession and wealth, so no matter how idiocentric I am, as a geek in an investment banking operation, my career and wealth insulate me from being low social status. In fact, "quants" are expected to behave more than a little Asperger'ee.
In college, who you are friends with and how many you have still matters quite a bit. College major provides some modicum of protection to social status, but most social status is based on who you are friends with. If you want sexual success in particular, you need to have friends of a high social standing. Even if you are the 'ugly friend', wing-man, or goofball, if you have popular friends, college is much more enjoyable than if you are the 'weird person who lives alone'. I wish that I had the social wisdom I have today when I was 18. I would have spent a lot more nights out with people instead of cooped up chatting on IRC.
07 Dec 2010, 10:44 am
