Are we bad people?

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I have next to no friends, and those I do have I'm constantly pushing away. Never had any sort of love life. Whenever I leave the house I find myself putting up walls between me and everyone else because I either can't see anything good about them, or I'm immediately convinced that they'll turn on me someday. I'm increasingly finding myself to be extremely judgemental of other people, too. All this time, I've told myself that these are just symptoms of having Asperger's, but lately I've been putting serious thought towards whether or not I'm just a bad person. Like the saying goes, if you meet one jerk, you met one jerk. If you meet two jerks, you should stop to think. If you meet three jerks, you're the jerk. So, where do I draw the line between just being a normal, awkward, insecure aspie and being a legitimatey bad person?

being (too) judgemental can be improved by stopping the internal dialogue, already better said here:
http://www.pathwaytohappiness.com/writi ... n_head.htm

I struggle with this as well.

I often find myself in a place where I am judging all NTs, and to be honest, in some ways they are not very likable.

Having said that, I don't actually know any other ASD people outside of Wrong Planet.

All of the people I know and with which I regularly interact are NTs and the relationships I have with some of these people are incredibly rewarding.

When I focus on that aspect of my life, my internal dialog changes.

When I was in my early 20s, I hated most people. I turned that anger outwards. I fought a lot, even though I wasn't very good at it.

It changed, but it took a while.

Part of it was that the people with which I spent my time changed (both the internal and the who), and part of it was that I changed.

If you are still living in the same town in which you grew up, it is much easier to judge the peoples. I went as far as possible.

I think we often lack the NT's ability to lie to ourselves and to others.

One of the things that keeps coming back to me is an argument I got in a week or so ago. It was on Facebook, and somehow the argument became about rape. What seemed like everyone in the comments was against me, and I kept being told "Rape isn't always sexual." I said, yeah, it was. They said that, by definition, "rape" just meant to have something taken away from you. I responded, "Try telling a judge that you were raped because your house was robbed, or because your car was stolen. He'll laugh at you. The fact that women are trying to classify EVERYTHING as rape these days is pathetic. If you're robbed or assaulted, call it that. Don't call it rape. Rape is a very specific crime, and trying to use it for other things is just a way to get attention."

I mean, *I* see the logic in what I said, but apparently that makes me a misogynistic pig. Am I a bad person for saying things like that?

I don't like the use of the word "we" in questions or statements, it's impossible to speak on behalf of people who you don't even know. What defines a good or a bad person? It's subjective. If you truly believe yourself to be a bad person and other's agree with you then perhaps it's time to try and change something about yourself. It's all a matter of perspective, if having no friends is a problem for you then for your own peace of mind it would help to address the issue, but if having no friends is not a problem for you, then there's nothing to solve.

Rape is a word which is all too frequently used in the wrong context nowadays but you are absolutely wasting your time arguing with other people about what they choose to apply the word to. There is such a thing as freedom of choice and people are entirely free to use words as they see fit. The meanings of words can change over time, they're not fixed. You are not a "bad person" for sicking to the correct dictionary definition of rape but others can view you as being inflexible and overbearing if you keep pushing your opinion while disregarding theirs. Your remark "The fact that women are trying to classify EVERYTHING as rape these days is pathetic" could be seen as mysogynistic, as it isn't just exclusively womem who misuse the word rape in connection with robberies and other non sexual events.

I think the problem you ran into wasn't about the definition, but was about communication.

I read the book "a field guide to earthlings", it help me understand NTS better.

Generally, when they communicate socially, they are sharing symbols and normalizing beliefs.

That is not what I do. I exchange data.

I go out to dinner with co-workers. I don't know how to have a conversation that doesn't involve what I do (work, botany, geology, rock climbing).

I can't have a conversation about the weather or what I watched on TV (I don't watch it).

They can spend hours just normalizing their group beliefs about which fashions or which politicians are correct.


So, these people on FriendFace (facebook) were probably trying to have one kind on interaction while you were trying to have a different kind.

Another thing that's been bugging me is, I work at the Walmart corporate office. My job is to take customer service calls. One day I got a call from a mother who was in tears, saying that her son ate a banana she had bought at Walmart, and the banana had blood inside the peel. Apparently this is something people do to try and give people aids, and the mother was in hysterics trying to figure out what to do. I told her there wasn't anything I could do except send a complaint to the store she bought it from. If she wanted more help than that, she should take her son to a doctor. And through it all, I didn't feel bad at all. I mean, yeah, I sympathize with the kid for possibly getting aids, but I'm not losing sleep over it or anything. Is that wrong? Like, aren't people supposed to feel really, really bad when they're asked for help with things like this, and they have to turn them away?

Have you heard of Alexithymia? It's a fairly common trait with people who are on the autistic spectrum. You can read abut it here and also take an online questionnaire to see if you have the traits yourself.

Alexithymia: Emotional Blindness

I am strongly alexithymic and while it was interesting to read about the boy and the banana in the same situation it would arouses absolutely no emotional response from me whatsoever. The chances of getting AIDS from a banana, that's been injected with blood, are minimal. The infected blood would need to come into contact with the boy's own blood, so unless he had bleeding mouth ulcers or something similar the odds of that happening are virtually non existent.

I got 118 points, which rated me high on that test (even if it looked like I was just past the yellow mark). I actually think I'm better at understanding emotions than most aspies, though, because of the books I write. I have to be able to get inside my characters' head to write them well, you know? That means that whatever they're feeling, I have to be able to imagine how that feels. Then again, I may just be writing them from an aspie's point of view, but nobody's complained about that aspect as of yet, so who knows? lol

It sounds like you have been hurt so many times that you have gotten into a state of wanting to protect yourself. I have had people in my life appearing to be my friends before it turns out that they never liked me at all and either used me for things or just latched themselves on so they can pick up on my quirks and complain about them.

Another thing to consider though is there isn't something wrong with you, there's something wrong with them. If they can't accept you for who you are then they aren't good friend material, to begin with. Most people are not capable of being good friends from day 1. A lot of them have selfish self-centered motivations, to begin with where they attach really wanting something in return or want something else but you are in their lives until that something else comes along.

It sounds like you have low self-esteem when it comes to friends and that needs some improvement.
1. You could do to listen to Jennifer O'toole
2. The Asperger Experts
3. Maybe look into improving your social skills
4. Trying some mindfulness and guided meditation exercises on anxiety.

This kind explains how I feel. You might need to follow it for the next couple of days after this one.

http://www.gocomics.com/bloom-county/2016/09/13

I've also found it helpful to consider the different reasons people have conversations. Most people I talk to just want superficial connections. They seem to want to neither share useful information nor understand each other on a deeper level.

ThisAdamGuy, not understanding others doesn't make you a bad person. It's understandable why you might snap to quick judgments, though it might help to try not to judge if you're not sure you fully understand.

As for the conversation about rape not being sexual, I've heard that before. The people who've said that added that it's more about power than anything else. Maybe the Facebook people got upset when you spoke negatively of their motives. Maybe they didn't like your judgment. Your logic was fine, just that you started with different premises than they did.

As for not feeling for the crying mother on the phone, that doesn't make you a bad person either. You did what you could for her. In the end, what you did was more important than what you didn't feel.

I have also read about it being a crime of power, not passion.

Just as I think carrying handguns is not about protection, but about power.

I've had many of the same thoughts I see posted here. I've only had a few good friends ever. But within a year or two after high school we grew apart. These people ended up saying some hurtful things and I'm now in my early 30's and I have not really had a "friend" since. I've done so much analyzing wondering if I was not a good person and that's why all this happened. Sometimes I think these people were just using me and not good friends themselves. Looking back I think I did not understand what a friend was and I accepted what they gave me. For example one never bought me a Christmas gift even though I would get him one.

They were outsiders too and I wonder if they only were around me because I was blind to the negative traits a neurotypical person would see. But then I think maybe I was doing things that made me so angry that's it's only fair they reacted the way they did. But all of my former friends are now married and from my facebook checking in they seem to have lots of other friends as well.

I like to use the analogy of Cichlid fish. For those who do not know they are a family of fish that are known to be aggressive. Some types much more so than others. So if you want to keep them you accept they are going to pick at each other a bit in the tank. There are two types those from Africa and those form South America. You can not keep them together both because of different water requirements and also because they can not understand each other''s body language. So they will not establish their own corner of your tank eventually they will just kill each other. So it's like I am from the wrong continent and it's my fault because I am in a world where every other fish in my tank just understands how to deal with other fish. It's only fair they will be angry when I don't respect those rules.

You are right, and it was good that you said it. Some people (and often its the most active ones in this type of forums) terribly overstate things, and call the things by the wrong name. When talking about "rape culture" for example, it makes sense to come up with other forms of dominance towards women like trying to take them away their means of communication, or beating them, but summing all those acts under the term" rape" is idiot.

I am also very much against calling insulting someone or telling him or her anything negative about her behavior in the appropriate negative wording "violent communication" (unless you are threatening them with beating them up, or you have conditioned them by giving them a slap each time you say a particular word, or so). Some people behave like a**holes or like psychopaths, so why shouldnt you tell them that they are "a**holes" or "psychopaths". It is necessary for them, because if you conceal the message, most of them will not get it and lurk themselves into believing that they are quite O.K. or even just surpress what they have done to you (which happens very regularly in relationships with the worst acts).