Angry at folk that think there hard working.

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Obviously I was making a distinction between paid work and what you do when not in paid work

What I do is not typically classed as working

For most people work is paid work

I don't class it as work; I see it as helping to improve the system

work for me is paid drudgery and this is not drudgery

I acknowledge that I have been lucky in life to have certain traits and good family and environment and support growing up. However, I had to work a lot too and deal with a lot of discomfort to take advantage of the luck that I had and try to turn it into opportunities to do what I want to do in life, and still working on achieving many goals that have little to do with money or status.

Nice false dichotomy there. People don't just go on the dole because they're lazy and want to slip into oblivion. Many go on the dole because working is not feasible for them, for whatever reason. Many try to work because they've been raised with the belief that they have to work no matter what, and it burns them out because of the difficulties they had going on, that were not accommodated.



I already know I've made a difference - more than one difference, in fact. I just did not make that difference in a traditional working environment. But, I also can't function for very long in a traditional working environment, and I have tried to do so. Sometimes, perhaps harder than most people ever have to try. This is why I do not like the assumption that hard work automatically equals good results. I would agree that it probably always equals results, but for some they may not be good results at all. I am not trying to dismiss your work and effort and success, although I do think there are factors to each of these things that were in your favor that you have not acknowledged in this thread. What I am saying is that not everyone can get the same results for the same effort, and someone who ends up on disability isn't there because they weren't as good a person as you, or because they weren't as smart, or as hard-working, or that they didn't try, or didn't try hard enough, or gave up too easily, or whatever other rationalizations people tend to come up with to avoid facing the fact that they may have had it a bit easier than others.

So are you, in effect, saying that I have it a lot easier than anyone who has gone on disability? That's a large assumption and that's not automatically true. I know people with a fraction of my health problems that have, for whatever reason, decided it's not worth it. I don't blame them at all. Maybe I'm the crazy one, or just too stubborn to realize that life is too short to force myself to suffer so much. Basically, my limit will be when I drop on the floor. Yes, that's probably stupid of me.

I know you were not addressing me specifically, but I just wanted to point that out.

^^^
you are my stoic hero

I wrote "may have had it a bit easier." I didn't use those words just because they sounded good when I composed them - I used them because I did not want write something that meant "such people have certainly had it better" and also because I did not want to write something that meant "they had it a lot better."

Since I didn't write what you're telling me I wrote, I am not sure what else I can post in response to this.

I had some health issues that were so severe I had my disability ticket filled out with approval guaranteed--I just had to say yes.

Instead, I worked hard enough in rehab to not only return to full time work, but to marry, buy a house, and pay off the mortgage!

I know you didn't mean everyone. I was pointing out my own situation (not trying to argue) because what you wrote is something that people like me hear all the time. Many people think exactly what you wrote, but it's just an assumption that is extremely hurtful to people like me. That's all I meant.

Well Fnord, let's try to get to the reason.

Here are my questions.

1. What is considered hard work?
2. Is it ever possible for a person to work hard and still have bad luck and be angry?
3. Is it ever possible for a person not to work hard have excellent luck and be happy?
4. What is the extent of one's control of reality?
5. Didn't Ayn Rand write her beliefs down due to her anger at communism?
6. Why is life always considered noble yet death is always considered ignoble?

I will be honest. I do not agree with your opinion and Fnord's opinion.

First, I am not accusing Fnord of deception or lying. IMHO, people are innocent until proven guilty.

Second, there are missing gaps to Fnord's story. When Fnord states he was homeless was he literally on the streets? How was he able to get himself to the recruitment office?? What was his means of travel to get there? How did he survive day to day while he was homeless? Did he do it all by himself or did he have help along the way? There are gaps that he is leaving out that make no logical sense to me whatsoever.

Third, how was Fnord able to get through the military drills? How was he able to follow orders from the drill sergeants all of the time and understand what they wanted? How was he able to keep up with everyone else. ASD impact communication and impact flexibility. With respect to the military don't you have to be flexible especially to deal with High combat Situations. I believe Fnord did say he was in High Stress Situations and he saw combat. How did he get through all of this and what was his techniques?

I have missing gaps in my understanding of what his situation was, how he got through it and what his techniques were.

Fourth, why is confidence focused on so much in the USA? Why isn't the ability to do x focused on more than the belief itself? For me, my experiences are different than Fnords. Once I had the ability and knowledge my confidence automatically soared. For example, I major issues with switching lanes when I was driving. I eventually had to go to driving school for help. Mr. James Brock told all of us what we needed to do in specific terms. There was no talking about negativity or negative attitude.

Confidence and attitude is treated as though it is a muscle that can be voluntarily be moved. I ask, how is this possible. I do not grasp the rationale to this whatsoever or grasp Fnord's beliefs whatsoever.

From my perspective he is like most Americans who seem to put the cart before the horse. Confidence and attitude does not precede ability and circumstances. Ability and circumstances precede confidence and attitude. This is from my experiences. How does the converse of what I say hold up whatsoever?

From my perspective, confidence and attitude are important, in addition to ability and circumstances.

An attitude of giving things a try can put a person into the circumstance of gaining abilities. For eggsample, I often gave phone conversations a try when I was about ten or eleven years old, even though my communication and verbal skills were poor. I did not have the ability before I had the attitude of giving something that I sucked at a try. In the process of trying and sucking, then trying and sucking less, then trying and sucking less less less, I gained greater communication and verbal abilities. You are right that greater abilities precede greater confidence. I gained greater confidence in my communication and verbal abilities, which let me put myself into more circumstances or opportunities to gain more abilities. Preceding communication ability was also general confidence that I got from other things that I was good at. Even though I had no confidence in my communication abilities before giving things a try and gaining these abilities, I had confidence in me being generally capable and intelligent and also the attitude of giving things a try, so I could easily enter the circumstance of gaining abilities, which gained me also confidence and attidue in a positive feedback loop. With confidence and attitude, the effects of negative setbacks and bad things happening, such as me sucking in a situation, are blunted eggswell.

With your driving eggsample, I think that you did have the attitude of giving things a try and learning something from the driving class, so you could develop your driving abilities. But maybe someone else with a different attitude would have said that they definitely can't drive, so why bother with the class to learn and develop these abilities? There are also people who due to brain issues genuinely can't drive safely.

This is all so very interesting. This will sound weird to you.My neurology does not work like most peoples and it seems like it includes most autistics as well. Can you please try to explain further. This may be where I am getting my wires crossed with people. Maybe it is my pragmatic issues as well.

The best way I can explain myself to you is this. I do not know if it is good or not. My abilities already exist within me. Constraints are what keeps them from expressing themselves like lack of knowledge, ability, laws of physics, etc. There are those who wish to become the God of Abraham and Issac. God keeps people constrained from doing that.

The thing is the knowledge of excellent communication and phone skills was already within you. By your trying you were able to negate certain premises that led to your conclusion of having lousy phone skills and develop better premises.

Flying was within us but could not be expressed due to constraint but we were able to over come our constraints by correcting certain premises we had. We now have airplanes that negate our constraints.

It is said that man can't sprout wings and fly. I ask why not. Why can't we negate this constraint through genetic engineering?

Think of man as being a mix of all numbers both positive and negatives. The positives already exist within man but to access these positives one must eliminate the negative numbers that constrain him. This is why I focus on the negative. It is to negate the negative so I can access the positive.

Why focus on positives that already exist within you instead of eliminating negatives that prevent your ability of accessing the positives. Through your learning you negated your constraints.

This is why I ask people my questions and challenge people's beliefs including Fnords. Fnord is one aspect to eliminating negatives so not only I but all of us can truly do. By eliminating what makes us can't then we can.

I completely agree with you about the confidence issue. I was born in America, but am half Asian and think much more in an eastern way. For me, confidence comes with knowledge. At work, I cannot be confident in what I'm doing unless I completely understand it. Therefore, I am always asking questions of my colleagues. They have told me that I am unique and no one else asks questions. That baffles me; how can you do your job properly without understanding what you're doing? Going through the motions only leads to errors and you cannot be proactive when a special case comes along. In accounting, every case is a special case. Not understanding your work is irresponsible, IMO. If I make a mistake, it can cost my clients thousands of dollars. How could I be negligent? There's no way confidence can come in this situation. I don't think it's coincidence that I make fewer errors than colleagues who have been around for several years. It's not a special ability, either. It came from effort!

There is a different kind of confidence I have, though. It's the confidence that I can learn; an overall belief that if my boss gives me something new to to, I can do it. But that confidence comes with past knowledge and achievement, does it not? Because I know my discipline? Hmm... so there is still a root of ability and circumstance!

^^^That makes sense once you eggsplain how you think, but I don't think of things that way. I think of skills as things that I'm getting to then have them. I have the ability to learn things to get the skills, like my brain already has basic motor functions, but I need to practice them and put them together in a certain combination to do a waltz jump in figure skating.

I'm not Asian at all and do not know too much about the eastern way. I'm in agreement with you all of the way. This is what my father told. He told me that I was brave for asking people questions and clarification on things to make sure I understand them. I was in shock in what he said. Apparently most people do not do that.

What most people do is pretend to understand each other and make what they perceive is an educated guess. I believe Jannisy mentioned this a long time ago. Most people do what is called a probability analysis. They go with what they perceive is most likely the correct way and interpretation.

We autistics do not do that. We want accuracy in our communication and we want to make sure things are accurate. I have to ask. Is this truthfully an NT thing, just an American thing, or a western thing?



This is how I see it as well.

I am trying to say that what I wrote is not what you said I wrote. I don't want to argue either, but I am not sure how I am supposed to respond to something telling me I said a thing I did not say. I do not think many people think what I wrote. Most people seem to think that everyone has equal ability to function and thus those who have difficulties are malingering or lazy or some such thing. I have seen some of that thinking here on WP, although not so much from Fnord. Or at least thinking akin to "If I can manage it, so can you." Even though the person referred to as "you" may have different difficulties and impairments that may complicate such things.

I do think that for someone who is able to push themselves to function on a relatively consistent basis in an educational or professional environment does have an ability I do not, because whenever I push myself hard enough to do that, I crash and burn hard after at most a few months and spend even more time trying to recover from the associated decompensation. It is not that I do not want to work, but that whenever I try, I end up in really bad shape. I would rather receive disability than have one brief job every two years accompanied by spending the rest of that time trying to just be able to function on a daily basis. This is not to say that someone who can do that necessarily has it better, but there is often an accompanying assumption that everyone can do it if they really want to. None of that is aimed at you as I see no indication you assume such a thing. Your statement here prompted these thoughts:



The reason you push yourself to work is the reason I have decided to stop trying to push myself to work - I don't see any point to forcing myself to suffer so much.