NTs Keep Score

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I am judging based not only upon these boards, but from Aspies I have known irl. A small but significant minority had problems along these lines, and there was no excuse for it save laziness.



When I am wronged, of course I want to extract revenge! Should I instead curl up into an ineffectual, whiny little ball and throw a pity party for myself? While I realize this kind of narcissistic exhibitionism is quite popular these days, I have no need of it whatsoever, and utterly lack any sort of emotional impetus to do so. But the human is a learning animal... that is, when you evoke enough pain in someone, in response to improper behavior, they learn to stop engaging in that behavior... or at the very least, to stop engaging in it around you. Either way, it ceases to be your problem.

Of course, it's not trendy these days to admit that. We all want to pretend we live in some touchy-feely wonderland where if only everyone gets enough hugs and cookies, everything's perfectly ok. Sorry, I'd sooner live in the real world.



It is not pragmatic (or realistic either, for that matter) to expect billions of people to change in order to satisfy a comparatively small handful, particularly since they have no real impetus to do so. You may have the best of intentions, but this is still an absurdity.



You assume I want love from man the mass, when in actually I couldn't care less what the overwhelming majority think of me. I care as much about what most people think of me as an entomologist cares about what opinion his ants have of him.... and for precisely the same reasons.

My friends... hell, even my fiance... were originally a data mine in progress, the same as anyone else. The difference is that in the former cases, I "went native", as it were. I found myself honestly caring, on an emotional level, what was going on with them. Although I am still more keenly aware of their flaws and weak points than even a hypothetical worst enemy would be, it is quite possible that the emotional bond which has formed regarding them could critically compromise my objectivity as concerns further delvings.



Query: Exactly what sort of person would presume to take on the task of changing the fundamental nature of humanity to start with? With what bold initiative, with what sheer hubris one must be endowed in order to work for that! My self-esteem has always been very high, but no amount of "can do" attitude will work an utter impossibility. I may as well attempt to create a universe ex nihilo while I am at it. Such is the province of gods, not of men.

At this point, I cannot help but wonder what you hope to accomplish by turning a perfectly logical reaction into some sort of touchy-feely weak sister crap. Cui bono? Is my strength so off-putting that you must try that desperately to cast me as a "less than"? Or is it so strange, to meet such a being... someone who observes and diligently records, but who still has a sword and scales on her belt within perpetual easy reach?

It wasn't in ancient times, you know.

Without doubt the human race has gained much over the ages, but sometimes I wonder if it has lost more than it has gained.

Of course! Illusions are just like zits. We can't help but pop them. Even if we know they'll instantly reappear, bigger than they ever were before...

You are wasting your font.

Wow. Bitter much? There is a third option, the way of the intellectual. You drop it. You neither whine about the past, nor plot their demise in the future. You do not waste energy being a crybaby, nor do you perpetuate a vicious circle. To either direction lies your eventual doom.

You have no idea, and you trivialize the stigma applied to the blind, deaf, and immobile. To learn body language you must see in conjunction with hearing. It is not instinct for NTs by any mean. They must learn it. That they are properly wired does not guarrantee that they will learn. It comes down to proper socialization. Neither the deaf nor the blind get a fair shake in that regard. For that matter, the infirm cannot properly express intent either. They all fail to some degree in joining the social mind, and are degraded and ostricised for it.

Further, none of these afflictions exist in a pure way. Many blind people have some vision, and the same holds true with degrees of deafness. And of course, you dont have to be a parapelegic to be confined with limited mobility.

Blind people dont orient themselves to look in the direction of sound: no different than many autistics. They stand too close; too far; they have sensative hearing and smell often.

Deaf people speak out of turn; too loud, too soft; off topic, out of context; too much, not enough. So do ASers. No different. People see them as stupid, crazy, retarted. Same as AS.

Limited mobility people have trouble with expressive motions, voice tone, enunciation of words. sometimes they are mute. Same as AS. They get talked down to, because they are often situated lower to the ground. that lowers their social position. They are ignored, treated as children. Waitresses ask their companions what the wheelchair bound person will be eating, as if they cannot speak because they cannot walk. Treated as less than human, just like Autistics.

Hazelwudi, you are off base, talking arrogant, and as being mind-blind. You are not seeing things from other peoples perspective: certainly far less than those you are criticising.

NT's/Deaf people/Zits...

Ding ding ding - this thread is by far the winner of the "So off-topic it's incomprehensible" award! Pages and pages of it, too!

This is what Chomsky found out, Fuzzy. Humans are wired for language, but in looking at humans isolated as children, they never did catch up and communicate effectively. Hence the theory was altered accordingly. There seems to be a window of opportunity even in the most normal or ordinary of people and if that is missed that for whatever reason, they won't catch up. Of course that assumes no or very minimal contact with humans in that time. However, exposure to culture is needed for it all to work correctly.

The assumption that NTs don't change their communication rules is nonsense. They've done it again and again. The concept of love and caring for another's feelings over practical manners is actually a new concept from the time of the romantics in the mid 1800's. Before that you were valued on what you knew and did, but your feelings were discounted and humans were only seen in terms of being functional or not. If any spouse had complained to a group that his or her spouse was not affectionate enough, returning caring glances and words enough, etc., they would have been told to be thankful they had a spouse at all and to shut up and go home. All of this emo whining is a new phenomenon. All of this emo whining in society in general is a new phenomenon and it has to do with too much free time. People's lives have been made easier through technology in the past century and what we have seen is that they have become whiners about every conceivable thing because they have too much time on their hands to think about every little thing that bothers them.. They dwell on everything. Yet, there are still NTs who are intellectuals and who see the irony. Despite trends, you can't clump all people together like that. Not everyone thinks the same in any situation. What we see now will also change. Communication rules will change again with it.

In Keller's case, it only took one teacher to have the intelligence and perserverance to find a way to communicate. Compared to her, the rest seem silly now and so they were. That will happen again and the cycle will start over.

Your EF,

Zanne

I'm not at all TENTative about agreeing with your EF-fective logic Zanne.

I beleive they found that 12 or 13 years was the upper limit to basic communication level integration.

Teenage boys experience a secondary effect similar to that. They need to reach reach certain emotional-cognitive stages in order to mature into full men. The not so sporatic onanisms at that age are also needed, and suppression of that can put the hormone/experience pattern out of synch. Once the hormones pass, its too late.

As a species, we were meant to pair off at the onset of sexual maturity, but society ret*ds that through accelerating requirements for education and increasing complexity of interaction. Will our bodies change and adapt, or will our minds and society stall? Nobody knows.

There is less evidence that females have that teenage requirement, as they socialize and learn theory of mind differently.

EF,

Fuzzy

aylissa, if NT topic ha zit, this one ha zit. And I see you are deaf-inately add ding to.. zit.

I was thinking more along the lines of Genie and Victor and the failure of scientists to teach them language once they were found. They could only progress to a small degree.

However, you bring up another valid argument about social/sexual communication.

Then of course there is the fact that there are no ordinary people, just those along the NT continuum.

I'm not at all TENTative about it either.

EF,

Zanne

The horse is well and truely flogged.

Because there are literally billions of them. Because the extent to which you can access the good things in life (decent job, friends, romantic partner, etc.) often depends upon not setting off their evolutionarily hotwired "watch for the outsider" mentality.

No, not bitter at all... just sick of the endless whining that many people would sooner do, as opposed to doing anything constructive about their problems.



Speaking from experience, if your attempts along these lines are setting a vicious cycle in motion, your counterattack was not fierce or decisive enough. The best thing about extracting appropriate revenge is appropriate results. Not only does the guilty party cease to trouble you, but word gets around, making others that much less apt to trouble you.

With luck, you will eventually get to the point I'm at. I have to extract revenge once in a blue moon, and the necessity only becomes rarer as time goes on. People know damned full well what they're getting themselves into if they engage with me in that fashion, and they have the sense to dread and avoid the prospect.



For someone who was deaf since birth, yes. For someone who lost that capacity later in life, all the conditioning is still present and most of them can even still speak intelligibly, they just can no longer hear.

In either case (and similarly with the blind and the paralyzed), making merry at their expense is an automatic ticket to ostracism in polite society. Can you say that about Aspies? No.

When it comes to the deaf, the blind, and the paralyzed, people (rightly, in this case) attribute the afflicted person's lamentable condition to factors beyond that person's control. Hence are more apt to view them with compassion or pity than with contempt or hostility. You might well argue that behavior towards these individuals is condescending to some degree, and indeed it is. However, it is done with the best and most mild of intentions.

Contrast this with how more marked cases of "Aspie" behavior are viewed. Flapping, for example, is not viewed as something beyond the person's control. Nor is a seeming inability to make eye contact, nor is a perpetual lack of facial expression, nor any of that. "They have the physical ability to do these things, so why don't they do them?" is more the attitude. The end result of this is far less compassion, and far more contempt.



You wish I were off base, because the truth makes you uncomfortable. I see no point, purpose, or benefit of dissembling on messageboards. In fact, it is of far more benefit to me to be honest in this medium.

You seem to want to live in a dramatic fairytale of "The Good but Crippled in Some Way" vs. "the Evil of Everyone Else." I wonder if what unseats you the most is that I don't fit cleanly into either category, in your eyes. That is entirely your decision of course, but at this point I cannot help but wonder what past occurrences would have led you to adopt such a paradigm.

Last edited by Hazelwudi on 15 Apr 2007, 12:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Consider attributional theory for a moment.

Is someone who is deaf, blind, or crippled blamed for their condition? No. Who says of a blind person, "They're just lazy, if they tried harder they'd be able to see?" Anyone who said such a thing would face immediate social ostracism for it. Such things are simply Not Done. Period. In polite society, such commentary is completely verboten.

Contrast this with the attributions surrounding many AS traits and behaviors. In contrast to the blind, the deaf, or the crippled, the individual is actively blamed by others. How many symptoms are interpreted by others as laziness, as malice, as shiftiness, as blatant disregard for others... in summary, as a "bad attitude" that the AS person could and should do something about?

This is what you're missing.



I've never flapped, nor had a hygeine problem, nor had trouble looking people in the eyes. If anything, I have to actively fight down the urge to lock eyes with people, as I attempt to sift the contents of their minds. I am told that my gaze when I am giving my full, uninterrupted, focussed attention is a very difficult thing to bear. Either way, your theory falls rather flat.

There was a point where I had difficulties with procrastination, as many Aspies do. Those days are long past... I'm very much a "Get 'er Done" sort of person now, and have been for years. I found the results of procrastination to be objectively inferior to the results of taking initiative, and so I sensibly adopted the latter lifestyle.

There was a point where, like many of you, I had serious difficulties typing at a reasonable speed. Those days are also long past. Sheer dint of practice granted me a reasonable facsimile of what Nature didn't see fit to give.

I had many of the random difficulties that many of you have experienced, regarding delayed physical milestones, clumsiness, etc. I am old enough that the former have ceased to matter. The latter occasionally troubles me even now, but barring trying to be more aware of my feet and of my gross motor movements in space relative to nearby obstacles, there's not much I can do about that. I do trip far less than I used to, I must be doing something right. lol

Like most of you, I find it far easier to emotionally connect with domesticated animals (cats, dogs, etc.) than with human beings. I find myself genuinely giving a damn, not merely putting up the pretense of giving a damn, or giving a damn only insofar as it progresses my goals. However, I've developed enough of a facsimile of giving a damn with humans to put up a successful pretense of it. I see why they do what they do, that is enough to render predictive power and to set up the variables. That is enough.

Pfffttt. Being a victim is nothing more than a state of mind. How about stepping back and thinking about can I learn from this? And then let it go.

.

Who said anything about influencing billions of people? If someone is in a relationship with you, they certainly do have an impetus to understand. It has nothing to do with poor hygiene nor hand flapping, but everything to do with how your mind works, how you may not pick up on nonverbal communication, how your silences mean that you don't have anything to say at the moment.



How can you not have a emotional bond with your partner? Your partner would become dissatisfied and hurt without one. Perhaps develop the Cassandra complex and have to get validated by others married to the nasty-aspies. Your partner has to become somewhat aspergated so you can both thrive in the middle ground.



I think you misunderstand that the target of the compromise - and that is what I'm advocating - is your partner, you closest friends, your family. Not humanity in general, but the people you care to have close to you. Otherwise, they don't really know you, do they?



LMAO! I don't for a minute feel weak. I'm more in control of my environment than I've ever been. I've had a successful relationship for almost 25 years. While I understand that one must act normal to be sucessful the workplace, general social interactions and such, I know that pretending to be normal doesn't work with your lover as well as I know my eyes are blue. Again, this has nothing to do with unattractive behaviors, but everything to do with understanding each other's minds.

It's all irrelevant anyway Seriousgirl. We found what worked, the author found what worked and others will either figure it out or not. If they don't want to believe it and want to dwell in the boo hoo hoo, let them. I'm not anyone's momma and I'm not going to hold their hand and plead with them. Just cut them loose. They zap your time and energy otherwise.

You have got to be kidding. Not fierce enough? Lady, I am speaking of escalating revenge reaching the proportions of people murdering each other. Who have you killed recently? I dealt with stabbings, vehicular hit and runs, druggings, group assaults, glassings, people going to hospitals to deal 'revenge' on someone already there because apparently, you havent lost yet while you are still in this world. How decisive do you want it? Shall we talk about dead people laying in their grave while friends and family go out to seek revenge, even though both aggrieved and aggressor are beyond this world?

Did you think I used the term 'doom' lightly?

I dealt with people like that for 12 years, and in a professional manner for the last 4 of those years. Thats the extent of my experience.

Shall we talk about the bombings of whole populations, the utter vapourization of vast swaths of people, as happened at the end of the second world war, in Japan? Are you somehow capable of that? Guess what. The Japanese people were beaten, but not defeated. They stood up, dusted themselves off and neither became victims, nor sought revenge. Nor did the Americans continue. The circle of revenge was broken, and now both sides are True friends and allies.

I had to fight. I was a bouncer. I had no choice in certain instances. But I had to end it in a way that kept me from having to kill or main, and also assured that nobody would come seeking revenge in an hour. Or a day. Or a year.

Can you explain what secret dread you inflict that makes you immune to all these things? Humour me. who have you killed lately? Discuss it in a forum. Or stop talking out your back door. Because you are. You live a sheltered little life, and have never encountered anyone with the desire or motivation to take your life, even at the cost of your own. You know notthing of anger and revenge.

You have never held a person that had blood gushing out of a stab wound, even as they swore revenge. He didnt want to go to the hospital. he wanted to get up and find that person and kill them.

Again, who have you killed? Because that is as close to ultimate revenge as you will ever get.