EzraS wrote:
I have been in special ed school with aspie and autie classmates my whole life. The predominantly autistic population is not that much different in how they treat each other.
The strong still picks on the weak. The less impaired look down on the more impaired, the less different look down on the more different. The more impaired and different despise the less impaired and different etc.
I think unless you have a population where everyone is 100% identical, there is always going to be contention. The haves and have-nots, the alpha and beta types, the top dog and the under dog, the majority and minority.
Can I say how much I value your posts, Ezra? You provide a much needed perspective on a lot of topics. It could be so easy for people who sort of manage in the world without a lot of supports to completely dominate the discussion here on WP. Self-reference is so difficult to get around, we all depend a lot on the people with different life experiences to speak up.
How on earth did you get so mature so fast? I was pretty clueless at 15, like most people.
One thing that perhaps changes a bit with time is that the older people get, the more of them realize that we are all dependent on one another, for example in the wake of a personal crisis. In particular, people who are themselves very average and intolerant of differences end up having kids who are weird in some way, and then they have to adjust their thinking or end up with a seriously messed up kid.