Us and NTs

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I can't sleep. I've got that level of insomnia where I'm starting to go all philosophical.

I've noticed we can sometimes fall into a habit on this forum of viewing NTs as "them" or "the other".

This has been a philosophical, political and religious thing down through centuries. Us vs them.

I've come to wrong planet because I have had trouble fitting in to the NT world. I didn't know why until I realised that the way I think is just very different from the majority. Here I find people interested in the kind of things I'm interested in. People I'm concerned with societal prestige and ladder climbing.

Its difficult not to feel a bit of cultural/moral superiority to the "shallow NT" with their showy ways.

But throughout history an us vs them mentality has caused issues and conflicts. I'm sure you can think of examples.

How do we stop ourselves being just as bad as the divisive us vs them thinkers? Can we really all live in harmony? Is there really a best way to live? A best way to treat others that leads to a better society for all where no one feels treated like a freak?

Personally I've seen a lot of hurt people on here who have been put down by society for not fitting in. I've been there. Felt like I was weird and not good enough just because I wasn't "normal".

How do you develop a positive worldview when the majority of people you've interacted with have made you feel less than?

I've been lucky. I've had the ability to move around and wherever I go I meet one or two people like me and I've built up a good group of genuine friends and acquaintances. I know there are kind people in the world. I've met them. I know that not everyone will judge you because your car or job or house isn't "good enough".

What am I asking in this thread? I'm not sure. It seems bad to have an us vs them attitude, but sometimes the way society revolves around money and outward appearance seems very wrong to me. And I feel like my attitude to life is right and that I'm living in a society that isolates people and makes them unhappy.

Who am I that I should feel like I'm right? Who am I that I should say that I feel like society in general is grinding itself into the ground emotionally for the sake of earning more and looking good and keeping up with the jonesses and drinking itself into forgetting how bad everything is?

Do I just try and focus on the good? Do I think, well, the rate of survival for cancer is so much better these days. I'm glad that my relatives are in remission when 10years ago the same illness would have killed them? Do i look at the positive relationships i have and enjoy my bubble that I've built up over the years, even though I know there are many here struggling with isolation?

Ok I'll stop now. Maybe I'll make myself a cup of cocoa and see if I can sleep. Thanks for reading my 4am waffling.

I struggle with this as well. It's hard to have a positive view of people in general when you've had many, even steady, bad experiences with them since childhood. I remind myself to keep perspective:

It's a fact that I know and have met wonderfully nice people in my life that have enriched me.

Many strangers may also be wonderfully nice people. I just don't know it.

I believe in living by the Golden Rule.

I don't hate anyone either individually or collectively. It's such a liberating feeling.

One of my strongest convictions is that I believe I have a RIGHT not to be harmed intentionally by anyone. My personal space. As such, I feel just as strongly (Golden Rule) that everyone else has that same right. This is why I find it to be among humanity's most epic tragedies when a person or group hurts or kills innocent people.

Why do we struggle with a negative NT view sometimes? A big part of it for me is the feeling of having been bound to live under NT "rules" and forced to behave like an NT. I've said it before in threads that I'm to an age where I don't care quite so much about appeasing people by acting in ways that are not comfortable to me. I'd like to say I don't care at all, but it's not true. I would love to wear my big green over the head ear protectors to the grocery store and in public. Everyone would stare. I'm not at a point where I wouldn't care at all. Yet...

It would be wonderful if ND people broke free from NT conventions without a care in their daily lives. I hope for a day when that happens.

I was in a grocery store about a month ago with my wife and kids. A little boy about five came in with his Mom. The little boy was very happy and was squealing and sometimes shrieking rather loudly. He was wildly hand flapping as he ran ahead of his Mom. I believe he was obviously autistic. My youngest has sensory issues like I do. I could tell my youngest was distracted by the loudness and the actions of the other child. I told him lightheartedly: "It's ok, he just really happy!" And he was. It moved me to the point of being very choked up. Both happy for the boy and sad that the NT world has been suppressive of that kind of natural expression.

I've come to think that autism prohibits us from not just picking up social cues, but the entirety of social norms, the stories that people tell each other and themselves to structure their reality - I mean, if you had grown up in rural China, you'd see the world differently from someone grown up in the upper-class of a western metropolis. The worldview is to some extent socially constructed, and to some extent genetically predetermined.

Chomsky argued that language is way too complicated to be "learned" by children, and there must be neuronal circuitry in place to facilitate language acquisition. He based this on research about the way children are able to abstract on incomplete data, on the fact that languages around the world are not *that* different - in structure. And on the fact that if a child isn't exposed to language until a certain age, it won't learn to speak. There's a time-window to language acquisition.

Based on the fact that ASD can be shown in abnormalities of the connectome (the wiring of the brain), and on the fact that Kanner-austistics often never learn to speak, I'm guessing we are seeing the world as if we had grown up in a foreign culture - a culture of one. We just didn't pick up how things in NT-land worked when we grew up, because that requires social wiring.

We enjoy order that can be understood - even if it appears complicated to NTs, it is rarely as complicated as finding one's way around a social situation, which comes naturally to them. But of course, it's not so much them consciously doing it, but more like: their brain does it for them. Other systems, like a lot of professional software, are difficult for them, and come intuitively to someone like me.

we here all have "the immigrant experience", and while we each come from our cultures of one, we share some experiences of being alien to this somewhat uniform NT-culture - as uniform as human languages are uniform, in the way Chomsky pointed out. Structurally surprisingly similar.
I've been to foreign countries and made friends with immigrants from yet other countries there, based on shared experiences, even though we shared little else.

So, my guess is that we have to get used to living in a foreign culture, and treat NTs accordingly, while recognizing that we share soem experiences among us Aspies, but really are .... individuals.

We all have in many ways been frustrated, bullied, discriminated against by plenty of NT's. We all have a human need to vent about this. It is that "slippery slope" thing. It is easy to blame our difficulties on all NT's, to confuse the disadvantages of being a small minority with a conspiracy to put us down.