Possible Root of AS?

Post Reply New Topic

While creating a PM to a Wrong Planeteer a moment ago a thought came to me. The essence here is something that I had considered long ago and had classed people into tw types (which I will get to in a moment).

We all take that aspies are usually emotionally and socially limited. But what exactly is that?

I think the root of AS may be that we lack certain human instincts. Therefore some things that regular people do automatically (instinctually) we do manually (intellectually/consciously).

Where I had come with this long ago was in the realization that while most people live instinctually like animals, that I do not. How about you?

OMG! I was on this thought line last night! I've been obessed with trying to determine if most human instincts are predator traits or prey traits.. In evaluting this (for my own amussement of course) I realized that I lack instinct. I have gut feelings, intuition, but that is just my ability to see the outcome of a process by seeing the forces involved. When someone says something provoking to me, I generally miss the fight or flight thing and go right to "What are you talking about?" or "Why do you say that?".. mating instincts.. zilch. eating, bathing, nesting, pack behaviour, etc etc etc... is that it? But really, aren't instincts kinda outdated in modern society???

OMG, someone uses my WPteer term!

Anyway, that sounds pretty appropriate.

I truly seem to be generally sans instinct. I would take this to be generally a good thing in a modern complex world. Where I am at a disadvantage is within all those scenarios that require quick action.

I seem to lack an instinctual bag of tricks. Therefore I must pause a second and work out a response. In so many generally meaningless - but socially required situations I am behind the response curve.

I am likely to arrive at a better than instinctual solution, but the crowd has already taken flight to somewhere else.

I'd deny that I lack every instinct... such as fear, the need for water and food... but yes, I DO lack some instincts... most of them being social instincts...

I've learnt some now, but either by memorising or analyzing. I've memorised some 'manners', and I've learnt to analyze a lie since I can't 'feel' it.

Being like this is both good and bad I guess... if you memorise everyday stuff, you are less likely to make a mistake in that area like NTs who can change their instincts based on their feelings- most people I know criticise me harshly (whether it's true or false) when they're angry but deny anything is wrong with me when they're happy. It can be bad in the aspect that sometimes, it can make you feel at a loss in new situation.

Absolutely. This is also the reason that atheism and probably agnosticism is well represented among the WP population.
Social games are a complete mystery, so we have to search for those answers by thinking about them, not feeling for them.

Right, feeling and thinking, for me are closely related.. but feeling is when I obscure logic and just blindly accept.. inevitably to be screwed somehow. I'll stick with thinking. It may take slightly longer (sometimes) but it is far more accurate(always).

So, is there really a "God part" of the brain? Or is it just the "parent worship" instinct? "Dad can do no wrong" "I love my mother more than life".. I never got that. Dad's a guy.. Mom's a woman.. they made a baby. Yeah, I owe them for that. Unless you consider the world they gave me to deal with.. maybe they owe me???

ps. oddly I think there is a possibility that someone here will get this (ie. get me).. it's a new idea for me.. that someone else gets it.. besides my best friends.

SAME HERE! HEY, I have been saying this ALL ALONG! It isn't new either. We just haven't used the word instinct. But that isn't the cause of AS, merely the cause of some mental symptoms. The brain is funny, for example. It is dedicated to a specific purpose BUT, if it isn't used for THAT purpose, it will likely be used for something else. SO, dumb socially may mean smart linguistically.

Steve

I realized this about 15 years ago. For many years, it was almost taboo to think about behavior in terms of genetics, but recently, there has been theories in biology which have spawned evolutionary psychology and attempts to explain behavior genetically. The social games stem from reciprocal altruism:

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

We lack this instinct.

Exactly, that is to all of you. If a person comes out of the box sans so many instincts then that person will have to learn those things: hence our delay in such areas.

And if a person must consider consciously rather than act automatically then that person will be behind the NTs in fluid social situations, and will be more self conscious as well.

Further, learned systems would almost surely differ from automatically applied - built in ones. We have less ROM and more RAM.

I think this model explains more than sinply saying that we lack basal social talrnts: after all, what does that mean? But if we state that we lack a set of instincts, now we are nearer a real neurological root.

I also think we have more capcity in our CPUs and a more developed I/O system. I think in the past we may have been a priest or shaman caste. We are coming to light now as being disordered because we are not adapated to such a crowded, socially-complex, enviromentally-overstimulated world. Since we have senstive arousal systems and the ability to think objectively when in an optimum state of arousal, we were naturally suited for the philosophical and bookish roles we gravitated toward before the advent of mega-warehouse education, which includes a lot of socializing, physical games, and bullying run amok.

In the past, we were the educated class and the socially extraverted 75% were peasants.

I think that could be!

I don't agree at all. I think we have different instincts, not the lack of instinct. Back to the concept of predator vs prey, I think there are enough stories, traits, et al to support that autistic people resemble prey animals in their perspective. Most people do things that are incomprehensible to me, in terms of family structure and community building. That's a pack animal way of doing things.
Prey animals are simply different. I envy some of the NT community building skills people have, but I can't see accepting the negative consequences of it. Imagine being fully accepted in a society and to have their values deeply ingrained, only to be banished for some "wrong" you committed (true or not). That happens on large and small scales all the time. I know NTs that face disenfranchisement (for whatever reasons) and they go nuts over it. They'll put on a veneer of whatever they can to be accepted by anyone. They are so dependent on being part of the pack.

I dont believe this theory so much. I believe i have a strong sex drive, it sometimes pushes me to flirt with a girl, I can be aggressive when I feel offended, Ive criticized people and/or tried to prove others wrong when Ive felt them trying to do this to me. Ive Once even probably saved my little sisters life when we were climbing a mountain in mexico, the "must do whatever to make sure shes ok" feeling kinda took over. I think personality has more to do with this than genetics, I mean, maybe my genetics do put me at a disadvantage in this area only because i have some kind of learning problem, but thats not to say that once I do learn whats right/wrong/important in a certain types of situations, that I cant apply them. Sometimes, I feel that my Instincts run a muck and I'm just stuck trying to find the best way to solve something instead of the easiest while feeling confused.

Prey animals are enviomentally adapted to living in herds with enough members to sustain the speices when some go missing to become food. They do not vary much in their behavioral characteristics. It is usually the weak, sick, old and young which become food, an adaptive mechanism. It is not the ones with higher cognitive functioning that become food. If you want to look at an animal model, we most resemble chimps. Our troupe depends on reciprocal altruism, but since we have not been completely deselected, we had a fucntion in the past. I think you would enjoy reading, "The Selfish Gene."

I absolutely do not feel like a prey animal in my perspective. If someone messes with me, I will make them sorry for it.

I don’t think that it’s so much a lack of instinct, because social skills aren’t an inherent instinct in any species. They are a learned skill.

Baby animals learn social skills through playing with their siblings, parents, and/or any other animals in the pack. Any puppy or kitten taken away from its mother and siblings too soon, and not exposed to other animals, will grow up to have very poor social skills. These are the dogs that try to play with other dogs despite repeated warning growls, or the cats that never learned to keep their claws retracted during play. They learn all this stuff through regular interaction with other animals, not because it is instinctual.

The proverbial “child raised by a pack of wolves” would probably display some very autistic-like behaviours, having never had the chance to interact with other humans and learn the set of social skills necessary for normal human communication and interaction.

Our problem is that we DID grow up exposed to normal human interaction, we just didn’t learn it, or were unable to learn it. But just like someone with dyslexia can develop coping strategies and learn to read in his own, unique way, we can learn to develop our own coping strategies to overcome this. We just won’t do it in the same way an NT does.

Just my opinion, of course.