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foreigners are socially impaired

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muff
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19 Mar 2013, 10:48 pm

a girl from china visited my workplace here in detroit, and she struck me as a tremendously intelligent person who possessed an above average amount of woo (that was my objective, rational opinion).

she spent a day with our department and after she left, i reflected back, and concluded that she was severely socially impaired and seemed, well, cognitively impaired as well. she couldnt possibly know the most basic social rules, and remarked on information rather dumbly, 'what is slavery?' being the best example.

and my point is this: obviously she is not impaired in her own culture (or we wouldnt have flown this bright young gal over to us and entertained her/paid for her to be here for a day) but she could be greatly considered to be impaired should one view her with their senses as being a native detroiter.

so if people on the spectrum could be perceived by the senses to be from a different culture (say, autism culture) maybe the NT world would act more like my department in their response to us (welcoming, patient, helpful, accommodating, understanding, etc.).



Ichinin
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19 Mar 2013, 10:52 pm

"One person is acting weird so everyone is".

Logical? No. Ignorant as f**k? Yes.


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19 Mar 2013, 11:00 pm

Ichinin wrote:
"One person is acting weird so everyone is".

Logical? No. Ignorant as f**k? Yes.


Calm down and reread the post. You misunderstood it.



goldfish21
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19 Mar 2013, 11:01 pm

muff wrote:
so if people on the spectrum could be perceived by the senses to be from a different culture (say, autism culture) maybe the NT world would act more like my department in their response to us (welcoming, patient, helpful, accommodating, understanding, etc.).


This is a well documented Autistic "thing." (It's not quite a trait, is it?)

There are many ASD people who travel to foreign cultures and fit in just fine because their social shortcomings are excused as being a foreigner, not someone who lacks social intuition. Apparently Japan is an extremely popular destination for Aspies who relocate because of their very polite culture.

Personally, I don't have to go anywhere to experience this phenomenon whenever I want to - because I live in the suburbs of one of the most diverse cities in the world. There are people here from everywhere, especially China & India, but also from everywhere else. We have a Chinatown, a little Italy, neighbourhoods filled with affluent Persians, others with Philipinos, or ____ people from almost anywhere. It's very easy to go out on any given day and find a group of people from another culture, or various ones, and just blend in a whole heck of a lot better for it.


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19 Mar 2013, 11:03 pm

Nonperson wrote:
Calm down and reread the post. You misunderstood it.


No, the OP made a generalisation based upon one experience.


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1000Knives
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19 Mar 2013, 11:04 pm

Yep, I've been best friends with foreigners. Foreigners are cool.

And yes, I hope to travel to a foreign country so I can look like an idiot and have an excuse besides "yo my brain is all f****d up and stuff."



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19 Mar 2013, 11:05 pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaf_culture


Read these articles they fit like a glove for aspies, if you replace mindblind with deaf.



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19 Mar 2013, 11:25 pm

Stoek wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaf_culture


Read these articles they fit like a glove for aspies, if you replace mindblind with deaf.


My best friend when I was 12 was a recent immigrant from South Korea.

My best friend since high school when we were 16, and his wife, are both deaf/very hard of hearing.

I can concur that fitting in with the deaf culture is very, very, similar and that they face very similar challenges. It's likely because of this that we've gotten along as well as we have over the years.


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cyberdad
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20 Mar 2013, 12:45 am

muff wrote:
a girl from china visited my workplace here in detroit, and she struck me as a tremendously intelligent person who possessed an above average amount of woo (that was my objective, rational opinion).

she spent a day with our department and after she left, i reflected back, and concluded that she was severely socially impaired and seemed, well, cognitively impaired as well. she couldnt possibly know the most basic social rules, and remarked on information rather dumbly, 'what is slavery?' being the best example.

and my point is this: obviously she is not impaired in her own culture (or we wouldnt have flown this bright young gal over to us and entertained her/paid for her to be here for a day) but she could be greatly considered to be impaired should one view her with their senses as being a native detroiter.

so if people on the spectrum could be perceived by the senses to be from a different culture (say, autism culture) maybe the NT world would act more like my department in their response to us (welcoming, patient, helpful, accommodating, understanding, etc.).


It's not necessarily social impairment. It may be culturally determined behavior. I agree with some others that making generalisations over one experience with a foreign individual is similar to an NT making generalisations about people with Aspergers after watching Rainman.



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20 Mar 2013, 1:40 am

cyberdad wrote:
It's not necessarily social impairment. It may be culturally determined behavior. I agree with some others that making generalisations over one experience with a foreign individual is similar to an NT making generalisations about people with Aspergers after watching Rainman.


That's the whole point & why so many Aspies embrace this and travel to far off lands. What we know to be social impairments are perceived by foreigners as possibly being culturally determined behaviour, and they write our social quirks off as being "not from around here, so it's OK," & are typically very polite to us.


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20 Mar 2013, 3:24 am

1000Knives wrote:
Yep, I've been best friends with foreigners. Foreigners are cool.

And yes, I hope to travel to a foreign country so I can look like an idiot and have an excuse besides "yo my brain is all f**** up and stuff."


Most of my friends are foreigners. After telling a couple of them I had Asperger's they were surprised. They had just put everything weird about me down to culture or language differences. Viva la differencé :D



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20 Mar 2013, 5:52 am

goldfish21 wrote:
cyberdad wrote:
It's not necessarily social impairment. It may be culturally determined behavior. I agree with some others that making generalisations over one experience with a foreign individual is similar to an NT making generalisations about people with Aspergers after watching Rainman.


That's the whole point & why so many Aspies embrace this and travel to far off lands. What we know to be social impairments are perceived by foreigners as possibly being culturally determined behaviour, and they write our social quirks off as being "not from around here, so it's OK," & are typically very polite to us.


I think it's also partly a form of ethno centrism. Just like audism in the article I mentioned above http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audism

The belief that ones communication method is superior puts us aspies at a disadvantage. However communication style is forgotten once were in an environment where no style is Favored .



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20 Mar 2013, 8:30 am

Quote:
It's not necessarily social impairment. It may be culturally determined behavior.


I think you missed the point.

It was a bit of a poor choice of words, but if you read through what the OP said, he (or she) said that the person wasn't impaired in her own culture.

The whole point was that cultural differences can cause the same issues as AS. Which I think is very valid.



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20 Mar 2013, 12:43 pm

Maybe that's why I always kept learning different languages and posing as a foreigner, trying to integrate into different cultural groups. It allowed me to fit in more. Although that's probably just one of the reasons why I've always been into languages.


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20 Mar 2013, 1:06 pm

I almost always feel more comfortable with foreigners, no matter what culture they are from. I have found the Irish to be the best. My experience with Ireland is limited to Dublin Airport, and I have no idea what the rest of Ireland is like, but EVERYONE I met at the airport was so nice to me. It left an extremely strong impression on me.



muff
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20 Mar 2013, 9:35 pm

goldfish21 wrote:
cyberdad wrote:
It's not necessarily social impairment. It may be culturally determined behavior. I agree with some others that making generalisations over one experience with a foreign individual is similar to an NT making generalisations about people with Aspergers after watching Rainman.


That's the whole point & why so many Aspies embrace this and travel to far off lands. What we know to be social impairments are perceived by foreigners as possibly being culturally determined behaviour, and they write our social quirks off as being "not from around here, so it's OK," & are typically very polite to us.


no kidding? i did not think of it this way. it sounds amazing though. i am visiting my polish homeland next year and sooo hope to have this experience. thanks for the perspective.