Starting to distrust 1st Gens...

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I don't know how best to put this.

I'm a second-generation Aspergian... raised by an Aspergian mother... and cats. The cats had a lot of input.
Though I'm sure it wasn't my mother's intention, I was raised to look down on normality, and especially those who aspire to be normal. I believe it was a combination of my desire to succeed academically amidst the anti-intellectualist atmosphere present in a great many schools that frequently led to my mother telling me not to pay any attention to the wilfully ignorant folks who would seek to put me down for being smarter than them.
I've generally been content to isolate myself from the world for the most part, and even in the middle of London I have a casual disregard for the social and cultural norms of those peons who can't think for themselves. Afterall, society in general is just a mewling mess of blithering idiots scrambling over each other and burying themselves in layer after layer of deception and misdirection simply because it is what they've always done. They're free to engage in that absurdity with their own lives, but I'm not suffering under the delusion that anything about it is in any way desirable.

Initially, I was curious as regards other folk on the spectrum... but after having been around the few communities like this online, I've started to be aware of a disturbing trend: That many other Aspergians seem to have what I consider to be mundie values, and / or aspire to be more normal. Like somehow their behaviour is as a confused imitation of the way the mundies behave, knowing all the steps but not really understanding them... only that they ought to follow them. And honestly, it seems to me like the cause MIGHT be that they had neurotypical parents instilling the special brand of absurdism that society thrives on into them, whether they understand it or not. I can certainly see it in my mother sometimes... things that she has been taught as "ought to be" but doesn't quite understand and isn't in any position to defend.


It puts me in a rather awkward position, overall.
There aren't many places where I can exchange ideas with those who actually have the capacity for thought... if any... and I suppose I'm getting the impression that even this place could be as hostile to my differences as any other. In a sense... I'm too different even for a collective of "different" people.

You shouldn't have to feel like you have to be "normal", or to fit in.

On the other hand, if somebody makes that their goal in life, that is certainly their right! It is their mind, and their body they're destroying (or making better, depending on what they're doing), not your own.

You certainly shouldn't pressure someone to fit in, but what are the ethics of doing the opposite...pressuring someone to not fit in?

The socially constructed norm is a cultural thing that one can grow out of. As you may have noticed, having Asperger's doesn't guarantee that, even though it does increase the potential.

Not all of these ideas are bad just because they're commonly held. I think none of them are bad just because they are commonly held. Many of them are indeed bad, and the fact that they are commonly held makes them worse because of that, but that they are commonly held is not a sufficient criticism.

I fail to see the difference between promoting one form of orthodoxy and promoting another form of orthodoxy. I also do not see that the assumption that because someone has an opinion or belief that may be considered mainstream that it means they just swallowed it whole from cultural saturation and have not actually given it any thought.

I think the kind of "autistic good, NT bad" orthodoxy that seems to get promoted here gets way out of line, and downright irrational at times.

Magnanimous, could you please provide an example of why you distrust "1st Gens"? I'm not able to follow your OP without a more concrete example.

I stopped reading at "Aspergian".

Unconventional, that's me. rebel for the sake of rebelling. they joke about it in the office, I'm being anti again.
Since I have been coming here, I have been trying to absorb more of the things that never made sense to me. A lot of people have been giving me view/perspective on things and it does help.

"Nothing is true and everything is permitted."

Probably the only rule I was ever willing to follow.