Do You Have Issues With Something You Think Is

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Do you have issues accepting something you think is unfair? I have found many times when my parents do something or say something that is unfair I have trouble accepting it and will obsess about it.

Has this ever been the case with you?

incredibly often and it still happens and I am really old enough to know better.

We are taught to 'play fair' but then hardly anyone does. To a literal mind, this is like..I don't know - a self destruct sequence.

So, yeah, I recommend you read George Orwell 1984 and everything by the guy who wrote this:

It may help shed light on the inexplicable complexities of human nature and interactions.

Like my government requiring everyone to purchase a product from a private company.

Let's talk about unfairness and obsessing.

Last edited by Willard on 01 Dec 2013, 2:28 pm, edited 2 times in total.

^you spent so much time, energy and probably money trying to get justice - wouldn't have been simpler to just move state?

Only for my entire life.

No, it would not. All my family and support system is here. I'm not a neurotypical, who can just pick up and move wherever I want and function in any old "plug-and-play" environment. This is my home and I shouldn't have to leave it and move just to be treated like a human being.

Last edited by Willard on 01 Dec 2013, 2:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

All the time, and I'm old enough to be your father. Literally, my second son was born in 2000

Our house is in an access road, next to a main road.

On the very left hand side of the road where you pull out of the access road is a bus lane. Only buses are allowed to drive in it. There are two lanes for cars and the bus lanes.

Every morning, I watch people in their cars bypass all the banked-up traffic by driving in the bus lane. Sometimes the police are sitting at the bottom of the hill and they get fined, but most days they aren't there, and these selfish entitled drivers get away with breaking the law, and unfairly delaying other traffic and blocking the cars who waited their turn from entering the turn lane at the bottom of the hill.

It makes me so mad. Every morning.

Yes. If I think anything is unfair, I fight and argue about it and it always infuriates me if it's that way. Sometimes I will fight if I know there is not going to be a consequence or don't care for one. This was a problem when I was a kid and back then consequences were less severe since I didn't have a job and didn't have to pay to live and I didn't get kicked out of school. But yet I accepted the fact rules were different for every age group once my mother would explain the double standards to me for why it's okay for the kid to do it but not me. If I still found that unfair, then my family would have been in trouble and so would my special ed teacher since some kids had different rules than us when I was in special ed full time when I was six and seven and for ten weeks when I was eight.

Um. Calm down, it was just a question, trying to understand. I think the point I always try to make is that fairness doesn't exist as an inviolable concept that so many people expect it to be. Why do you expect life to be fair? Who promised you that?


Well, should and shouldn't are irrelevant aren't they? Or have you achieved your objective? If you have found that all your efforts were fruitless, then what was your objective - to complain or to achieve the licencing status? I don't mean to upset you but I am a very pragmatic person myself. I don't understand concept of 'home' and nobody ever gave me any support so I cannot sympathise with what it feels like to not be able to give that up.

I guess my confusion stems from not being able to understand whether your objection is one of principle or one of genuine inability to find any kind of solution (not just a solution that is the most convenient)

I apologise if this all sounds too cold and logical.

Let me just share this, if it will help. There was a profession I have dreamed my whole life about entering and finally I qualified for the training program, was accepted for a month training assessment apprenticeship and promptly got myself dumped from the program for two reasons:
1) I was clumsy and had difficulty following instruction which were not perfectly unambiguous
2) the Instructor was a dickhead and I kept standing up to him and questioning his (often) faulty instruction

When they called me into the office and told me I was done, I was shocked - I hadn't been expecting it at all. I went home and stayed in bed for two months with depression. My self esteem was floored. I considered whether I could appeal but there was nothing I could do and would have just ended up emotionally draining myself. Eventually, I found a way to pick myself up and go forward in a different direction. Some months into my new job I heard that this facility was being closed down and dissolved - so even if I had stayed on, I'd have been out of job. Either way - and slight satisfaction aside - it was clear to me from that I was at fault for expecting life to be fair when I expressed my inability to understand confusing instruction - I was labelled stupid; when I questioned the instructor - I was labelled insubordinate = all of that does not seem fair but that is how the world works. I wish it was fair, but it just doesn't seem to work that way. That's all.

My mother used to ask when I complained about the lack of fairness in the world, "Who promised you life would be fair?"

The problem, philosophically speaking, is one of an 'ought to be'.
In terms of this discussion, the issue is that while aspies/ASD people may have an innate sense of fairness, believe in treating people in such a manner, and believe that the world ought to be fair, the world seems to often be inherently unfair in various ways.
Because we tend to dwell on things, especially those that seem to resonate a dissonance, like unfairness, it seems perfectly normal that we have a tendency to get upset about perceived, and want to protest and attempt to resolve the dissonance by arguing our cases.

Unfortunately, NTs accept and even in many cases embrace unfairness as a necessary and even desirable element of the world and thus don't necessarily care about acting in an unfair manner towards others, or about the fact that others are being treated unfairly.
Frankly, that's one of the reasons civil torts are so popular, as they are a way for those who wish to redress unfairness to force the world to act in a fair manner, at least so far as the law allows them to do so.

@Willard: you might want to consider going to the ACLU and requesting them to file a suit on your behalf against the instructor/business for their discrimination and the state for their lack of action. It does seem from your description like your rights under the ADA have been/are being violated and that you have a genuine claim of financial loss as well as suffering as a result of this discrimination. Even if the ACLU won't take your case you should be able to find a civil laywer willing to take on your case either pro bono or on spec so you wouldn't have to pay for it out of pocket.

we need to band together to stop being treated grotesquely unfairly. There IS strength in numbers. Being one out of eighty- eight makes it even more important. That is why I am pushing so hard to get people to AutHaven in February, and why we have put all of our money into it so that the cost per person is only $100, and so that those with less may receive scholarships. That is why btbunnyr is trying to establish a program to assist with practical life skills and education, and she would like to start it here, on WP, with all of your assistance. That is why autspace and autreat exist [partially] and why we have so many Autistic blogs. But we need to utilize them, learn from them, and synergistically expand.

We , as a people, have our needs. We, as a people, need to demand our rights. We, as a people need to help each other. We, as a people, need to combine our strengths to help each other. If we don't stand together for what we know is fair, and instead fall back on the prideful "can't herd cats" argument, how can we expect the rest of society to care? why should they care? They don't know who we are and we, as a group are not bothering to tell them. come on. You're a cat? Then be a big cat and ROAR!

In a previous job, I stuck up for three other employees whose dismissal struck me as a unfair, all the way through disciplinary procedures up until the moment of their dismissal.

Not only did it not get the them their jobs back (although the dismissing boss later admitted he had been unfair, not only that he had laid the company open to tribunal on at least two of those occasions) it did me no good whatsoever and gained me a reputation as a bloody-minded not-group thinker, which may have been why I was passed over for promotion. If I had my time again, I'd keep quiet.