Jamesy wrote:
In terms of thinking and how they manage day to day situations or just thier general view on the world, what would the difference between a neurotypical way of thinking and an aspie way of thinking be?
Actually if you have aspergers and would be granted a wish to have a neurotypical brain for one day what differences would you expierence in terms of quality of life and how people treat you? Would it be shocking how different your life would feel? I am guessing insults would feel a lot less painful and stress would be managed more successfully?
I would like neurotypicals and aspies to answer my questions. Thanks.
Actually I don't think that people with AS have a more difficult time managing stress than NT's, I just think people with AS tend to have a different set of stressors, and are subjected to these stressors more frequently.
To give you an example which will tie in to what I am about to discuss, the terrorist attacks on 9-11 did not stress me. However, I still find having to go to a social event at a stranger's house fairly stressful.
I think people with AS only seem more stress prone and emotional than NT's because most of us are constantly subjected to the pressures of the NT world in the form of teachers, parents, and family members trying to get us to conform to their way of doing things. I constantly felt like everyone was trying to micromanage my life when I was younger, though I was perfectly fine when left on my own.
Concerning how I think NT's see the world...
The human animal is a highly social being, devoid of the physical attributes which allow a species to survive in a solitary fashion and "empty handed" against the elements. Humans are naked, physically weak, slow, have a poor sense of smell, and have children who, as infants are entirely dependent on their parents and have one of the slowest rates of development among mammals in the animal kingdom. Humans and their cousins have evolved to overcome these inherent weaknesses through social organization. In the most simple of human societies, humans needs other humans to survive as a species.
As such, the NT human is wired to be highly concerned with aspects of social interaction. Not only do they tend to spend a good deal of time socializing, they spend a good deal of time thinking about the act of socializing, and things pertaining to social issues not only in their own life, but in the lives of others. For example, who did what. Who is doing what. Who is dealing with what. Who does what in whatever annoying way. Who did what in whatever annoying way, and so on.
There is nothing wrong with this. It is the end result of an evolutionary scheme that works, however it has a subjective "down side" as it tends to result in somewhat of a narrow range of focus, and thus a narrow perception of the world, where the world is what can be seen in front of a person and "normal" is a fixed concept. I say subjective because whether it is actually a pro or con depends on how you want to look at it. The advantage of this "down side" is it allows people to operate in a sort of auto-pilot fashion where they generally go about their day somewhat obliviously but rather efficiently. It also leaves one with great potential for positive life changing experiences.
People with AS on the other hand generally have more of an introverted nature, and spend relatively little time with the act of socialization or dedicating much in the way of time to the ensuing thought processes above. This leaves us with a good deal of time of time to think about other things.
Some individuals with AS may spend this time thinking about a wide variety of things, while others with AS may spend this time thinking about a more narrow spectrum of things, such as "special interests", or we may simply spend much of this time day dreaming or idling in some random place of mental zen.
I think people with AS generally harbor more of an ability to acknowledge the world around them.
The reason the terrorist attacks on 9-11 did not disrupt my reality was because I could never perceive the illusion that reality should be a certain way.
As I am generally on the outside of things, I could never get caught up in much of anything, popular mindsets included, and so, while the western world was flourishing in the late 90's due to the economic dot com boom, I could only observe it. But this side lined vantage point also allowed me see the less positive issues brewing in the world at the time.
I was very aware of the discontent in the middle east concerning the policies of the west, and I had known of Osama Bin Laden from an article in Time magazine I think it was, which I must have read in the early 90's, in which he had declared war on the US.
Most people with such agendas do not have the resources to act on them, but I occasionally found myself thinking, what's to stop a billionaire with so many people not neccisarily sympathetic to his cause of spreading Islam in such a manner, but with similar sentiments towards western countries for entirely different reasons.
To compound that, there is the issue that golden eras, like great civilizations, don't fizzle, they grow exponentially until they collapse.
So I was not the least bit surprised when this happened. It did not come out of the blue but the average American spends little time thinking about things like this.
The downside to this is my deficit with social interaction and the fact that without this NT "auto-pilot" and illusion of normative reality, I'm not very efficient at getting much of the mundane, simple things done.
16 May 2010, 2:01 pm
OMG. Your mom's found the long-awaited magical autism cure. Alcohol, of course, why didn't anyone think of it before 
That's what happens when I drink.
