Distinguishing between severities of norms. Anyone else?

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Did anyone else have this problem? Like, in sociology you learn about taboos vs. folkways, and things like that. I feel like since we tend to take things literally, it's hard for me to tell the difference between mildly inappropriate norms, and more severely inappropriate norms. Like, I couldn't really distinguish between, "you shouldn't swear", and "you shouldn't call someone names," for example. I didn't really get how one was only mildly offensive, while the other comes across as shocking if you do it as an adult. I didn't really get how you're supposed to know the difference. Did anyone else have this same sort of problem? It doesn't necessarily have to be with those examples.

i think this is common in ASD.

to overcome it takes years of studying the behaviour of the Normals and trying to copying the way they grade the differences.

slow and painful - yes
effective - yes

oh and i still f**k up but i have improved

Yes. As a kid, especially. Something was either wrong or right, and there weren't really gradations. I didn't realize what swear words were for a long time, but other rules, more obvious or explicit ones, I followed as religiously as I followed the ten commandments. It took me a while to realize there was a difference between "Your chair must be pushed in to your desk when you go out to break", and, "You are not allowed to hit your classmates." I followed both rules, but I didn't realize why one was so much more important than the other. (The second one is more important because it causes more injury. Leaving your chair out just means people have to step around it, but if you hit a classmate, you can cause pain.)

As an adult, I've partially solved this by adopting a new set of more general rules and applying them to specific situations. They are rather general--for example, "Do not cause suffering to another living creature." That rule applies to both annoying someone by leaving your chair in the middle of the room, and to physically hurting them (and possibly causing fear or anger) by hitting them. I've also come to understand that deciding not to do something is a choice as well, and that choice can cause suffering by itself. Sometimes, one has to do things that are unpleasant to others, because not doing them would be even more unpleasant. For example, if my cat got hurt, I would clean the injury and perhaps take him to the vet, even though he wouldn't like it, because leaving the injury untreated would hurt more in the long run. It also means that ignoring injustice is something I consider to be a morally wrong action, even though it usually involves no direct action at all.

There are other rules, like fairness and the right to live, to be free, to make one's own decisions. It took me a while to figure all of that out. I know adults, non-disabled adults, who still haven't figured it out and still handle decisions like this on a purely gut level. I could never do that--my intuition is too shaky and sometimes it's not there at all. I need a set of rules to function.

On the personal moral level I don't get why a lot of things are a big deal and other things that strike me as worse are not. The simple code, " First, do no harm - then do what you want." The problem with that is there is not a universal agreement on what constitutes doing harm. Clearly current societies ideas about what constitutes harm and mine do not always match. So, I have to accept that in order to avoid unwittingly offending people - it is necessary to figure out what is acceptable and what is not. Of course this varies from social group to social group. For example some people think abortion is a monstrous crime. Others view it as a personal choice and no one else's business. I find that the Internet is a place where with some anonymity one can measure social acceptability. I must admit when I was a bit younger my bazaar sense of humor and my outspoken opinions were constantly offending people.