What if we turn it around?

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A lot of the friends I have are diagnosed with ASD. When I'm with them in a group and a NT joins in, funny things happen:

- The NT feels left out.
- The NT doesn't know what to do with his hands
- The NT doesn't know were to look.
- The NT doesn't know how to join in the conversation
- The NT doesn't understand the social rules (or lack thereof)

These situations got me thinking; what if NT's would make up the minority of the world? We keep on saying that we lack social skills, but we only do when we compare our selfs to the NT's. When we compare our selfs to each other, we are pretty social. With one of my best friends, I can sit on the couch all day just reading books, not saying anything and still being happy for the social contact. NT's don't understand these things, they fill everything with words, gestures and tones.

Anyone else here who has experienced things like this? What would be your advice to NT's when it comes to 'your' social rules? What social skills do they miss?

Indeed. I've seen first hand how social we can be with each other, it's just out in the NT majority world that things are different. All of a sudden you are bombarded with unwritten rules and gestures that must be interpreted quickly, otherwise the NT loses interest or misunderstands you.

One can fantasise how it would be the other way round. If we then become the norm, I think it would actually make our social skills better than they currently are because many social rules, expressions, forms of body language etc. will become less common.

Since I am the only Aspie around where I live, I have no first hand experience, but I always thought it would be that way, because whenever I come here to his forums and someone addresses an issue he has, or something that bothers him or something that he doesn't understand, most of the time I sit here and think to myself: "Yes, oh my god, yes, that is exactly how it is!"

NT Syndrome

I don't think that most people who are AS lack social skills altogether, but they just go about spending time with each other and making connections in a different way.

I find that when a group of aspies get together, they have similar patterns of communication and interact with each other in similar ways, although its not necessarily the 'correct' way. It's like they speak the same emotional and social language. When an NT comes into the group, just acknowlede to em that they need to expect an awkward or unconventional conversational/social style, and that you're not tryin to intentionally leave them out.

this is true, ASD groups tend to mix and bond together simularly to a NT group.

if the world was turned around though, with NT being the minority (disregarding the face that *we* would be the NTs then ), aspies would still remain aspies, as we are some kind of mix or in-betweeners for ASD and NT

I made a thread like this some time last year, but people on WP didn't seem to know what I was on about. They thought I was trying to explain a fact, when it was just a fantasy. (Perhaps those what answered to my original post were too much of literal thinkers, I don't know).
Anyway - I like this sort of topic. It's so interesting to think how life would be if people on the spectrum were the norm - you know - just how most people naturally were and always had been. We probably wouldn't know any better and nobody would think anything, because life would always be that way, the same as it is now.
So say if mainstream school was typically full of ASD children and ASD teachers, and one or two ''neurotypicals'' were there. I think the whole school would be in exact order, there wouldn't be much bullying (because most Aspies are ''too nice''), and there would probably be really huge libraries or something. There wouldn't be no bells (because Aspies don't like bells!), and there wouldn't be much friendships about. Probably the very few ''neurotypicals'' would pair up with eachother.

And it'd be much, much easier, I think. Just think - you can cover your ears in the street when a loud vehicle (like a motorbike) goes past, because almost everybody else would be doing it. You can wear what you want, because most Aspies don't care what they look like and so don't care what others look like.....

Then again, if it were this way around, just my luck I would probably have been born neurotypical, left out once again!

Very true. So there would be friendships.

I have been one of the 'highest functioning' in a room before, and it was a strange experience.

I think the most interesting thing about other auties is how they just do their own thing and it's like, you're hardly there at all! I guess that's how I make other people feel at times.