communication

Hi Gosh what an interesting insight for me this has been..reading the exchange between yourself and Longman..thank you.

I do not (to my knowledge) have an ASD but there is so much truth in what you are saying. I get so frustrated with the 'acts' and false actions of others...Give me someone who 'shoots from the hip' anyday over the 'social nicities'.

I struggle trying to explain to my partner and son the ridiculous complexities of in an attempt to protect them from the hurt that comes their way. Often I just think , that my guys have got the right idea and the NT world is just at such a juxtaposition from reality. How can you explain the unexplainable?

Thanks for helping me understand.

If I cannot decipher the Other’s intentions, I cannot have friends. If I cannot “read” Other, how can I know what Other means when talking to me? Words, sentences, judgments expressed to me are acts, have a pragmatic value, are charged, possess intentionality. “Good evening” does not mean that Other augurs you to spend merrily my time for the rest of the day. This should be obvious. If Other wanted me to end up in hospital for a fall (this may well be sometimes), he wouldn’t tell me that straight away. The real meaning of “good evening” may be that,for now, he/she considers me an acceptable member of the humanity known to him/her. To really know something more relevant I should analyze the tone he uses, his body language, smile, kind of smile (is it a sincere smile or just cold conventional?). Most people don’t need to do these analysis for two reasons 1) they have an instinctive capability to read the other speech-acts. 2) they don’t have the need (that I have) to be assured of Other’s sympathy. So life is an ordeal for me and many others  like me. In the elevator I meet sometime  a lady who, if I greet her, doesn't return my greeting. So I stopped greeting her, but generally I avoid the elevator when I see her. If I don't succeed in this the 45 seconds of an hostile look at me is a horrible experience.

I have presumably means enough to reach  the end. But you can’t  avoid instrumental exchanges. Shopkeepers are generally kind  (if they weren’t they should change their trade). But what about, janitors, mister or ms opposite, nurses, plumbers, administrative personnel, competitors in a line, docs, And if you lose self sufficiency?   This last thing happens to most old people if they don’t disappear suddenly. Nurseries for the old are a heart breaking disgusting spectacle.  

Do I exist?  What’s the meaning of my presence on this earth? I don’t know what has been done in the context of the NAS campaign “I exist!”, also because I do not live in the UK. Though any solution about the problem of adult (“adult”: are old people to be included? I am 78). Some points anyway. The problem should be faced in view of the totality of the disables: deaf mutes, blind people, paralytics, in a sense also people fatally ill, MSs, bipolar, mentally disturbed  and, of course, ASD mild or not mild who have never been diagnosed and who are the more invisible. Some problems are the same for each of them.  Dependence on others in a massive way with no chance to pay back in some form. Existence, being born, is not in itself a title to reclaim help from others whom you have never had benefited with an affectionate sustenance (sons and daughters). And, after all, you may have no living relative. The public, the state, the health services subsist on the basis of an abstract architecture of society: the universalism of most (mainly monotheistic) religions. Is this enough for a second or third rate integration of disabled people?

This post was meant within a differents subject. As it is here looks like simply a rant. And it may appear rather obscure. I will try to make it more clear, if possible. The point anyway was to reject the idea that assistance may be enough. To put it briefly I would like that there be some chance of full moral affective  citizeship in humankind, something different from a paid pusher of a wheelchair. A metaphor of course.

That is one of the hazards - that we are forced to become recluses and only interact very formally in very practiced ways. So many bad experiences mean trust is hard to sustain.

Being diagnosed very late in life I didn't know what caused me problems, and my response was to keep trying. I've met others on the spectrum with the same philosophy. Although I find social situations uncomfortable I seem to manage better if I have a role to play, which can be acted out, and doesn't need so much self defence when not as good as others at doing so. So I got involved in committees, in volunteering, in anything that got me out there with people.

Yes I get hurt a lot. I'm too trusting, too gullible and cannot read between the lines fast enough when people are taking advantage of me. I appear more gullible than I am, so I'm always conscious that people may be starting from the premise of what they can get away with.

I am conscious though of having mild aspergers and being lucky, and don't want to suggest that everyone can do this. But I think some degree of outgoing and effort to interact is needed to avoid isolation. Even if it is hard and lots of disappointments.

There is an element of diffidence if not outright hostility in communication among humans. Or so I live this communication.  I only trust middle aged ladies who express sympathy for my dog.

 We live in mazes, cultural mazes, power mazes and wealth mazes , where we never meet each other, nor we find an exit. We don’t know how much money the other has, how much power (in terms of formal status, of helping relationships – allies – and cultural background, which also can be converted in power). In other terms we don’t know the weaponry at disposal of the others, which we potentially mistrust, knowing so little of them. Charm and politeness may always be only some good acting.

Indeed, well put Abloner. I well know what it feels like to have my efforts viewed as some sort of trickery, duplicity, insincerity....if you have to act up what should come naturally to every "normal" person you must be up to something. Especially to cliques (where trying to learn the routines that form their little mind games marks you out as an outsider), or with people who insist on being unrealistically respected (and view someone trying to do this as hamming it to be impertinent).

Because of all the effort, I seem to have only one pitch of language. I talk to high ups and low downs much the same, not to insult but just because its enough to keep up one kind of appearances.

But tell that to all those consultants and interventionists out there, with their methods for sorting kids' minds out so supposedly they will somehow be cured. They have no comprehension of the subtleties of social communication, or what it is like to try to act it out, rather than do it naturally.

We should be rewarded for trying - instead we get kicked for it.  No wonder so many people on the spectrum become distressed or depressed. Its a very harsh world out there if your speech patterns and gestures don't match the norm

A further thing that blocks communication is your (our) detachment. Least you accept to pretend and act all your life (see if you can the BBC interview to Alec Guinness on YouTube) at a tremendous  cost and effort (and also paying the price  of perpetual insincerity) you make of your identity a private affair, Hyde and Jekyll; you separate yourself from humankind, you lose any interest in what happens and is relevant for others. The others you meet don’t know what is your problem but they subliminally perceive you fakery and will not help you in need. Where need is here affection, if not love, for you in all your complications.

An interesting reply abloner, reads like poetry - which means your management of written language is excellent.

Do we have to fit in? That is the question. Dickensian England, which seems from social documentation as well to have been very diverse in eccentricity and mannerism. Life was shorter and early death more common, misfortune in health and wealth more accepted. People accepted difference.

Nowadays we have to conform to the standard social "factory" - standard units of behaviour driven by media and fashion.

Einstein, if indeed he had aspergers, was in some ways better tolerated than he would be today. Nowadays they want us to change to be like everyone else. They think we're missing something.....

Yet to use that memory skill, focus and innovation we need the time and solitude to do it. We're not being allowed to because we all have to play vastly greater social parts. Einstein would have been partied, discoed, counselled, entertained so much he would never have had time to discover anything.

Perhaps we should reach a radical extreme position. Why do we have to feel obliged to talk if not for practical necessities: shopkeepers, necessary information (the time, the route, pay attention!, how do I have to fill this form, “minor civilities” (sorry to have hurt you, physically or morally)? Small talk, in which we are more inept, means that there is a relationship between us, but this is a lie. We are extremely complicated repositories of memories, experiences, theories about life and about the meaning of existence that we have elaborated in solitude and which are incommunicable.   

My experience is that routine formal conversation, where language is in control, is fine (though it wasn't when I was young) but is has improved because I work hard at it and act up - learning expressions and mannerisms that make me sound better. (I used to be good in print and disappointing in person but that has improved over time).

Where I experience disproportionate amounts of difficulty is where more than one person is involved, where there is more "body language" and inferential unspoken activity, also where lots of people are speaking at the same time or there is competing sound. I have a massive battle to keep on track, I lose the thread easily, I get tired easily, and the more stressful it gets the less I understand and the more gaffs I make. I find it easier on social occasions to stand near a wall, so the sound comes at me from one direction.

I think therefore that the tendency to lecture people, from my perspective, is that language based communication is vastly easier, and I just cannot do the nudge nudge know what I mean, gaze directed, eye contact thing. I think its what I know best rather than specifically avoiding dialogue. I have to try hard not to talk at people because believe me, that's where things really go wrong, my voice gets louder and the world around me fades out - dangerous stuff -