Published on 12, July, 2020
I know people are going to say go to groups where like minded people are but i never seem to find people or find a fault that just ruins it for me.
The problem with most of us auties is we don't know where we fit so assumptions are made along NT lines and thought processes. That's doomed to fail.
I really think you need to dig deep into your childhood and remember what delighted you as a child. It's usually easier for blokes because there's easy access to cars, trains, Lego etc. so then it's just a case of finding the particular group that suits best. The focus of all conversations will be about a 'thing' or a defined subject so it's really easy to keep up and learn the rules - it lights all the specialist subject parts of you brain. Communication can be as simple as grunts of approval
It's much harder for women - unless they're into bloke-stuff. Most 'female interest' groups like history or book clubs will include a lot of communication skills - lots of masking and maybe some politics. It's much harder to break into. A lot of the typical female-interests are solo pursuits too - needlework, jewellery, toy making etc. so it's hard to make a friend group.
I spent years trying to be interested in the normal girl stuff, soap operas, fashion, makeup. I wasted so many years trying to fit in and not looking weird. Never figured out that I was expending energy on being miserable.
I even gave up my costume work because I was too focused on the social aspect and getting worn out when I just needed to focus on the core skills which made me happy and would have helped me to build my career. There seems to always be an emphasis on women being social creatures. I still can't convince my lot at work not to give me a birthday card each year.
I've joined an online Costume History group which is great for me, as it's helping me tap into the type of thing I enjoy, but even there, there is a substantial amount of social etiquette that I have to be mindful of, even if it's predominantly online at the moment.
I just asked a question about corset patterns, I made it clear that I had the skills and knowledge, (Just being lazy and didn't want to draft a pattern) I still had people 'advising me' very basic things. The urge to point out that not only have they not actually answered the question, but have also insulted my knowledge on the subject is strong, but I know that will cause me issues within the group. It's all politics as much as it is about the shared interest.
Politics is definitely a dominant feature of general social interaction. Often autistic individuals do not respect social hierarchy structures. I know I don’t. With regard to social connection I find that I am only really interested in trust, truth and enlightened self-interest. I have no use for casual interaction or personal aggrandisement. I recognise competence as the only trait that should determine position in any hierarchy and I find it almost impossible to conceal any of this. It is possible that I have become compromised by my resentment of conventional social behaviour. Because honestly? I believe politics may be the very science of evil. By it’s very nature it values popularity achieved through social conflict which I find utterly reprehensible. Obviously therefore I have genuinely no desire to refine the skill and actively avoid engagement. Even at it’s most well-meaning, what you don’t compromise of your integrity in the conflict is ultimately lost in victory.
The problem is that the Media tail is wagging the Political dog.
Politics is superseeded by Cult-Worship.
ChaosLogrus said:Thank you so much for taking the time to compose this response. The knowledge and insight demonstrated here is genuinely useful and I appreciate it greatly.
I am very glad to have been of some service. :-)
ChaosLogrus said:I am somewhat at a loss for words to be honest which, it is not an understatement to say, is extremely rare.
An attempt at humour and sincerely meant also:
In that the vertical hierarchy of size and strength (involving familial authority) needs to be balanced by the horizontal hierarchy of capacity and function (involving social equality) ~ so as to facilitate the diagonal hierarchy of orientation and direction (involving specific or general relativity) ~ please accept my apologies for the ‘too-much-information’ stroke ‘discussion-killer’ session.
Thank you so much for taking the time to compose this response. The knowledge and insight demonstrated here is genuinely useful and I appreciate it greatly.
I am somewhat at a loss for words to be honest which, it is not an understatement to say, is extremely rare.
ChaosLogrus said:Thank you for this response, it really made my day.
Bonus! :-)
ChaosLogrus said:Of the three aspects you identified the vertical one clearly presents the most obvious challenges to diversity.
Excessive competition involving the vertical authoritarian and regressive cooperation involving the horizontal equalitarian varieties of hierarchy ~ do tend in the unbalanced sense to muck things up somewhat, what with the unreasonable forces of excessive ‘competition’ (domination) displacing and replacing the reasonable forces of ‘cooperation’ (facilitation) ~ as they are socially by way of trauma habitually mimicked and unconsciously adapted to lesser or greater degrees, as by the same measure prevents the diagonal relativities of the hierarchical trinity (or ternary) from being applied in a balancing or stabilising way.
ChaosLogrus said:I have often considered that it’s dominance as a governing factor in common social behaviour is prone to catastrophic errors of judgement due to a sort of endemic assumption that strength or resilience (both physical and mental) are the most appropriate means by which authority or respect are established.
As such neither ‘authority’ or ‘respect’ are established, as aggressive ‘dominance’ and submissive ‘compliance’ are more habituated instead ~ educationally, professionally and politically ~ involving more then unconsciously assumed senses of power as actually being ‘control’ over others, who in more or less disassociated or acclimatised states of fear serve those who are as such in charge.
In this way the natural tendency to consciously cooperate in a symbiotic way becomes more the unnatural tendency to compete in an unconsciously parasitic way, so rather than respect and authority there is more fear and loathing ~ with competitive behaviourisms becoming at worst combative, involving at least minor intellectual put downs to major psychological character assassinations.
ChaosLogrus said:Similar to the misapprehension that the mechanism of evolution is survival of the fittest when in reality adaptation is of fundamental importance.
The infamous ‘survival of the elitist delusion’ as I more generally refer to it ~ with one of my favourite articles on the matter in part stating:
The “fittest” can be the most loving and selfless, not the most aggressive and violent. In any case, what happens in nature does not justify people behaving in the same way.
The phrase”survival of the fittest”, which was coined not by Darwin but by the philosopher Herbert Spencer, is widely misunderstood.
For starters, there is a lot more to evolution by natural selection than just the survival of the fittest.
There must also be a population of replicating entities and variations between them that affect fitness ~ variation that must be heritable. By itself, survival of the fittest is a dead end. Business people are especially guilty of confusing survival of the fittest with evolution.
What’s more, although the phrase conjures up an image of a violent struggle for survival, in reality the word “fittest” seldom means the strongest or the most aggressive. On the contrary, it can mean anything from the best camouflaged or the most fecund to the cleverest or most cooperative. Forget Rambo, think Einstein or Gandhi.
What we see in the wild is not every animal for itself. Cooperation is an incredibly successful survival strategy. Indeed it has been the basis of all the most dramatic steps in the history of life. Complex cells evolved from cooperating simple cells.Superorganisms such as bee or ant colonies consist of cooperating individuals.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13671-evolution-myths-survival-of-the-fittest-justifies-everyone-for-themselves/
ChaosLogrus said:The foundation of which is of course diversity of physical and mental characteristics that historically the systems created by humans based on vertical hierarchical instincts typically seek to suppress.
Rather than so much ‘seeking’ to suppress diversity itself; most people have been compulsively ‘driven’ and habitually ‘steered’ into promoting their individuality through other people’s collective conformities ~ whilst finding little contentment in having their individuality assimilated within the inferior, mediocre and superior categorisations and segregations of delusional [survival of the elitist] society.
Thus most people as such get confused or annoyed by those who haven’t taken on or wont compete for the collective burden of their particular delusional conformities as well ~ whereas others by contrast can be more curious or even exemplary about cooperatively facilitating, identifying and affirming the evolutional development of individuality ~ in both the plural and the singular senses.
This is an interesting observation, I think these proclivities when present can be explained by things like social naivete and narrowly focused interests that block taking a substantial well-informed interest in many generally relevant things including politics. And also by embedded compensation to hide these traits.
I do agree with not artificially idealising or devaluing autists as a group.
Thank you for this response, it really made my day. Of the three aspects you identified the vertical one clearly presents the most obvious challenges to diversity. I have often considered that it’s dominance as a governing factor in common social behaviour is prone to catastrophic errors of judgement due to a sort of endemic assumption that strength or resilience (both physical and mental) are the most appropriate means by which authority or respect are established. Similar to the misapprehension that the mechanism of evolution is survival of the fittest when in reality adaptation is of fundamental importance. The foundation of which is of course diversity of physical and mental characteristics that historically the systems created by humans based on vertical hierarchical instincts typically seek to suppress.
ChaosLogrus said: I recall that I was by nature largely a conformist in my youth.
Every time I tried to conform it got mistaken for rebellion ~ so either way I was damned when I did and damned when I didn’t.
The main problem is that I am an immutable egalitarian and recognise no one person or group as being any more important than any other, which always got difficult for people who expected to be treated better than anyone else on account of their assumed authority, power or status.
ChaosLogrus said:However due to catastrophic and persistent failures of judgement by authority figures and peers I have come to regard hierarchy systems as morally objectionable.
There are three aspects of hierarchy ~ vertical involving authority, horizontal involving equality and diagonal involving relativity ~ and as such you have described only the vertically imbalanced variety, as is more enforced than shared which inhibits diversity and prevents as much sociological and ecological efficiencies.
ChaosLogrus said:Regrettably this places me in the position where either the impetus is on me to establish an alternative means of reconciling with standard social practices or (and this is my fundamental difficulty) to instead attempt to identify individuals that share my specific experience of rejecting the established social norms. Needless to say both present significant challenges.
I chose both complimentary and alternative approaches to socially established norms ~ so with the prosocial ones I do in the complimentary sense likewise, and with the antisocial ones I do in the alternative sense otherwise.
Talking of conformists who love authority in any form and are devoted to hierarchies...
I think, if you reread the above post, you'll probably find the answer to your original question.....
This sounds reasonable. I recall that I was by nature largely a conformist in my youth. However due to catastrophic and persistent failures of judgement by authority figures and peers I have come to regard hierarchy systems as morally objectionable. Regrettably this places me in the position where either the impetus is on me to establish an alternative means of reconciling with standard social practices or (and this is my fundamental difficulty) to instead attempt to identify individuals that share my specific experience of rejecting the established social norms. Needless to say both present significant challenges.
It’s partly comparative analysis based on what I have read. There are variables like pathological demand avoidance etc. I can only speak for myself really but yes, the hierarchical concept is a very generalist observation offered by some of the literature available. I don’t have the source to hand atm.
I can only speak for myself, but I have been quietly subversive all my life. As a trades union activist, I have been on the picket line many times, been involved in special interest groups impacting union policy, supported student occupations, debated, demonstrated and marched. Since my early schooldays, I have had a jaundiced opinion of authority in any form and an antipathy to hierarchies.
Agree wholeheartedly with 90% of what you have written. Not sure you're correct about autism and hierarchy though.
ChaosLogrus said:Often autistic individuals do not respect social hierarchy structures.
I don't find this to be the case at all. Sadly. I had hoped it would be. In my experience on this forum, autists are just as pre-disposed to being followers as NTs. In fact, I've seen more evidence that autists have less of an inability to question political propaganda and socio-political norms. Bluntly, there are far more societal ants and political lemmings amongst autists than their are amongst NTs. Political and cultural dogma seems to be equally entrenched in the autistic community as it is in the neurotypical community. In fact, intellectual laziness and the blind acceptance of whatever the current mainstream political narrative may be seems to be slightly more prevalent in autistic people than in their NT counterparts.