Is there an Aspie "culture"?

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Surfman, step by step now, how the h*ll did that dog in your avatar get stuck down a toilet bowl? This is really bugging me.

Ask again in 50 years.

He was forced in there by the white devil slave master
He didnt choose to be born a pug
But wears his shame on his sleeve
If only the dog whisperer would come with whip and chair
And liontame, his cruel masters
He may have a reprieve

Its cool eh? Many people have commented on the poor wee mutt. Kinda sums up AS for me, like flushing away a dead goldfish.........or a 50 year domination fetish

Last edited by Surfman on 06 Jul 2011, 6:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I just thought maybe he's this stupidly high-IQ'd dog taking a cr*p because it's raining outside and doesn't like getting wet .

I read the thread about the worms, that is some weird stuff.

fizzicksgirl,
An argument is never premature.

You said you believed yourself to have some similiar traits, which is to say, identified with us.

In case you misunderstood my post, I brought up enemies as a necessary identity congealing dialectal element for any group that feels marginalised and misunderstood, because I wonder if that's true. Nada to do with you.

You wisely shrugged off the initial testiness, and now that it has completely stopped, you're personalizing that which is not personal.

Delayed reactions are entirely understood here.

Yep the need for a common 'enemy' is a valid component of some subcultural models. Not all subcultural models require an enemy. Some guy studied a bunch of women
who spent the whole day, one day a week dressing up and sitting around in superfine garments
and make-up. He couldn't figure out why they were doing it because there didn't seem any exterior pressure or reason for them to do so. There was no religion behind it. After ages of trying to figure the cultural significance of this ceremony he came to the conclusion the main reason was the women enjoyed it, so they did it. Which was the first answer the women gave when asked.

Our 'enemy' , well its not like there's some kind of monster-clan out there tracking us. Psychopaths can be pretty hard to deal with and make little sense becuase there seems to be no rational reason for their behavior.

I guess a common experience goes like this.

1. As a kid you start to play a little bit with group of other kids. For a while its good. Then someone decides you're a bit different and you can't play anymore. So you hang around the playground on your own kicking your heels. You get a trail for the school soccer team but they figure hell no, this is too much hassle . So you vow never to play soccer again. You get told in front of the whole school not to sing in school assembly just mouth the words. Teacher slaps you real hard and tells you go to stand in the hall . She asks if you want to come back in, you say no because there's two sparrows bathing in dust in the playground and you're enjoying watching them, she gets angry and starts yelling you end up on a table on your own
with a toothbrush and paint pot and you're told to spray-splatter paint of the toothbrush without getting it everywhere except a little square of paper on the table. The dam stuff goes everywhere and all over someone who was your friend but can't play with anymore on the next table , the yelling starts again, in your mind you start to wonder if the sparrows in the playground might like some bread, you get up and try to go back to the hall but haven't worked out "hall" is a punishment not a time out retreat, and you get hauled off to see the headmaster and there's more yellin' - it's so damn noisy everywhere and you just feel frozen up inside ,that's the moment you realize and every damn day is going to be like this ever after.

2. In later life you now get all the skills they need but it's so exhausting being with a bunch of NT's in the workplace and no matter how hard you try you always slip. You play for a while then the grown up version of the someone who decides you couldn't play in the playground, or sing in assembly or join their soccer team starts making it increasingly difficult to work with the adults until you get so stressed you can't go to work anymore. There's no reason for not being able to play other than a minute bit' of social difference , but this thing is measured in micro-volumes, eventually it turns into all-out aggression against you . So you think f*ck this and walk away.

Oh yeh, you're in a menial job now and some prof. gets a mate of his to get all pally with you
and pick your brain because you can see a solution to a problem they are working on but they can't get to it themselves. Like hell they intend to give anything back , but it's an interesting problem and you abstract a solution, but the Prof-guy doesn't want to be seen with you in public and starts doing this NT avoidance body language when you try to talk to him.

So the 'enemy' - hell you tell me what that is , it's like the Matrix, individuals suddenly become Agents and take it upon themselves to become arbiters and enforcers of social rules. It's not a person, its a human system. I guess our enemy is an abstract one, and if we were to challenge it we'd be taking on the entire evolutionary system. The only way you could do that at this level is something really wild, like restructure and advance human consciousness.


Meme.

I would define a culture as a set of beliefs and behaviors to a certain group along with the recognition of unity.If most of most people on wrongplanet agree on certain things than yes.let's look at guidos and atheists as a example of subcultures.Guidos love to drink alcohol,they body build(for men),they wear sunglasses at night,they are b*****s(for the women),they are Christian, and they are stupid.Atheists also have a culture.Atheist means someone who rejects the belief in god but it means so much more.Atheists are viewed as being more intelligent or angry(depending on your source),they don't believe in ghosts or alchemy or tarot cards(even though they could and still be atheists), and they hate religion.These traits and beliefs are prevelant in the atheist community.That's a culture.Aspies aren't known in mainstream culture.We do sorta have a stereotype obscurely.I don't think we have a culture but I could just not be enough into these forums.We hate school,lots of us are atheists or buddhists,we don't have many friends,we like computers.These are a few similarities we have but I still can't called this a culture.I think we are too disconnected emotionally because of our personalities to make a culture.

That is the first thing I noticed, and took an instant dislike to the poster. Sorry, but I hate the staring eyes

Hi Tantric,

Interesting post. I think that your description of "guidos" is more of a stereotype than a culture. I am thinking more about culture as the norms of human interaction within the group. So for guidos (of course what I know about guidos comes from the Sopranos... ) maybe the males are dominant and women are submissive, their communication norms involve lots of hand gestures, facial expressions, and variations in vocal tone. They value Catholicism and strong family ties. Although they value Catholicism, they have distinct separations between their religion and their actions taken in the course of "business". They share the past experience of immigration into the U.S. and the first immigrants were laborers. They have had to work hard for their movement up the socioeconomic ladder.

How else could I classify Tony Soprano's culture...

OK, I ditched the creepy avatar!

The cat still looks a bit staring, like it's looking at a mouse.

I avert mah gaze.


Utah utah utadedo
Now Neils Bohr is gonna be playing with you.

Sing along it's Entertainment time.

OK, I am going to stick with an inanimate object.... try to say this is staring at you...

This is a part of a stained glass window I made.

Hmm still looks like it might be a weeny bit starey. You'll have to ask everyone else. I didn't start this starey thing . It's sort of hit critical mass when surfman mentioned it, i just ignored it until he brought it up . Look if it goes quiet maybe start another thread about culture- that was really interesting and loads of guys liked it, and put some kind of I dunno abstract avatar up , one that's chilled. Nothing that sounds like grating squeaking trolleys scraping on concrete looks OK. ( Your window doesn't look like that, not to me anyway. )



Meme

Is there an Aspie "culture"?

Yes but mainstream NT culture is excessively dominant and non inclusive

Last edited by Surfman on 07 Jul 2011, 8:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

Hi.

Personally, I have always, first and foremost, viewed myself as a unique individual, outside of any culture/group. Realizing I have AS has given me some common ground with many others, but it still doesn't feel like a "culture" per se. That's just me, however.

I view WrongPlanet as a community of (somewhat) like-minded others who are at least willing to meet me halfway. I consider several to be good friends, more so than some people I know IRL.

I appreciate the goal of your research, btw. "Culture" or not, students with AS definitely should be given some considerations due to differences from what is considered socially "normal."

People with AS, I think, do have unique experiences due to the way we perceive the world. Where those perceptions come from--neurological variations--don't matter. They exist, and color the way we interact with the rest of society, which is "wired" differently from the way we are.

Members of different races are born with a certain skin color. Some may say that's not the same thing, but in some ways it is, because the "majority" part of society has deemed it to be so (speaking historically).

Differences in the way one is treated due to skin color, neurological wiring, sexual orientation, etc., may tend to create "subcultures" out of necessity--groups of people with the same "differences" coming together for support, understanding and (eventually) a means to fight for acceptance by the majority.

So: AS culture/subculture? The best I can say is "maybe", because there can be compelling arguments for both the "yes" and "no" sides.

How are you approaching your paper? If you're doing it like an ethnography, you may have more leeway in terms of "proof." Just a thought.



Kind of like that.



Ever read Durkheim or Giddens, or any of the other philosophers who wrote about society as a force unto itself? (Foucault's writings are very interesting, too.)

Good luck with the paper. Wish I could give you a more concrete answer.

Ever read Durkheim or Giddens, or any of the other philosophers who wrote about society as a force unto itself? (Foucault's writings are very interesting, too.)

Man, I did read that stuff years ago and it's nice to revisit it. In the UK our A level textbooks were structured so this stuff appeared at the front. Back then the trendy lecturers were Marxists and the guy who wrote the basic textbook had Marxist leaning, so there was a implicit thing that these kind of "functionalist" approaches were outdated. When we got to Uni no one even mentioned them. It was all big conflict-structural theories and world revolution next year , which never happened. These guys were talking heads in a bigger game.

I think the work of Durkheim and Giddens have actually stood the test of time better than a lot of the hard left-wing stuff. The thing was ,you had to second guess which approach the uni-lecturers were into to get the grade.

If anything I think Durkheim's work ( given like he'd almost invented a unique field) has sparks of humanity in it, maybe even something of the human 'spirit' like you find in literature. The Marxist stuff to me is cold and abstract, like European Post War architecture, boxes you can just about live in, but go crazy trying to:) We never believed any of that bull anyway.

Yeh, I like that "functionalist" stuff and wish I had chance to study it more.

Meme