Connecting to other people

Post Reply New Topic

It seems to me that normal people are mostly interested in the superficial details of things and of each other. Watching what other people consider important really amazes me, because they seem to spend a lot of time talking about things that are mostly aesthetic rather than functional.

For instance, every time I watch the nightly news, I see sports segments. But sports aren't news. They're games. There are people whose emotions are significantly influenced by the number of times a group of people (who they don't know) were able to make a ball go into a particular area. I think that's amazing.

Or there is news coverage of the clothing that a particular person is wearing. I understand if someone is violating a particular social taboo by wearing a particular type of clothing, but other than being nice to look at, that's not news, either. Looking at all of the people who dressed up nicely to go to an event which happens every year and which people usually dress up nicely for isn't news.

Or if someone asks me how something works, if I "know", that means I can tell them exactly how it works and how all of the parts work, on at least one major organizational level(like how cells work in biology, or how the chemical reactions work within them chemistry, or why things tend to react in the way they do in physics), but other people don't seem to have that depth of knowledge in any subject. For instance, a stereotypical teenage girl may absolutely love makeup, and may have an idea that particular products do particular things, but doesn't generally seem interested in how those particular products do those particular things. When I am interested in a subject, regardless of whether it's a topic, a process, an object, or a person, or something else, I learn everything that I can about it.

well im not to sure what you mean but i feel like im in my head a lot of the time if that even makes sense.

Except for close relatives that I enjoy talking to, when I am around other people I would rather remain in my own bubble and just listen to and observe the other people. I don't feel a connection. I feel like the universe is inside my head and human social interaction is just skimming along the surface and very shallow.

This is hard to explain, but I feel that I don't connect emotionally because I am too emotional and keep my emotions inside my own thoughts and appear detached and unemotional on the outside because I don't know how to act any other way.

I guess you can say that I view the world from the inside out, but I am not so sure that when you say you view the world from the outside that we are not talking about the same thing but just expressing it differently.

Hi matt,

I understand what you mean.

I think it's because they think subjectively, unconsciously. The rule is:

Something is interesting/exciting if and only if it affects one's life in some significant way

As a result it is interesting what things do, not how they do it.

For example, the clothing is news because people might actually go out and buy this new clothing. So it will affect their life "significantly".

On the other hand, knowing how particular make-up products work doesn't really affect one's life...all that is needed to know is what products do, not how they do it.

With autism you can think something is interesting regardless of whether it affects your life or not (often it doesn't). It is in that sense autistic people owe themselves to think more of their own lives - only doing things that actually affect their own life positively.

The question is how to do it unconsciously.