Does you anyone feel normal people get more things?

Post Reply New Topic

That was the point of my earlier post. Everyone faces challenges. The nature of the challenge may be distinct between the groups but in no way does this mean any particular group has it easier.
There are countless people struggling to get by, heck, even getting off the ground is a challenge! Then there are the ones that fly. The ones that fly tho, didn't come with metaphorical wings. They worked at it.
Taking on a victim mentality is both defeatist and self-fulfilling.

There should be consideration for differences (within the workplace or within relationships for example) but to suggest that "normal people" have it easier is propagating an attitude and feeding into the myth that NTs determine your fate.

You determine your fate. No one else.

There's a lot more to acquiring success than your neurology. There's autistic people who've been far more succesful than some NT's and vice-versa. There's a lot more factors to take into account.

My theory is that success requires 3 basic things: talent, luck and hard work. You only have control over the latter, which is why most succesful people coincidentally are also hard workers. People that are succesful but didn't/don't work hard were probably very talented or just lucky (you can probably think of some examples).

Your neurology would fit into the 'talent' category. If you have ASD you may be less talented than NT's in some things and better in others. If you're at an overall disadvantage because of your ASD, that means you'll have to compensate for that through either working harder (or being luckier, which is out of your hands).

What it boils down to to me is that autistic people have a harder time in this world and are therefore forced to work harder for the same things. At least, that's how I feel about it.

Do you realise that to be autistic means that a person has impaired abilities in certain areas?

I find this question to be fairly redundant.
Firstly, none of these things come easily to anyone, they all are achieved by putting in effort, so it's not really fair to say "normal people GET more things", they're not handed these things, they earn them.
Secondly, it's safe to say that most people with ASD often struggle with social interaction, which can create extra challenges when it come to achieving these things, but there are many other potential obstacles in someones life which will make these achievements more difficult to attain. Autistics and "normal people" alike, all have their own set of unique obstacles to overcome.
Thirdly, So what? Some people might have life easier than others, life is not fair nor should it be. You need to assess what it is that YOU want in life and figure out what You need to do to achieve it. Looking at other people and thinking that they have it easier, wont get you any closer to getting what you want.

Last edited by mattdens on 18 Feb 2016, 11:57 am, edited 1 time in total.

<--- Doesn't want what he hasn't got.

So being born with good health and affluent parents doesn't give a person an edge?


That may be true, but seeing things the way they are doesn't make me a victim. It just means I know what I'm dealing with.

Yes, you must be new here, a lot of people normally ignore my posts, or only post to object to something I've said. So you can imagine my surprise at not only being "quoted" but also receiving thanks for it.

I don't blame people for not replying to most of what I write, as it stands, I'm not particularly relatable to anyone here. I've been married three times, divorced once, outlived all three of my wives, I'm Clan born (a bit different from an ordinary family), had a rough childhood, my Autism was cured/treated in late childhood (this makes me a walking, talking, contradiction to 90% of the Forum who all believe Autism is incurable, and resent everything to the contrary), I'm reasonably successful in communication/manipulation (though only through experience/practice, again, people aren't to fond of this as it implies anyone can achieve success in <insert subject matter here> if they work hard enough, and really put their mind to it). I've actually met a lot of Sociopaths and Psychopaths (many of whom I'm friends with) and know them to be good decent folk, sure they have their problems, but they're nowhere near as bad as Hollywood, or even the media in general, would have people believe.

Even when it just comes down to Neuraltypicals, I don't believe in the "Autistic fueled propaganda" for a second. I am fully aware of just how rough their lot is, that they often have it just as bad (if not worse) than those of us with Autism. If you think about the safety nets alone (or the lack thereof) as much as the adults who have Autism complain about the lack of support they have now compared to when they were children, most Neuraltypicals don't have anywhere as remotely close to the level of fallback support that is currently being bemoaned by those with Autism. If they crash, they will burn, maybe a friend or relative will pull them from the wreck in time, but you wouldn't want to bet your life on it.

Again, it all comes back to perspective, I could post something cliche here about just surviving and not really living, with the sincerest of hopes that someone on this board will listen, take a stand and then fail, and then take another stand, and probably fail again, repeating the process over and over again. Until eventually, they start to fail a little less, and bit by bit ever so gradually, they start to succeed. In time it will get easier, it will never be easy, but it will be easier, and as the months become years, and the years become decades, suddenly the way they were before is but a distant memory, something that can be remembered but never repeated, except perhaps pantomimed in mocking jest.

Ah, sorry about that boofle, when it comes to plight of others, the Idealist in me really wants to reach out to people and write paragraph after paragraph. I thought I'd gotten over writing, but I guess not.

___________________________________________________________________

Last edited by Idealist on 18 Feb 2016, 12:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think that's really awesome and bad-ass
I think determination is the thing that makes it for most everyone and sometimes the saying what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger is very true. However I also don't think it is particularly equitable either and I think if we stopped creating barriers for lots of people in specific ways we would see a lot more productive value and contributions for people in the world.
Also just in general a huge part of success is luck whether people like to admit it or not- however trying over and over and over I think increases your chances of having luck with any given venture.

It can seem that way, but its not entirely the case...they can have struggles and great difficulty getting those things to, sort of depends on the individual and their circumstances.

A couple things, first whilst it hardly means neurotypicals have 'everything' easier it is true autism/aspergers is considered a disorder and or disability, which means we can have significant difficulties that normal people don't have to deal with so in a vague sense normal people as a group probably have some things easier than autistics as a group. But of course pointing fingers at who has it the easiest or hardest is good way for a discussion to never go anywhere and make everyone defensive.

Also though some that fly did indeed come with the metaphorical wings, some haven't so its not entirely true every one who succeeds did a lot to work at it...and everyone who fails simply did not. Nothing in life is that simple anyways.

I don't have a problem not having a spouse or children because I don't want either. It's society that has the problem, not me. The only traveling I enjoy doing is a weekend road trip with my mom to Halifax or New Brunswick in the summer. I've never been on a plane, I don't plan to get on one unless it's absolutely necessary. My mother sometimes talks about moving to Florida when she and dad retire, and they'll be taking me and even my grandmother with them. Not only do I worry about hurricanes and alligators and GUNS, but even if I really did want to go to Florida I'd want to be driven the whole way if we could.

I can handle the motion of a car. You can stop to stretch your legs and get a bite to eat. In a plane you are trapped about a million feet up in the air. I don't want to find out ever what it's like to throw up at that height. I don't want to see others doing it. It's bad enough when you're on the ground. I'm also afraid of what it will do to my ears because I've had such a bad time with them and I've read stories about people getting severe ear pain that lasts even after the flight. All these things scare me more than terrorists or even the plane crashing. My shrink once suggested I take some kind of tranquilizers just before the flight (naturally), but that scares me, too.

And where I live there are next to no jobs for people even if they're NT. For years the majority of jobs were industrial. But those days are over and the city refuses to accept technology and wants to stay in the 1940s.

boofle's a troll. don't feed it

Seems a lot of people in this thread either fall into one camp or the other. The one camp is "everybody has it hard, just work hard and be determined and you'll do OK." The other camp is "autism is a significant liability that makes everything harder for the person, and that's not a victim mentality, it's just the fact."

I think these are ridiculous poles to the argument. Of course autism makes things harder. And yet, of course an autistic person will fly higher if he flaps his arms really hard than if he never takes that leap at all.

I give my autistic daughter things she can't afford to buy herself because, well, I love her, and don't want her to go without. Does that mean she's taking the lazy route? Certainly not ... she really does suffer from several contributing disabilities. At the same time, I would acknowledge that she has at times been lazy or unenterprising, possibly because failing is so scary to her.

If I were not autistic .......... I'd probably have made a whole lot more money in my lifetime, and face a retirement of travel and comfort instead of one where watching TV has to satisfy my yearning for adventure and knowledge. Many, many of my peers are in that cushy situation about now, with their MDs and PhDs and MBAs and their investments. I don't resent them, I wish I could have been more like them. I wish I could have succeeded. As it is, I can barely manage a full time job, and it's a low wage one at that.

Don't nobody quote me please, or if you do, strip out the parts you aren't responding to. These nested quotes get way out of hand here.

I'm no troll. We can all agree to disagree, surely, but, calling me a troll is unreasonable.

Autistic or not the idea that that if a person works harder and smarter they will automatically have a better outcome then the lazy ones and that one controls everything about thier life is only partially true and naive. Attitude is a very important factor in sucessfull outcomes. It is far from the only factor as so many seem to believe.

Very well said.

The question was asked earlier "you don't think autistic people deserve special treatment, do you?"

The answer that seems evident to me is: of course they do.

By definition, people who are diagnosed with autism require some degree of support. This may be formal and provided in a therapeutic context or informal and provided by family or others, but it is special treatment and it is needed.

Even the most independent and materially successful autistic people have some way of working around the challenges their autistic traits create in their interactions with others and they need those special ways of living.