There are many bitter and hateful people on this forum

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Anger and resentment are things that glow red hot in youth. Some of the bitter posts so far on this thread, may not be repeated by the same posters 10 years from now. Then again they might! Some ASD folks do seem to hold their resentment very close to the chest, not wanting to let go at all. Could that be part of being ASD? After all forgiveness is a social construct. In this very moment, there is no inherent reason why we should forgive anyone for anything. I remember hearing about this somewhere...perhaps a Science show. There are social reasons to forgive. We exchange social currency in doing so that may be cashed in at a later date. Even if goodwill can't be cashed in with a particular person there are group benefits to forgiving someone. At all times in a group, people are assessing everyone. A long standing dispute between two people brings down the "social value" of both parties. Good leaders never have ongoing fights with several parties. In fact, a good leader never appears to have difficulties with a group member. That sort of stuff is settled behind closed doors.

AND even if there was no way to cash in your goodwill with the parties involved, I would suspect over time, that there are other very good reasons to forgive and let it go.

Last edited by tortoise on 05 Nov 2006, 1:06 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Yes, you nailed it on the head. There was something wrong in the way this concept was presented. Still, it's an interesting discussion.

okay, all joking aside, i see NTs as human beings. i don't see NTs as heartless things with a cruel intent to put us all down. we all know that not one person is the same and i've taken this idea to heart. sure, when we come down to it we're all born and we all die but, we don't all have the same perception of life. NTs are different but the same. autistics are the same way. NTs and autistics are different but the same. there really isn't anything as a normal human being in my mind.

Bitter and hateful are your own interpretations - perhaps an NT tendency to attach emotions to every single statement made. I have found this to be a very annoying and cloying practive especially on many of the online parent advocacy groups (because mostly they do not advocate for autistics just themsevles). If you make a statement they can not seperate that it is just a statement - there has to be some underlying motive or agenda behind that statement. Then there is all what I like to call "fluff". Fluff is their habit of constantly posting all this reassurance and love words back and forth to one another and often couched in every single post where someone might remotely express a difference of opinion. I do not care to trifle with "fluff" therefore on those group (and others as well if there is an NT majority) comments are often taken personally instead of objectively.

The other side of this issue though is one where many on the spectrum have seen through severe bullying and insults and therapies and "cures". Often the surpressed minority may feel the need to defend itself more vigorously against the majority who has proven to be a tentative friend at best. And one of the places I find this epecially is among the autism advocacy groups that are dominated if not entirely controlled by NTs. The conversations on some of these groups have been utterly despicable in regards to how they describe those on the spectrum. And to defer your argument that represents a small segment - I have posted on groups before challenging some of those statements (like others here have done) and very few people if any at all will concur. The majority will be silent and allow the bullies (just like in school) to say what they will. Some will email you offline and agree with you but they will not do so publicly. So just like you claim that AS social skills are lacking and that someone is a cause for the rejection they experience - it is also that some AS CAN understand the group dynamics of the NTs and see how they do not see how they behave either.

Hence my replies in other post here about a report to educate people on autism:

and a reply to Callista who felt that education can help:


That being said there are NTs who are capable and caring and make all effort to be understanding but that doesn't negate the experiences of those on the spectrum that you interpret as bitter.

I don't agree that forgiveness is just a social construct. It's part of our psychology and emotional well-being. People who counted on witnessing executions to avenge a murder didn't feel better in the long term. It didn't give them closure (I want to say I read this in Dead Man Walking by Sister Helen Prejean).
We need to forgive to accept our lives.

Is it an innate trait or do we learn it? Kids don't seem to be very good at forgiving. Could it be something that we learn to function better in society?

For me, this IS ten, twenty, thirty, and forty years from now. It is over forty years since I was in kindergarten.

I imagine we learn it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a personal emotional component to it. Like I said, it allows closure, which helps the grieving process, which processes negative feelings/stress.
If you don't forgive, you may be stuck in either perpetual anger, sadness or avoidance and unable to grow. Forgiving is a therapeutic technique for recovery from addiction and PTSD.
For example, I know someone who was abused and neglected by his family members. Some of these people he can't/doesn't talk to. But he had to forgive them to move on with his life and reconstruct his personal value system. It serves no other direct social purpose because those people that he had to forgive weren't in his life anymore. He wasn't socially dysfunctional, just emotionally so.


That said, back to the topic at hand, anger is part of recognition that something is wrong. Even Jesus got angry. It's part of breaking away from the status quo.

Depending on the audience, and this goes for almost all audiences, the label "bitter and hateful" is usually pretty damning. The common use of this label is to characterize a person as a bitter and hateful person independent of what he or she has experienced, not caring if there is a reason for the bitterness and hatred. That's the way the label is used, often knowingly against someone who has been deliberately tortured.

I would not be angry if so many people hadn't found me vulnerable and deliberately caused me real harm. I wouldn't even be talking about how badly NTs treat each other and the rest of the world. The label "bitter and hateful" also implies that my experience is false and what I say I say just to be mean. This kind of characterization is unacceptable on the face of it. Why don't you ask yourself how a person could become so mean without being mistreated? Oh, did I just hear someone think "mental disease"? There has been some success in recent years in obscuring the fact that mental illness comes from childhood abuse.

No there is not a "vast" difference. What people say is indiciative of their attitudes and disposition. People who aren't bitter aren't exactly going to "accidentally" let a unintentional bitter remarks slip. Who are you guys kidding, seriously? Does not one's mental and emotional state directly effect their personality, and that in turn effect their perspective, preceptions and attitiudes? And doesn't that in turn effects how that person communciates? There's are definite interconnections here which you can't just dismiss for the sake of being nice and not wanting to offend someone. A criminal is a criminal because they behavior as such - why can't a person be called bitter if they talk and act like it?

I agree with the original poster - there definitely very bitter and very hateful people here. And for the sake of the forum and for the people who come here genuinely seeking help and support, I don't think we shoul deny it or play nice about it. This seething hatred is why I had to leave here for a good while, and why currently I keep a healthy distance from this place. So if we're going to bully each other around with "Well, that not my experience so f' you too" than THAT's my experience.

Not only do I personally find a lot of bitterness and hatred among various people here, I also find a lot of emotional immaturity. It's simply shameful how often someone around here cops the attitude that because they have AS, somehow their logic and perspective are infalliable and invinciable, and end up rationalizing myopic, even psychopathic biases. I've paid my dues around here trying to confront such egregious distortions and brattiness, but basically, if someone doesn't want to change, they're not.

To echo the original poster, I think if we understand anything about AS, it is that it doesn't mean we not vulnerable to secondary psychological/emotional problems and unreasonable biases that may impede our personal development. Likwise, there's no reason to assume we can't volitionally refuse to address them simply out of our fears and lack of humility. And how ironic, since that's pretty much what the most bitter and hateful of us generally accuse the NTs of doing. Suffice to say, if you're going to make an enemy out of NTs, and insist they're so much inferior to you, make d*mn sure that you actually are better than them before you do. Otheriwse, you've become exactly what you hate, by your own doing, and I can't think of anything more pathetic or miserible.

ONE post making general references does not logically indicate that a person is hateful or bitter. At best it can be a reflection of their feelings at the moment IF someone feels the need to attach sentiment to every statement made. There have been topic posts here about NT's being evil and plenty of people have disputed that notion - but a comment (taken completely out of context I am assuming without the permission of the author) is to be held up as a shining example of how those on the spectrum shouldn't be allowed to behave? Why isn't the motivation of the person who chose those particular posts examined to see if they are not the ones being bitter.

I think your bitter and hateful toward aspies. You think it must be our fault if NT's treat us badly. It doesn't stop after high school, allot of people don't change or grow up. Your AS is not that noticable (or you don't even have it) so you are able to conform and fit in with NT society. Count yourself lucky you never had the terrible experiences that most of us have. If people with AS have been hurt and are still hurting over things that they have experienced they should be supported and not put down and called hateful and bitter. On the support sites for NT's when they complain about us does anyone speak up and defend us? They blame all they're problems on us because we are the scapegoats.

I don't think there are many hateful people on this site, I have found people amiable and understanding. I think some comments are not always meant to be taken literally, I'm sure some get frustrated with NT behaviours but I'm sure its not hate. I take people as they come NT, AS, HFA, theres good and bad in us all.

fujikochan,

WHOA, you hit home ALSO!! !! ! NO WONDER why my signature hasn't changed until a few years ago. My writing even a few years ago was TEXTBOOK! I just remembered that I started cursive late ALSO!! !!

MAN, I don't know WHAT is most meaningful, but I have triggered TONS of latent memories! I even asked my mother "You know that tan VW Beatle? Was it a 1967?" She said YES! I don't even remember hearing it, and my normal chronological reasoning could narrow it to maybe SEVEN years! And I got the year EXACTLY. I wish I remembered to ask her the month. 8-(

My memory USED to be EVERYTHING! NOW, it seems events are the best. I can remember/recall them instantly if I want. Others are now FAR harder. Does anyone else have this problem?

Steve

BTW I HAVE to say... I have seen computers that seemed to display the wrong data, or take in the wrong data. Some may have thrown the whole computer out, but I DID find the problem to be unrelated to the processor.

Autistics are the SAME way! They may not understand you, and you may not understand them, but you could BOTH be just as viable.

Heck, am I to be called illiterate because I can only read maybe 60% of the hindi "alphabet"(devanagari) and perhaps only 80% of the greek one? I can read ALL of the danish, German, English, Norwegian, Swiss, etc.... Even those from several hundred years ago. Yet YEP, an indian would probably consider me illiterate.

Maybe NTs should consider that when dealing with others.

Steve

A lot of the things that sound bitter and hateful were brought up because there is a LOT of abuse out there and it does change behavior. No person should be considered to be diseased or have some kind of syndrome on the strength of the fact that he has a bad reaction to being abused. It is a real life problem, an extra penalty, that someone like myself was diagnosed with mental illness based on having such a reaction. I was also diagnosed as morally deficient, not quite so officially, by the ones who abused me. What can a six year old child be guilty of, morally? Being there.

Maybe it isn't neurotypical to be so mean. Any animal or human can be made mean or affectionate by the way he is treated. I don't know that I've ever said that Aspies were some kind of angelical type. The implication that I have seems pretty sarcastic and misleading. The Aspies that I see here seem to have what I think of as a basically normal human psychology. The problem that I see is that a certain percentage of humans like to rule other humans by force and by fear. They get out of hand. They even like to get out of hand. They selectively disable those types that they know will continually try to escape the regime that they want to enforce. I think that the autistic spectrum consists largely of those who are targeted for that kind of characteristic, mainly the ability to think freely and concentrate on a subject for more than a few seconds. Real concentration on a subject isn't going to happen when someone is forced to sit listening to someone reading from the book for an hour at a time, the same things that the student can read in much less time and do better work with on his own, any student.