Are Autistic people more/less likely to be bad/evil?
no more than anyone else can be, i think.
my friend's ex boyfriend is aspie and he assaulted her and emotionally manipulated her ("if you leave i will kill myself"). so that's pretty damn evil in my book.
i don't think autistic people are incapable of evil simply because of the nature of the neurology. no.
ASPartOfMe
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painful hypersensitivity
The following are normal everyday behaviors among neurotypicals: lying about their feelings; avoiding sensitive subjects that are glaringly obvious; leaving important words unsaid; pretending to like things they don’t like; pretending they’re not feeling an emotion that they’re clearly feeling; using language to hide, obscure, and skirt crucial issues; attacking people who frighten them without ever realizing they’re full of fear; stopping all forward progress on a project without ever realizing they’re full of anger and grief; and claiming that they are being rational when huge steamy clouds of emotion are pouring out of them. Neurotypicals are often emotionally exhausting.
And here’s the big ugly secret: Neurotypical behavior isn’t empathic — in fact, it’s often counter-empathic and filled with noise, static, emotional absurdity, and confusion.
But even amidst all of this static and confusion, many of my autistic friends were achingly, scathingly aware of the social world around them. I mean hilariously, dead-on aware, if you would only listen to them. In fact, they were as uncommonly aware of the social world as some of my wildly empathic friends were. What I saw in these people was not a lack of empathy, but a difficulty in dealing with an often-overwhelming sensory onslaught, from the outside world, from their struggle to decipher neurotypical social absurdities, and from inside their own brains. (empaths on the autism spectrum part 1)
My autistic friends were incredibly sensitive to sounds (especially very quiet sounds that many neurotypicals can ignore), colors, patterns, vibrations, scents, the wind, movement (their own and that of the people around them), the feeling of their clothing, the sound of their own hair and their breathing, food, touch, numbers, animals, social space, social behavior, electronics, the movement of traffic, the movement of trees and birds, ideas, music, juxtapositions between voice and body movements, the bizarre, emotion-masking signaling neurotypicals call “normal behavior” … many of my friends were struggling to stand upright in turbulent and unmanageable currents of incoming stimuli that could not be stopped, bargained with, ignored, moderated, or organized.
In short, my autistic friends were overwhelmingly, intensely, unremittingly, outrageously empathic — not merely in relation to emotions and social cues, but to every possible aspect of their environment.
Being on the Spectrum is a very difficult thing when the world around you — with its constant noise, confusion, emotional inconsistency, and demands for attention — is built for neurotypicals who aren’t aware that everything is engineered for their comfort.
The lack of awareness neurotypicals have — their blind acceptance of their world “the way it is,” without concern for the needs of others — is called privilege in sociology. For example, a young white man who lives in Northern California in 2011 and states that racism is no longer a problem is speaking from the ignorance of racial privilege. He may not be cruel or inherently racist himself, but from his social location, he cannot see or experience any direct racism; therefore, he mistakenly infers that racism doesn’t exist. Privilege is a form of mind-blindness that is, sadly, absolutely common in neurotypicals.
Neurotypical privilege relies upon the same unaware and insufficient reasoning as racial privilege does: So if I don’t experience the sound of the dryer next door as being extremely loud, then it shouldn’t bother you, and you certainly shouldn’t start rocking, flapping your hands, hitting yourself, or pulling out strands of your hair in order to deal with the aural overload. Or, if you know two people who have been fighting for months on end, and you clearly understand all of the issues that they’ve been ignoring, then you should never, ever speak aloud about it, because that’s not how we do things! It’s rude! Wake up and act like a neurotypical!
What? Ouch! This “normal” social behavior — this insensitive and emotionally incongruent behavior — is only deemed normal because neurotypicals agree that it is. Neurotypical social behavior isn’t objectively correct or better than any other way …. in fact, neurotypical functioning is tremendously problematic, and as I wrote above, it is often deeply unempathic as well.
Neurotypicals who learn to manage in the social world aren’t displaying signs of superior mind-sight, functioning mirror neurons, or a healthy dose of empathy. Neurotypicals — for whom mind-blindness and a lack of empathy are common, everyday behaviors — learn to manage because the neurotypical social world was created by them and for them.
As a huge majority of people in this world neurotypicals vary widely. What you describe above is a subset of them. There have been many NT's that have suffered and died because they do not accept the idea that this is the way the world is and always will be. Lying about feelings, avoiding sensitive subjects? You do not know too many of my bosses, friends, and acquaintances in my life.
NT Privilege? There is no NT privilege. What it is, is that they in general, are treated as they should be a lot more often the Autistic people but this varies widely by person and situation.
In general NT's tend to be more like what you describe them then Autistic people. Individuals are just that individuals and should be judged that way, not by their neurology.
Nothing I said above should be construed to mean I do not understand the harm done to Autistic people by the disadvantage of being a small minority and discrimination subtle, outright, intentional, unintentional, individual and systematic.
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DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity
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“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman
Evil?
Is the 'evil' part all about conventionality and morality that society dictates? Or emotions and intentions driven from the human heart?
NT surely gets the former right most at the time. Gets autistics blamed for having that part wrong.
And both are just as equally guilty at the latter because we ARE humans.
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leejosepho
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That is my own deal, but some or even much of that could have come from how I was raised. In any case, I have never been skilled in lying or cheating and I have always preferred going to someone (even to the police) and admitting something wrong I had done rather than dealing with the fear, shame and/or sense of guilt over being discovered, found out or caught.
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I think people with autism or Asperger's are more likely to be the victims of violence or other types of crime. Autistic people are also likely to be falsely accused of a crime because of the lack of eye contact with law enforcement, and behaviors such as stimming that could potentially lead to trouble with police who aren't familiar with the autism spectrum.
lostonearth35
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If the geniuses out there really do believe we're all evil and violent, you'd think we'd be able to take advantage of it:
- Please turn down the volume on the TV. You don't want me to get "violent".
- I'm sorry, but I might get "violent" if we go inside that noisy crowded building.
- Do you really think calling me a r***rd is worth my getting "violent" with the entire school in a few weeks?
- Please turn down the volume on the TV. You don't want me to get "violent".
- I'm sorry, but I might get "violent" if we go inside that noisy crowded building.
- Do you really think calling me a r***rd is worth my getting "violent" with the entire school in a few weeks?
Funny enough, this is how people in school assumed about me when I was younger.
And the whole thing did came true. Except no one knew why was I 'moody and violent', and I was undiagnosed.
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I was violent in 6th grade but only because I was a bullied victim and kids would tell me to make them whenever I told them to leave me alone. Then my school tried to say I had a behavior. Then when I pushed a girl in her seat because she wouldn't quit touching me after I had kept ignoring it, they tried to use that to justify me being violent and having a behavior so I needed to go to a behavior class but my therapist said I was provoked. I pushed the kid pretty hard because she nearly fell out of her chair. I don't even remember this, my mom told me this story.
When I was 16 I found a short cut to my anxiety so I thought I could have ODD to get my way because Frankie always got his way using his ODD. I thought then ODD was just a behavior kids chose to do to get their way and they chose to be mean and nasty and spiteful to adults and other kids and be violent to get what they want and doctors just had a label for it because it was a behavior people didn't like. So I tried it and instead I was threaten with a mental hospital. My mom would have the nerve to send me away and told me Frankie's mother wasn't very smart if she is giving into him so he wouldn't be a bully to her and she shouldn't have given into him before when he was little. She told me it was actually very hard for her to make that decision to send me away if I wouldn't quit trying to be Frankie but she and my brother had a right to be safe in their home.
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Son: Diagnosed w/anxiety and ADHD. Also academic delayed.
Daughter: NT, no diagnoses.
Being autistic may indeed make one less susceptible to socialized adherence to social norm. Would that make an autistic more likely to question common standards of morality rather than intuitively accepting it without question? Yes, perhaps. But like noted above, it depends on the individual.
Though it may be a bucket of worms, I do wonder about autistic alexithymics, though. Depending on individual programming, I can sometimes well see how such a person could take on an alternative set of behaviours that would come unimpeded by a normal emotional makeup. Does that mean an autistic alexithymic is more likely to be a "bad" person? No, but the potential is there in ways kept in check ordinarily.
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Alexithymia - 147 points.
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Anyway, I believe Hitler had paranoid schizophrenia and not Asperger's. Not that people with schizophrenia are all dangerous, either. Most aren't
I agree with everything that's said in this post. After being ostracised by my family for my harmless special interests my whole life, I feel a bit vengeful once in a while.
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Anyway, I believe Hitler had paranoid schizophrenia and not Asperger's. Not that people with schizophrenia are all dangerous, either. Most aren't
I agree with everything that's said in this post. After being ostracised by my family for my harmless special interests my whole life, I feel a bit vengeful once in a while.
Sometimes I wish they'd come up with a game that all Aspies would be good at but which would push NTs to their absolute limits. Then they could see just how on the verge of insanity they need to go in order to be up there with the best of us, and they'd have an inkling of what the world has put us through.
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Yup. I found this especially amusing watching Ben Affleck in The Accountant. Affleck's performance was spot-on, as an autistic adult, but the overall notion of an autistic John Wick was just ridiculous.
I can believe an autistic person being obsessed with firearms and even being a crack shot, but someone with overwhelming hypersensitivity to sensory stimuli being able to wade through a hail of gunfire and hand grenades and defeat multiple attackers - gimme a break.
And the notion the character's father had "If light and sound are painful to him, he needs more, not less." What a dick. Immersion Therapy does not work. And you could not force an autistic kid to become a proficient martial arts master. it would only result in meltdowns and hatred. Now if he chose to pursue it as an obsessive interest, maybe. But the likelihood of his becoming Bruce Lee - slim to none.
painful hypersensitivity
The following are normal everyday behaviors among neurotypicals: lying about their feelings; avoiding sensitive subjects that are glaringly obvious; leaving important words unsaid; pretending to like things they don’t like; pretending they’re not feeling an emotion that they’re clearly feeling; using language to hide, obscure, and skirt crucial issues; attacking people who frighten them without ever realizing they’re full of fear; stopping all forward progress on a project without ever realizing they’re full of anger and grief; and claiming that they are being rational when huge steamy clouds of emotion are pouring out of them. Neurotypicals are often emotionally exhausting.
And here’s the big ugly secret: Neurotypical behavior isn’t empathic — in fact, it’s often counter-empathic and filled with noise, static, emotional absurdity, and confusion.
But even amidst all of this static and confusion, many of my autistic friends were achingly, scathingly aware of the social world around them. I mean hilariously, dead-on aware, if you would only listen to them. In fact, they were as uncommonly aware of the social world as some of my wildly empathic friends were. What I saw in these people was not a lack of empathy, but a difficulty in dealing with an often-overwhelming sensory onslaught, from the outside world, from their struggle to decipher neurotypical social absurdities, and from inside their own brains. (empaths on the autism spectrum part 1)
My autistic friends were incredibly sensitive to sounds (especially very quiet sounds that many neurotypicals can ignore), colors, patterns, vibrations, scents, the wind, movement (their own and that of the people around them), the feeling of their clothing, the sound of their own hair and their breathing, food, touch, numbers, animals, social space, social behavior, electronics, the movement of traffic, the movement of trees and birds, ideas, music, juxtapositions between voice and body movements, the bizarre, emotion-masking signaling neurotypicals call “normal behavior” … many of my friends were struggling to stand upright in turbulent and unmanageable currents of incoming stimuli that could not be stopped, bargained with, ignored, moderated, or organized.
In short, my autistic friends were overwhelmingly, intensely, unremittingly, outrageously empathic — not merely in relation to emotions and social cues, but to every possible aspect of their environment.
Being on the Spectrum is a very difficult thing when the world around you — with its constant noise, confusion, emotional inconsistency, and demands for attention — is built for neurotypicals who aren’t aware that everything is engineered for their comfort.
The lack of awareness neurotypicals have — their blind acceptance of their world “the way it is,” without concern for the needs of others — is called privilege in sociology. For example, a young white man who lives in Northern California in 2011 and states that racism is no longer a problem is speaking from the ignorance of racial privilege. He may not be cruel or inherently racist himself, but from his social location, he cannot see or experience any direct racism; therefore, he mistakenly infers that racism doesn’t exist. Privilege is a form of mind-blindness that is, sadly, absolutely common in neurotypicals.
Neurotypical privilege relies upon the same unaware and insufficient reasoning as racial privilege does: So if I don’t experience the sound of the dryer next door as being extremely loud, then it shouldn’t bother you, and you certainly shouldn’t start rocking, flapping your hands, hitting yourself, or pulling out strands of your hair in order to deal with the aural overload. Or, if you know two people who have been fighting for months on end, and you clearly understand all of the issues that they’ve been ignoring, then you should never, ever speak aloud about it, because that’s not how we do things! It’s rude! Wake up and act like a neurotypical!
What? Ouch! This “normal” social behavior — this insensitive and emotionally incongruent behavior — is only deemed normal because neurotypicals agree that it is. Neurotypical social behavior isn’t objectively correct or better than any other way …. in fact, neurotypical functioning is tremendously problematic, and as I wrote above, it is often deeply unempathic as well.
Neurotypicals who learn to manage in the social world aren’t displaying signs of superior mind-sight, functioning mirror neurons, or a healthy dose of empathy. Neurotypicals — for whom mind-blindness and a lack of empathy are common, everyday behaviors — learn to manage because the neurotypical social world was created by them and for them.
Hear! Hear!
_________________
"I don't mean to sound bitter, cynical or cruel - but I am, so that's how it comes out." - Bill Hicks
Anyway, I believe Hitler had paranoid schizophrenia and not Asperger's. Not that people with schizophrenia are all dangerous, either. Most aren't
I agree with everything that's said in this post. After being ostracised by my family for my harmless special interests my whole life, I feel a bit vengeful once in a while.
Sometimes I wish they'd come up with a game that all Aspies would be good at but which would push NTs to their absolute limits. Then they could see just how on the verge of insanity they need to go in order to be up there with the best of us, and they'd have an inkling of what the world has put us through.
I'd also like to see a game like that as well.
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