People live in denial

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I don't believe Autistic people are superior to neurotypical people but I will say this, people live in denial. Normality in all its vaunted glory is all too often a very ugly thing.

Take for example, the man who moves into an apartment block in a city. The area is poor: he has lost his job and forced to live in reduced circumstances. The man is educated and sensitive but has no disability and is of the same skin colour as most people in his country. He dresses in a middle class manner, as one might expect from his upbringing.

Soon after he moves in, the locals begin to knock on his door and ask why he doesn't stop to talk to them in the hallways like everyone else. He tries to avoid their questions but they are pushy, they insist on becoming familiar with him. He can not talk to these people: they talk of cock fights and crude things done when they drink.

One of the men knocking on the new neighbour's door introduces his wife. He has a plan in mind. He will make his wife seduce the new neighbour so he has an excuse to beat him up. She does and he then is beaten up by the husband and his friends - and is killed.
That is actually from a short story I once read by a writer - but it is based on reality. Such things happen all the time.

So does anyone else wonder why on earth so many people - from psychiatrists to teachers to streetsweepers - live in denial? When asked, most people say, "I live in a nice place. I am proud of where I live." And yet almost every city in the world will have people like the ones I've described here living in them.

Pride or people don't let bad apples ruin it for them or they are oblivious. Mom took me out the other weekend for my birthday and we went to the family fun center. We went miniature golfing. But we had this girl behind us who was so impatient and was a snot. She complained the people in front of us were too slow. My mother deliberately took her time but didn't make it obvious. I just ignored her and didn't bother going slower or I would be punishing the people behind her and her parents. We still had fun and she didn't ruin our fun. I don't call this denial.

I had an ex who was poor but he refused to live poor so he continued buying nice stuff and going out and do fun stuff and he wanted nice things. He also would not be frugal and he wanted to eat organic. He also refused to get a cheaper phone plan because he wanted this nice phone he had. It was like he was in denial but he knew he barely had money so he was always borrowing from his grandparents because his salary didn't pay him enough to live off of every month. Then he thought I had money management issues because I refused to spend it. I had no job and I was getting $115 a month from SSI because some woman in the office didn't do her job by putting my pay stubs in the system to show I mailed them in. My mom had to go in for me and get it resolved. Then finally I got all this money from them from the past six months they owed me.

Also the guy in the story you described, did he ever say he liked where he lived? Or are you just assuming he thought that?

It sounds to me as if what you are describing is the underclass of this society. Most neighborhoods aren't like this, even if they are farther down on the socio-economic scale. Since the underclass is with us, and has always been with us. I think rather than denial, this is simply a perennial problem that has defied solution. What you describe explains the three rules of real estate (location, location, and location--in other words, as far from this kind of thing as it's possible to be).

I'm not quite sure how NTs vs. non-NTs in terms of superiority, denial, and "normal" not being as great as people may think are related in your post, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. It seems like you are saying that people who believe that normality (such as NTness) is better than abnormality (such as being on the spectrum) are in denial because they somehow don't recognize that some people who are normal are bad people. This is a fallacious argument. It is quite possible (and quite common) for a person to think that a state of being (such as normality) is better than some other state of being and simultaneously understand and accept the negative side of the preferred state of being. Preferring something and simultaneously understanding its drawbacks are compatible states of mind; no denial is necessary to the coexistence of these two states of mind, and so, without further evidence, there is no reason to infer the presence of denial in the person who thinks this way.

An extreme example, but I agree that the class separation would be more plausible than denial. I've lived in middle class, working class, and borderline ghetto. In each one, there are different values that are looked for, and different acceptable reactions that are expected. I know many people that consider not joining in socially is the height of offensiveness. It doesn't have to be long, and there may not be anything to add to the conversation, but that effort of engaging socially seems to be not only expected but demanded.