Autism - "different" or "inferior" WRT relationships?

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Yep. I see these as follows:

1) Being able to communicate clearly / effectively, being able to show that you extend equal value to other people and can play a fair game as well as acknowledging the level of difficulty other people are dealing with and showing them consideration.

2) Hierarchical boot-licking largely for its own sake (ie. supplication even when it serves no practical purpose outside of social climbing) as well as aggression / imperialism toward those who aren't well defended by others.

There's also 1.5'ish skills you should know - like as an average status person not chasing after someone who a Nobel Prize winner, famous triathlete, etc. is chasing, ie. a bit of 'knowing place' in the 'what not to do' sense, where 2) jumps full on into compelled behavior in the active sense. Similarly not walking into a social group like you run it when you've made no major sacrifices, haven't paid the personal time/dedication price of administration the way some others have, etc.

Yep. I see these as follows:

1) Being able to communicate clearly / effectively, being able to show that you extend equal value to other people and can play a fair game as well as acknowledging the level of difficulty other people are dealing with and showing them consideration.

2) Hierarchical boot-licking largely for its own sake (ie. supplication even when it serves no practical purpose outside of social climbing) as well as aggression / imperialism toward those who aren't well defended by others.

There's also 1.5'ish skills you should know - like as an average status person not chasing after someone who a Nobel Prize winner, famous triathlete, etc. is chasing, ie. a bit of 'knowing place' in the 'what not to do' sense, where 2) jumps full on into compelled behavior in the active sense. Similarly not walking into a social group like you run it when you've made no major sacrifices, haven't paid the personal time/dedication price of administration the way some others havesometime]

The final paragraph is a problem for me but with a domineering slant of dick swinging. My biggest dislike is people who haven't accomplished much on their lives demeaning and patronising others. Not just me but I see it happen to mostly happen to others if they have a sign of weakness. Nothing pushes buttons more than someone with a misplaced sense of accomplishment ripping shreds into people who have actually accomplished a lot more.

Basically, if one is living on benefits and hasn't done anything since leaving school, don't question the capabilities of someone who holds two degree's, a good business or is generally successful.

Knowing ones place is an important skill.

MOST ppl like to talk about THEIR interests.
Safer to talk about the OTHER person.
That is just the way it is.
A good heuristic to keep in your "back pocket".

Last edited by Pepe on 24 Feb 2023, 3:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

I am moving in the opposite direction.
I'm considering interacting with NT websites, also/more.
I have started and have found my sense of humour is appreciated.

STOP!
My head is hurting!
You are being too rational.
But, here, have a gold star anyway.

That's where people have to either stand up, gray rock (in the case that it's a narcissist), or if they really do think they're dealing with someone whose will intentioned but tone-deaf have the difficult conversation with them or at least whatever pieces of it that you think you can slip under their radar.

The problem with the things in that paragraph is that their endemic problems in the human biological condition (like any species competing over genes) where it's rude to try and grab power in an unjustified way (a bit like that's many men's impulses in early childhood that gets socialized out of them as a bad strategy), and to have power one should be showing active competence and be whatever benefit to the group they're in (social, family, or work-based) - ie. do as well as they can with cultivating integrity in how they reciprocate with others.

What can be really tricky in social situations is if you feel like you do have a lot to give but that it'll rattle those lines of hierarchy if you do. It's a situation that no one in it can do much about because abusing power is an ever-present temptation for most people and to break certain social customs of hierarchy is a bit like saying 'narcissism FTW'.

What does suck is that a lot of men who do end up low status places get treated like crap, get bitter, and you see them relatively often. People who've fought with the world and lost don't always go out swinging at whoever they can but plenty seem to.

My aunt is terrible for it. She dropped out of highschool yet disowned the entire family on my side. She's as working class as they get yet is a social climbing snob with no time for us. Ironically at the time all this started my side of the family were better educated than hers. She only ended up snobbish after my uncle started to become successful in business and assumed his social standing somehow rubbed off on her.

Years later she still doesnt have any high school education or achievements but looks down on my family and others. Every single member of my family has a longer lost of qualifications and achievements than her alone with almost everyone she meets in her day to day life.

Wasn't invited to my cousin's wedding and she pushes everyone's buttons.

I've also had a sinking realization that hits me off and on about my friends - ie. that the type of person I'd feel most comfortable with in a relationship would probably be a bit different but my most socially active close friend has a knee-jerk reaction to 'weird' of any kind in people and easy examples - I showed him a clip of Jamie Wheal talking about peak experiences, he saw his facial expressions and said there was something wrong with the guy, he's been getting into keyboard jazz more and saw a bunch of Youtube recommendations but didn't like the way Domi and JD Beck looked (again - they look 'weird' - and I had to joke with him that it's not the WEF trying to turn him non-binary, that they are good jazz musicians), and did see at least one time when I was out in our club district back in my 20's where someone was there who did 'vibe' with me but the ice wasn't broken yet, my friends treated her coldly like there was something wrong with her, and she was out.

While I get the impression that my friends would switch that off out of respect if I was actually dating someone I also realize that I really can't meet a partner through my friends because anyone who'd really be interested in me they're good at filtering out before I'd ever meet them.

People can usually sense an autistic. They seem to give off a vibe and how receptive people will be depends on the person but usually they're not receptive to an autistic. If they're not socially shunned they're treated like lower status people.

**Shooting rational brainwaves toward Pepe**

Bow to your master.

Here's another thing about this that bothers me.

I'm a guy who lives at home at 43. I live there not because I'm a NEAT but because there's no practical place for me to be other than here. I went to school for accounting but now program for a living and, as the pay isn't working out great, I'm able to make up the difference by actively getting involved in investing and day trading.

I get this weird thing with new neighbors, especially neighbors my age. Not all but some. For one it's true that I haven't been in a position to get to know any of them because things were really hectic for me during the lockdowns, they're married with kids and don't have intense social lives other than getting together with other couples who have kids, they love my parents and they'll go out and spend time with them, they know of me, but it's really like I'm living in this place of being the unknown variable no one knows how to handle. It's a bit like I've fallen though the cracks in the past but now it seems like it's amped up quite a bit and it's for no other reason than that I've been forced to carve an irregular path through life.

On one hand there are people out there who will not want to know someone like me because finding out that I did everything right, am not lazy, am not a slob, but I live with my parents at 43, that I don't have two heads, they would only want to interact with me if I was actually crazy or deeply inferior to them because for me to be in this situation and have any kind of integrity - that would just open so many cans of worms about what they believe about society, what society does or how it works, the worst possibility for them would be talking to me and finding out that I'm actually sane and competent. That's sort of there I realize, just my existing, is probably the kind of thing that would give a lot of people existential crises.

That's sort of disconnected from the first paragraph, maybe some overlap (most notably thinking about the kinds of people who'd have a narcissistic bearing without full-blown NPD diagnosis) but it's really like me finding out that the pressures of life are so intense on people that this is how men, even in families, lose track of friends and just end up with their wives and the guys who didn't get married end up in obscure / liminal places without much social integration and not many ways to go about it. At that point the whole conversation about 'can people with ASD have good social skills' is made almost irrelevant by structural factors where the social skills aren't even the problem.

What I had to accept about myself many years ago is that I'm a sort of 'niche' person, that smells like lack of confidence to NT's but - it's knowing that most people aren't interested in what interests me and thus just not forcing it on them. Some people really love talking to me and having me around, they're typically really curious people who didn't need to rip a bong to think about life or existence, and I find that most people just aren't like that. Somehow that gets interpreted as me having a problem by.... not people themselves but something more like subconscious automatic filters people run.

What's really strange about it is it's like none of this is my fault (I would say it's incredibly unlucky) but I have no control over it because there isn't a more optimal path available. It's not social skills, it's more a product of both what society does to itself in an autopoietic sense and then where it's landed me socioeconomically.

It's just strange how consciousness and it's fundamental goals seem to get bludgeoned and conquered by material concerns, to such a degree that that it divides everyone off into loneliness. If the social skills game won't get you life itself will..... it's kind of absurd.