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aspiesavant
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17 Apr 2016, 8:38 am

The following in an excerpt from Why the Tech Industry Needs More Autism :

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Do Autistic people live in their own little world?

Autistic people do live in their own world, but not in the way most people think they do.

Autistic people are in their own world in the sense that they don’t have a cultural identity. “Neurotypicals” tend to identify with one or more specific cultures to the point that they’re incapable of distinguishing their individual identity from the group identity and their individual beliefs from the group’s beliefs.

Question the religious views of a Christian, a Jew or a Muslim and they all tend to feel personally offended, even though you’re merely questioning their views and not them as a person. The same applies to political views or any views held so dearly people identify with them.

Alongside group identity, “Neurotypicals” also develop shared faith / prejudice. “Faith” and “prejudice” and are respectively positive and negative labels given to the same attitude and behavior : believing something very strongly without being able to prove it. A key advantage of shared faith / prejudice is that it simplifies communication among people of the same cultural background. People know what to expect from each other and how to behave in another’s presence with barely any information at all. A key disadvantage, however, is that this strategy often fails when people come in contact with others who don’t share the same cultural faith / prejudice.

Autistic people lack the “implicit learning” mechanism that is responsible for this kind of group thinking, which is what makes us much more individual in our cognition, our emotions and our communication styles. While Autistic people do adopt a lot of behavior and knowledge from their environment like anyone else, they do so much more consciously and are consequently much less emotionally attached to this behavior and knowledge.

Autistic people therefore tend to hold less faith / prejudice than “Neurotypicals”, which — in a sense — makes them more flexible than “Neurotypicals”. A downside of this, however, is that this complicates communication with “Neurotypicals” and culturally isolates Autistic people from their environment.

In a way, Autistic people have their own unique individual cultures. In that sense, we truly do live in our own little worlds. We live in our own little worlds, not because we choose to or because we fail to understand the world we live in (some Autistic understand actually the world far better than many “Neurotypicals”), but because our inability to relate to the culture we live among sets us apart from that culture.

Consider how it would feel to be a North-American or Western-European living as the sole immigrant in a rural community in East-Asia, sub-Saharan Africa or South-America. That is exactly how a person with Autism experiences every day social interactions.

Ironicly, this makes Autistic people more adapted to living among people of a different culture. One one hand, it’s because people tend to be more forgiving about social mistakes and quirky behavior when faced with a foreigner. On another hand, that’s because people with Autism are so used to living among people who identify with a culture that feels alien to them that actually living among a foreign culture feels only marginally more alien than their every day experience.

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29 May 2018, 5:45 pm

Quote:
Do Autistic people live in their own little world?

NO.
But the article makes perfect sense to me. I consider myself outside of society and observing it. And I can observe pretty damn good. The article is right on the spot.


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MrsPeel
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30 May 2018, 4:49 am

Interesting point of view. I'd never thought of it that way, but it makes sense.



Benjamin the Donkey
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30 May 2018, 10:55 am

The concluding sentences are certainly true for me. It's much easier for me to live in foreign cultures, since no one expects me to fully fit in there.


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Dylanperr
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30 May 2018, 1:07 pm

Yes we often do.



Kiriae
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30 May 2018, 3:20 pm

I figured that out a long time ago. Sometimes when I try to describe my experiences to others I say something like: "I am like a foreigner that looks like a local and speaks like local but was raised somewhere else. Except there is no place I could call my homeland. I am just a stray".

BTW. Recently I realized many strangers assume I am a foreigner. I live and was born in Poland and since I moved to Kraków (a big Polish city, with considerate amount of immigrants and tourists) I am quite often asked if I am from Ukraine. I wonder why.
Also a few years ago my family mentioned that I have a foreign accent.



AstroPi
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30 May 2018, 4:12 pm

Kiriae wrote:
Except there is no place I could call my homeland. I am just a stray".

I think our mind is our homeland.

Quote:
I am quite often asked if I am from Ukraine. I wonder why.
Also a few years ago my family mentioned that I have a foreign accent.

That happened to me also, It's probably because Polish is not our "native" language, and Ukrainian nationality is the closest explanation they can get.


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lostonearth35
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30 May 2018, 4:31 pm

People who think I live in my own little world are just jealous because they can't live in it. :P



Benjamin the Donkey
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31 May 2018, 7:50 am

I'm more than a little offended by the "little" in the thread title. In my experience, it's most NTs who inhabit a little world bounded by the pursuit of stuff and more stuff, office gossip, empty but expensively packaged entertainment, celebrity non-news, and the latest political scandal. My world spans light-years and epochs.


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Skilpadde
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04 Jun 2018, 11:52 pm

the article wrote:
Question the religious views of a Christian, a Jew or a Muslim and they all tend to feel personally offended, even though you’re merely questioning their views and not them as a person. The same applies to political views or any views held so dearly people identify with them.

Anyone who thinks this is an NT thing needs to see how people react to that here. It's a human thing, not an NT thing. People identify with their beliefs and opinions.

While there are people on here that don't do group think, some of us do.


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aspiesavant
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16 Jun 2018, 11:25 am

Skilpadde wrote:
While there are people on here that don't do group think, some of us do.


Maybe the utter disgust towards groupthink more of an INTP thing than an Autism thing?!



Gallia
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04 Sep 2018, 5:13 am

"Autistic people have their own unique individual cultures."

I can relate to this. I tend to dive in deep into anything I am interested and that becomes my personality for a little while. I come out of it slightly enriched every time. Over the years I have collected ideas, images and sonic patterns. For instance,
since i am quite visual in my thinking, I have collected a lot of images which are sort of my individual mythology - there are visual metaphors that make sense to me because I thought of them in a specific way and then build on them and refine them over the years. I try to pour this out into my artwork but I still have way too many images to get out.


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kazanscube
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04 Sep 2018, 8:38 am

I'd not say our own little word, but sometimes our minds my be focused on something that NT persons find no relevance nor interest in whatsoever


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ASPartOfMe
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04 Sep 2018, 10:18 am

Some Autistics identify as being Catholic, black, LBGTQ etc and feel in some way connected to these groups.

Some Autistics identify as Aspie, Autistic, Autist etc and feel some connection with the Autistic community.

Some Autistics say I am my own person, screw these labels, identity politics is toxic and I want no part of it.

Some NT's feel the same way.


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04 Sep 2018, 11:18 am

Why wouldn’t we live in our own little worlds? Sure beats the alternative. :D



MagicKnight
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04 Sep 2018, 12:08 pm

I live inside my head most of the time. If that's what they mean by "my own little world", that's spot on.