Who wrote the social rule book?

Autismman said:

Do neurotypical individuals ideally want to be popular or at the very least have a room full of friends?

On the whole, I would say yes. There is a drive to be successful (popular = social success) and to have the validation and companionship of friends. There is a variety or appetite for these things amongst individuals but on the whole it is true.

Autismman said:

the bigger picture is that the most highly educated people on the planet, the scientists, the doctors, the psychiatrists have all come together to agree on what is considered “normal” social behaviour.

I think you will find it is not the intelligent people setting these normal standards - it is the less informed masses and the media. The rules are becoming much more changable than they ever were due to the speed of dissemination of social media and the masses pick up on what is the new hot rule of the moment much more quickly.

There are positives - the rise of the "me too" movement was one such event which has given women much more encouragement to stand up to a historic wrong is one such case.

I think that the autistic issue of not getting the rules stems from the way our sensory filters do not activate as children, leaving us overwhelmend with sensory input while other children have more capacity for observing and mimicing the social interactions. They had the capacity to see the rule book in play and follow it while we were occupied with our special interests and stayed away from others.

The good news is that you can learn it but it requires a lot of paying attention to something that doensn't really interest you which is one of our weaknesses. You can read up on it, observe it and mask/script to apply what you learn, but this all takes effort and energy which we are typically low on.

Maybe life really was simpler then and there were less was of being "wrong"?

Another thought, in some ancient cultures those who didn't fit in, often ended up with a role that was important but slightly outside of normal life, such as Shamens, they were sanctioned by there society to be different and deviant, often those who were trans or something like that.

It's only in the bronze age that you really start to see social status and specialist workers really showing in the archaeological record, it would seem that neolithic, and hunter gatherer cultures were more eglatarian than those who used metal. Is there something about metal that makes people more concious of rank and status? Was this all part of a wider cultural change, towards hierarchies and possibly patriarchy too? Whilst we can't say for definate because we don't have huge amounts of evidence the neolithic looks much more equal, whereas rich tombs appear to be male. Although that might be an assumption on our part and the parts of previous archaeologists, for example in the Viking world there's quite a lot of weapons burials with female bodies, once it would of been decided they were male burials just because of the pressence of weapons.

Another thing to think of, is that in the deep past people tended to live in smaller groups, maybe an extended family, this si very different to us where we send children to school and nurseries in infancy, exposing them to a much wider range of potential interactions. Maybe if there was a gathering of many different groups at certain times of the year etc, then everybody felt a bit overwhelmed and unsure of themselves?

Maybe life really was simpler then and there were less was of being "wrong"?

Another thought, in some ancient cultures those who didn't fit in, often ended up with a role that was important but slightly outside of normal life, such as Shamens, they were sanctioned by there society to be different and deviant, often those who were trans or something like that.

It's only in the bronze age that you really start to see social status and specialist workers really showing in the archaeological record, it would seem that neolithic, and hunter gatherer cultures were more eglatarian than those who used metal. Is there something about metal that makes people more concious of rank and status? Was this all part of a wider cultural change, towards hierarchies and possibly patriarchy too? Whilst we can't say for definate because we don't have huge amounts of evidence the neolithic looks much more equal, whereas rich tombs appear to be male. Although that might be an assumption on our part and the parts of previous archaeologists, for example in the Viking world there's quite a lot of weapons burials with female bodies, once it would of been decided they were male burials just because of the pressence of weapons.

Another thing to think of, is that in the deep past people tended to live in smaller groups, maybe an extended family, this si very different to us where we send children to school and nurseries in infancy, exposing them to a much wider range of potential interactions. Maybe if there was a gathering of many different groups at certain times of the year etc, then everybody felt a bit overwhelmed and unsure of themselves?