I believe that part of the problem - at least in my case - is that typical person immediately sees 3-4 possible generic answers to such questions.
For me… It’s like opening Pandora Box and have the brain flooded with not just answers but long chains of interactions, where none leads to anything positive. A “simple” question is like like an abyss that’s gonna suck you down and exhaust you while you’re trying to escape it so much, that you feel like lying down and trying to remember that air is meant to be inhaled again after it’s exhaled…
There was this scene in the original Terminator movie, where the robot sees the spinning list of possible answers to “cat question”. For me, this list doesn’t stop. Even when the conversation is already finished, the list continues to spin.
Since I think no one will see my comment at the bottom of the OP im going to reply it here as I think it’s relevant to your content.
For me, in addition to this, more specifically it’s the energy to pull up that info and analyze how I am. Like I don’t know the answer to that question and that’s why it’s so annoying. Now I need to analyze my day, decide what parts mean what to me and weigh the average basically, and then decide if that’s appropriate to share/if the person really wants to hear the truth of that, then pull up my files of pre-prepared phrases for the question that fits most closely with the truth since not answering truthfully is close to impossible for me.
I’ll be honest, it really feels like you’re overanalyzing it. You really can just say you’re fine and go about your day. You don’t need to analyze your day or even know how you’re feeling at the moment.
There’s a couple different issues at hand here. There’s the social protocol being stupid and annoying part which is what I think you’re referring to. I don’t analyze my day like that with a stranger like a retail worker, or anyone at work. I know the social protocol. I just think it’s a dumb game and I don’t want to play.
Then there’s another aspect which I was thinking about when I wrote the above comment. I was thinking about how even with dear friends, even with my partner who truly want to know how I am, I personally get tired of the question. And maybe that’s unreasonable of me, and I know they mean it out of kindness and love. But it can feel formulaic, like ok are you just initiating a conversation and therefore don’t need the full answer or are you really truly asking? Because when I know someone cares about me and wants to know that’s when I feel like I need to run the above algorithm.
But chances are when people ask me how I am, honestly I’m probably dissociating right now in order to not be overcome by how exhausted and burnt out I am just trying to survive. So a. I don’t really know how I am most of the time unless im in the middle of an emotional experience. And b. I don’t really want to go and pull all those emotions up and relive them in order to analyze the words to summarize and describe them. That honestly makes me feel worse.
So what I wish I could figure out how to communicate to my loved ones is that I will tell you what I want you to know when it occurs to me to say it. And if you want to connect with me and talk to me, why don’t you just tell me what’s on your mind? What are you feeling if you have any feelings, or what are you doing? Or what’s your current interest? Literally anything. I always want to hear from you and listen to what you’ve got to say and let the conversation grow from that. Because that’s how I approach conversation. I just start talking to you about whatever it is I’m thinking about. If I just feel the urge to connect with someone I haven’t spoken to in awhile, I’ll usually say something like “thinking of you, hope you’re well” because that’s literally what’s happening to me right now.
For me when I’m asked how are you? It feels as much pressure as a phone call. Like, please don’t call me! It’s such an imposition demanding attention immediately. I much prefer text so I can think about, draft and edit my response, and respond when I’m ready on my own time. So same with how are you? Like maybe I don’t want to think about that right now. Maybe it’s painful to think about how I am. Maybe I’m not ok but I’m just a saran wrap covering of keeping it together. So talking about it directly is too risky. But I want to talk to you.
Anyway, I can go on and on so I’m going to stop treating this like betterhelp. Hope some of that helped explain why I said what I said although I’m betting probably not. I think something you might have missed was that the post was intended for discussion among those who feel similarly, and really not asking for help. Because there is no help. It’s just the way it is. We understand the social protocol, we just would prefer it to be different and find the whole charade to be one of the hundreds of daily ways we feel othered by society, showing us we don’t fit in, which is often very unnerving and/or frustrating. And when you are feeling those things every day in every interaction with people, it’s a cumulative effect. Ok I’m stopping for real
The “typical” person doesn’t see 3 or 4 answers, they have prepared a few generic answers to those small questions, and anyone can do that. Unless you’re really feeling different, and have enough intimacy with the asker to be honest, it’s just a game of tic-tac-toe that anyone can learn.
Imagine that somebody places before you a dozen baskets all filled with white balls the size roughly of a ping-pong ball.
They are all identical. There’s no way to discern one from another.
Then he says: pick the right ball, but be warned, picking some among them will result in a member of your family dying a horrible, gruesome death. Now choose, you have 20 seconds.
That’s not how it is, you’re comparing a Saw movie with small talk, talk about hyperbole.
You can always say “I don’t feel comfortable with small talk” if you don’t want to make the effort of making your own quick-answer list, and no loved one of yours will die because of that.
It’s hyperbole yes, but there’s a kernal of truth to it.
Consider that this conversation is one example of the hundreds of examples ND people experience every single day for how they are asked to mask their initial reactions/responses/preferences for seemingly arbitrary meaningless reasons “just because” that’s how it’s been done and no one wants to care about how it impacts us day in and day out.
Consider how it is a cumulative effect that builds up. Frustration, embarrassment, confusion, annoyance, sadness, hurt, yes even rage at the stupidity and injustice of it all.
These are the emotions ND people in your life are experiencing every day all day as they go about trying to survive and fit in in a world that is constantly telling them that they are wrong for the way they instinctively react to things and their preferred ways of being and interacting are not only weird and wrong but somehow disturbing and put a target on their back for disrespect or worse, bullying, being ostracized, fired, or targeted for harassment.
Try to think about that before responding. Really think about what that would be like for someone to live with every single day in every interaction with other people.
Oh, they can pretend. They can pretend so freaking well that loads of people have ZERO idea they are experiencing any of this. They just see them as a little shy and a little weird. A loner. Creepy maybe. Or maybe they are so good at masking you don’t even see that. You see a happy friendly person. Meanwhile inside they are so fucking tired.
All of these stupid little dances we have to play in order to be accepted. When being ourselves, why would that be so bad? It doesn’t make any sense. But whenever we try to unmask, society very quickly shows us that is not acceptable.
If you are asking this question you haven’t read enough of the responses to this post. Consider refraining from commenting until you have read more and listened and reflected on the experiences of others different from yourself.
No, I will not consider refraining from replying just because you don’t agree with my comments. I’ve replied to plenty of comments to explain my point of view, to show it’s not a superficial opinion. Don’t pretend to discuss by trying to silence your interlocutor.
You can always block or report me if you must, just don’t try to pass that attitude as dialogue.
Yeah I understand how my phrasing would make anyone feel defensive. Maybe you might attempt to understand why the phrasing you used in the comment I was replying to might trigger someone to want to tell you that.
For some people it is hard to do. I have ADHD and it is tiring because I have to actively focus on not jusy being honest, but apparently not as much as someone who is autistic.
Saying 'why do some people find my effortless things take a lot of effort' over and over is the same thing as telling them they are wrong for telling you it takes them effort.
I used to struggle a lot with small talk too, and dialogue in general (used to be too literal), that’s why I can relate to some of the answers here. I speak not from prejudice, but from my own experience.
That same experience has taught me that not thinking like the rest is not necessarily the same as being neurodivergent, but having developed different skills as you grew up. If willing, everyone can learn a skill they find lacking at least to a beginner level.
Believe it or not, that is plain emotional intelligence. Over analyzing can become a vicious circle, but most therapists will teach you ways to escape the dreadful scenarios in out heads, and ground yourself in the real world.
The liberating part is that most people don’t care about you much at all, they won’t obsess because you said “you too” to your waiter, they’ll forget your faux passes quickly if they’re small.
I agree. That's exactly what I do. Memorize two or three different socially acceptable answers to each of the half-dozen or so most common "human vibe check" questions.
Because that's exactly what they are. They're human vibe checks. It's not about finding out how you're really feeling, or what you honestly think of the weather. It's about being a quick way to sort out who is capable of of functioning in a social capacity and who isn't, without putting in a lot of time and effort doing an in-depth screening.
"Small talk" is culturally designed to weed out 70-80% of those people who are likely to be dangerous, unstable, or unreliable, allowing us to know who we need to pay close attention to in our environment and who we probably don't. It's not a question of "lying" or "telling the truth", it's a question of "can you perform your socially expected role in this cultural ritual?".
Saying "I'm fine, how are you?" is no more "lying" than doing a safety check on an airplane you're about to fly is (because you don't actually need to engage the flaps right now, being on the ground and all). It's just about checking to make sure the right lights come on and the right motors engage. If a person can't even answer a question they've had decades to prepare for, and can't engage, even to a minimum acceptable degree, in a small social ceremony they've watched thousands of times and had hundreds of opportunities to practice themselves, that's a bad sign. That's like trying to engage the flaps and hearing some weird grinding noise and getting a red blinking light on the console.
It's important to note here that I have a bit of an advantage in this arena over a lot of the rest of the community. One of my deepest autistic hyperfocus areas has been observing, experimenting, and collecting data on human interpersonal communications, specifically linguistic communication. It's all very ritualistic, at its base, and it's easy for me to create, memorize, and practice the scripts for performing those rituals in different contexts. And when I fuck one up, I can go back through and memorize another script so if that same conversation every comes up in the future (and it will, because there are only so many rituals!), I won't fuck it up again (to the same degree).
"Small talk" is culturally designed to weed out 70-80% of those people who are likely to be dangerous, unstable, or unreliable, allowing us to know who we need to pay close attention to in our environment and who we probably don't. It's not a question of "lying" or "telling the truth", it's a question of "can you perform your socially expected role in this cultural ritual?".
I find that the best and worst people are really good at small tall. The best people use small talk to establish relationships and ease into more personal topics that they honestly care about. The worst people use small talk to establish a connection that they can abuse later on.
That's like saying a pre-flight check doesn't throw up errors on anything anything but honest machines. But, more to the point, you're right, in the sense that the people on either tail end of the "good/bad people" bell curve aren't going to be precisely detected by a simple test of inclusion/exclusion criteria. The ~60% of people in the middle will be. That's why it's a screening tool, not an in-depth socio-psychological exam.
As long as your honesty comes closer to filling the socially expected role than, say, a man who's high on meth or a Qanon conspiracist who thinks "how are you?" is a sex-trafficker code, you're probably ok.
The ability to follow social rituals like small talk, handshakes, bowing, making small offerings, etc. doesn't screen anything for the people in the middle of the bell curve other than the knowledge of and conformity to social rituals.
What is the benefit of screening people through social rituals?
other than the knowledge of and conformity to social rituals.
That's exactly the point.
What is the benefit of screening people through social rituals?
You know instantly who's part of your culture. Whether or not they are a part of your sub-group within that culture. Whether or not they are capable of interacting with strangers in a way that isn't frightening or disturbing (try asking a guy on meth "So, how about this weather?").
If you respond to a social ritual with hostility, that tells the other person exactly what they want to know about you. They know to avoid you, that you are not "friendly", meaning that you are not a person who can be trusted with other, more important/complex social rituals.
You're seriously asking "What's the point of testing the flaps when the plane is on the ground? It's not flying. What do I need to know about the flaps when we're not flying? It's just me and the plane lying to each other?"
So if someone is not familiar with your social rituals then they are not to be trusted?
That is what you are saying, just making sure you mean that someone who doesn't already know your local customs is not to be trusted. Because someone who doesn't want to shake hands because it is taboo in their culture is the same thing as someone refusing to check the flaps before takeoff.
So if someone is not familiar with your social rituals then they are not to be trusted?
Yes. This is the basis of pretty much all Western human interaction, from the observations and data I have collected over the last 30+ years. It is the root of all inter-group conflicts in the country, from the lofty halls of politics to the "that group's not really a metal band!" subreddit pettiness.
Humans are ritualistic and their interactions are so rigid as to be almost mechanistic, when you get down to the base of them. Every person isn't so much a unique individual as they are a unique combination of common parts, and their communication ceremonies reflect that.
Because someone who doesn't want to shake hands because it is taboo in their culture is the same thing as someone refusing to check the flaps before takeoff.
Yes. That is exactly correct. If you don't do the ritual right (or right enough, within a margin of specification), you will not be trusted.
Does it make rational sense from the perspective of a sapient being capable of examining their own actions? Fuck no. But that's the world we live in. We refuse to learn it and adapt to it at our peril.
“We refuse to learn it and adapt to it at our peril”
See that’s the entire whole encompassing point of this post. We are literally “in peril” either way. We are all sick, literally burnt out exhausted from all the adapting and masking we are doing every gad dang freaking day to these arbitrary stupid social protocols that serve no purpose. I’m ready to stop. I’m ready to call it out and ask society to change itself for once. ND are literally killing ourselves to fit in and it barely ever works anyway! Accommodations are for everyone, meaning everyone benefits. Just accepting that this is how it is is fucking bullshit. How about NT have some personal fucking growth and acknowledge that they have not given half a shit about how much ND people have contributed to society while being shat on CONSTANTLY for being socially different.
Our brains work differently. It’s equivalent to being from a different culture and speaking a different language. Many NT can learn to accept this and adapt their own behavior out of respect for this other person. It’s far past time we stop looking at Neurodivergence as a disorder to be suppressed, and instead as a different way of being that is just as valid and that society needs to accept, truly, and adapt to accommodate our needs.
How about NT have some personal fucking growth and acknowledge that they have not given half a shit about how much ND people have contributed to society while being shat on CONSTANTLY for being socially different.
Great idea. Will never happen. Not in a million giggity years. It's like saying the best way to stop mountain lion attacks is to teach mountain lions to not attack.
Treating NTs and the society they built like they are all rational actors who give a fuck is the most dangerous, naive, and stupid thing I ever did in my life. We must treat them like impersonal, implacable forces of nature that cannot be educated or reasoned with, only prepared for so that we can mitigate their inevitable destructive effects on our lives.
I spent most of my life trying to "inform" the NT-society hurricane about how much it hurts me. It's pointless. Give up, spend your energy and your focus on figuring out how to protect yourself from them. The results on your everyday life will be far better.
I disagree that it will never happen. I think it’s already starting to happen. Part of it is ND tiktok and Instagram and Reddit/Lemmy and YouTube educating people about it and helping people get diagnosed, part of it is research is ongoing allowing therapists/doctors to get better educated about these conditions, and yes part of it is ND people just deciding fuck it I’m done masking in this specific way in this specific environment and learning how to advocate for our needs and ask for accommodations so that it becomes better understood by NT and more commonly seen.
But I agree with you that for now my energy is best spent providing myself my own accommodations and protecting my energy. I love love love talking about this stuff online in the autism communities.
This post went bigger than any of the others I’ve made so more NTs came in asking to be educated and riling me up, so I have spent more energy talking to them about this than I would ever normally try to do. So far none of those comments seemed to sink in at all lolsob, in accordance with the prophecy. They tend to just ignore what you say and then repeat what they said before and add an “it’s that easy” to the end. And then you slap yourself in the face and do some breathing exercises and walk away for awhile.
But the value I get in engaging with ND folks here is life changing. Just sharing our experiences with each other, commiserating. Makes me feel less alone and gives me spoons somehow. Gives me perspective, and sometimes tips, and resolve to prioritize my needs, and forgiveness for when I can’t do the things that I feel I’m expected to do.
Anyway I’m rambling again. I just wanted to say I understand your sense that it’s hopeless, and I’m sorry that you burned yourself out in that way and I hope you’re taking care of yourself and that you have some people who support you.
All of my bitterness and cynicism in my previous post is actually, now that I sit down and think about it, motivated by concern. For you, for our community, for all of us. I've gotten to a point where I have nothing left to fight with; I can only use the privilege that comes with my specific level of social function and direction of hyperfocus to hide (as much as possible) and pass as a slightly-weird member of NT culture.
As worried as I am that you and others will come to the same fate, I'm also glad that there are still people with some fight in them, who love talking about the community and trying to spread their knowledge with those outside of it. You're doing a good thing. I just worry about you while you're doing it, and I'm not hopeful that it will help in the long run.
But I would love nothing more than to be proven wrong.
I resonate so much with that. I think this is the nature of social change. We fight however we are able until we cannot anymore and then others take up the torch. I struggle with bitterness about other fights I fought before that I burned out from. Maybe I’ll learn from those lessons and definitely have learned more about myself so I’m working on recognizing burn out before it ruins me. If not, well I’ll learn from that too. It’s all we can do. I’m proud of you for recognizing your needs and prioritizing that for now, for however long you it takes.
I agree with this. Observe carefully someone who you deem a master of small talk, and you’ll notice it’s not intellect or genius, but patterns of small non-answers they’ve learned to use as conversational support.
Most of us neurodivergent people consider ourselves smart and observant. Observe those who you consider small talk comes naturally, and see how they fall into patterns. They’re more elaborate that a non-answer catalogue, but they’re still crutches to make ease the friction.
An acquaintance of mine, for example, tells jokes. Some times they bomb, but he doesn’t sweat it, they’re still ice breakers. Another acquaintance immediately gets the attention of nearby females by retelling one more how he went randomly backpacking across Europe as a poor, young musician. If that doesn’t work, he has other, equally entertaining tales, which we have few ways of fact checking, ha ha.
But for us small-talk-stunted people, clever non-answers are a perfect crutch to fend off the awkwardness until we acquire this skill, and we can always refuse small talk if we’re not in the mood.
Nobody is saying that neurodivergent people can’t do small talk, it’s that it is oftentimes a dreadful experience for them. You do understand the difference, yes?
It’s a bit like telling someone genetically predisposed to disliking cilantro because it tastes like soap to “just eat cliantro… everyone can do it!”
Fine, but beware of getting on the “I was born this way and I can’t change even if I wanted to” train. That’s extremely harmful to your personal growth, because even if you were truly different genetically, it can be used as an excuse to not learn or change, even if you were capable of it.
This comment gets under my skin because in this community for autistic folks we have heard this kind of thinking our e-n-t-i-r-e lives and NT never ever ever ever understand just how much effort it takes for us to mask in order to fit in with their arbitrary ass rules that we consider hella dumb. I long for the day when a NT person comes into communities of autistic people and says, “wow, you know what, all this you’re saying makes a lot of sense and this social protocol IS hella dumb and doesn’t actually serve any valid purpose and I’m with you! I’m going to help out and join the movement to making society more accommodating to different brains preferred way to be, instead of assuming like everyone always does that the way society is is by definition the right and only way it should and could be.” How about calls for personal growth that aren’t ableist and full of unexplored privilege and ignorance about what masking actually does to us. Because I’ll tell you right now that it is 100,000% devastating and the fact that many of us are keeping it together enough to survive is FUCKING MIRACULOUS and we honestly deserve monetary awards and rest and a fucking break.
Did it occur to you that I could be a neurodivergent person too? Did you label me an enemy because I’m not getting on the “I can’t help it, I have no choice” train?
I couldn’t tell you I’m actually autistic to some degree because I’ve never been tested for that. I’m introverted, struggled with shyness most of my youth, and was very inept socially to add insult to injury. It has cost me a great deal to learn to improve those aspects of life, and I owe a great deal of it to my wonderful wife, who somehow reciprocated my affection when I was still emotionally stunted.
That’s why I can speak from my own experience, and not trying to tell people here to “just walk it off”. That being said, most of us are capable of growth and change, we can adapt. Yes, there are severely autistic/disadvantaged persons that can’t, but I’ve seen too many others using the pretext of being different to assume they’re autistic too (without a medical diagnosis) and are too hardcoded to change. What most functional people perceive as innate disadvantages is, at least in part, emotional immaturity. We focus on improving some aspect, study or expertise for example, but neglect others, like socializing, empathizing, or management of emotions. We grow unbalanced, and it’s wrong to pretend we can’t change without at least doing an honest try to change.
I don’t know why I’m being so insistent here, probably because I’ve seen this attitude more in the younger generations, IRL, and it’s not like something is making more people autistic, but making them less eager to examine and improve themselves. I’ve met autistic and mentally challenged people in my life, and they’re truly limited in their capabilities, but highly functioning people claiming they’re the same as them is bordering entitlement.
I think there’s a lot in your comment to talk about and I certainly don’t think you’re wrong about a lot of things. I think if we were in person we could have an engaging evening of discussion that will be harder to do in this way online but I will try to expand just a little more.
Your comment made me think about something that’s been brewing in my mind a lot recently but I’m not sure it’s entirely fermented enough to put down into words yet.
It has to do with my reflection on interpersonal relationships with people who I suspect might be ND but are either closeted about it or perhaps don’t even know themselves, people who have put a lot of work into analyzing social norms and applying those lessons in themselves so that they can pass as normal. I suspect these folks I’m thinking about are autistic in large part because of their rigid sense of social norms rules, and their clear anxiety when they see people eschewing those rules.
I was afforded a lot of freedom to be weird as a kid. I learned social rules for in the classroom quickly, but outside that I was very lucky with the kids that were around me. And since I loved school and learning so was missed for my ND I just grew up understanding myself as someone who was a weirdo but was accepted for that.
What this means in this context is that I find myself often triggering the above group of suspected ND folks who I think were probably not as lucky as me and who learned to be very rigid in applying social norms in order to be accepted. It smells of trauma, right? And how could it not be trauma. Being rejected as a kid is probably the most primitive danger we face outside of actually dying.
The point I’m getting at here is that I don’t think you’re wrong in a lot of ways but I think there has got to be a middle ground where yes we are learning the social norms and applying those lessons in order to provide the social lubrication to get along and succeed, but ALSO educating the world at large that Neurodivergence exists, is valid, and should be accommodated. I just really believe that the vast majority of the reason ND is not accommodated is because of unintentional ignorance.
So you clearly have had a lot of experiences with people who you felt were not trying hard enough to learn and apply the social rules. So that has shaped your perspective in this discussion.
I have had so many more experiences of the opposite where I have seen people living with intense anxiety constantly about their ability to fit in, and failure despite all their efforts. People who are killing themselves with stress, leading to burnout, depression, substance abuse, abusive relationships. All of this i see as a direct product of them never being given permission to be themselves, be different, advocate for their needs.
So I don’t think we are actually at odds in this discussion and I think if we were able to talk in person we would find that out.
Thank you for your sensible response. I also think online forums make it harder to carry a complex conversation, because we’re filling in missing context that comes with personal interaction. I don’t doubt we could discuss our personal experiences in a constructive way, and learn from both sides, given a better medium.
Thank you for saying what I was trying to express and just couldn’t. It hurts so much to be told “just act like ‘normal’ people so you don’t seem to be ‘disabled’”. We’re not disabled, just different!
❤️I swear we’re gonna get this all sorted out. Maybe not in our lifetimes, but we’re gonna help it get there. Just by having these conversations we’re gonna make it happen
I’m disabled. I can barely deal with normal amounts of noise. Banning cars and ads would go a long way to making me less disabled, but unfortunately I just have a lower tolerance for attention violence, and we live in a society of frequent attention violence.
I understand what you mean. I’m also extremely noise sensitive and have to wear ear plugs pretty much all the time. Being outside is so exhausting.
That’s part of what I was trying to say though. This world isn’t made for us and barely anyone cares to make it easier. In a different world we wouldn’t be disabled. We have different needs than NT people and it’s the world that disables us, not our being different.
The thing is I can do small talk, it just costs a lot of energy that I’d rather use for something more important. And I honestly don’t see a reason to mask all the time and pretend I’m not who I am.
While I might mask in short interactions with strangers I refuse to do it with people I know. They’ll have to accept me the way I am. And that, in fact, is personal growth as well. To accept yourself the way you are and stop pretending to be something you’re not.
I was about to ask the same question just worded much less strongly. Why do you fine them for eating in their room? If they are renting a room from you they should be able to do whatever they want in there as long as they are not destroying stuff or disturbing you/ neighbours
Could be related to pest issues. If you have problems with mice or roaches, I'd absolutely not even blink at a rule like that. Especially if they're leaving dishes and shit just sitting out on the reg.
No it's not. From the National Autistic Society:
"Asperger's syndrome’ (often shortened to Asperger’s) is no longer used as a diagnostic term for autism and is considered controversial due to the history of Hans Asperger, which is summarised below.
Historically, Asperger syndrome was used as a diagnostic term for some autistic people who did not also have a diagnosis of a learning disability. Broadly, it is now agreed that what was referred to as Asperger syndrome is part of the autism spectrum and there is no need for a separate term.
Some people who received a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome continue to use this terminology to refer to themselves. Others do not, usually for two reasons: because the term is no longer used officially; and because of revelations about the Austrian psychiatrist Hans Asperger, who Asperger syndrome was named after and who was complicit with the Nazis."
But isn't this the entire point? You like to call yourself that, and that is perfectly fine, but ultimately all of these words come from psychiatric diagnosis, from the DSM. That is where the labels were defined, that is where our cultural understanding of the neurotype comes from.
Our culture has defined that you are disordered because of your way of being, you've been diagnosed as such. Another culture, a former culture will not have defined it that way. So you calling it a disorder is not based on anything absolute, it is based in a cultural understanding.
I was diagnosed with autism level 1, not aspergers, because: 1 - We now understand that describing people based on 'functioning' is extremely damaging to the individual; and 2 - Asperger tested on children for the Nazis, and I think we can all agree that's not cool.
All of this is cultural, we didn't know about the damage of functioning labeling at the time that diagnosis was accepted (or the whole Nazi thing), and so our cultural understanding of the condition has changed.
Understandings of disorder are cultural, not absolute.
“an illness or condition that disrupts normal physical or mental functions”
Generally people are born with 4 limbs because that is the normal, if you are born without them it’s abnormal you need to use words to classify things, the world operates on the norm… it wouldn’t make sense to make all cars be only able to operate for people who were born without limbs
Saying that, just because you have a disorder doesn’t make you any less of a person, anyone that thinks that is a moron… basically don’t get hung up on a word, you had no choice in your biology/birth you just got what you got
They way you describe it as being oppressed or marginalized you are gonna be well on your way to always being a victim if you want to frame your worldview that way
I could see this argument though. If society takes on the value that the main purpose of every single living organism is to reproduce, then homosexuality could be considered a disorder since “homosexuals” would have difficulties fulfilling life’s mandate (per society). I don’t agree with that, but I can see the argument.
That’s why we have to look at the bigger picture instead of focusing solely on matters of individuals. How do LGBTQ+ individuals contribute to the progress of their group with similar DNA?
There’s a theory that suggests that having homosexuality is socially beneficial, because it means you have some non-rearing adults helping care for the children, similar to why humans live so far past the ages where they would normally be able to bear children, since they can still help socially raise the kids. It’s been observed in birds, but there is a bit of disagreement over whether that’s the case there, or whether there’s some additional species-related complications at play.
It’s funny how you immediately brought that up when it has nothing to do with it and as Johnny said it doesn’t disrupt anything mentally or physically so no, but nice try to make it an issue that wasn’t even talked about
Couldn't it be argued that homosexuality disrupted normal function in society due to societal expectations, which is also the primary way that ADHD produces functional disability? If society has different requirements would ADHD still be a disorder?
Productivity and focus are not “societal expectations”. Sure if society was based around getting things half finished, then maybe. But we can make up all kinds of things to try to justify
Some people (read those who take “go forth and multiply” literally and as an imperative) absolutely could. However, there is a basis in multiple older cultures in which gay/childless people helped support the society by taking care of the other members’ children and the elderly. Not everything was focused on the individual need to have more kids, but to help those who others had. It is more of a group idea. There’s more than enough children to sustain/grow the population, so it’s more important to have extra hands to care for those who are here.
No, since your own personal ability to function isn’t affected in homosexuality. Whereas with ADHD, you could have social support and still run into problems caused by ADHD. Similarly with ASD. That’s not really the case for homosexuality.
As someone who is left handed and grew up being forced to adapt to a right handed world I can understand how it could be considered a disorder! So many things were just that little bit harder
I mostly agree, except for the last part about marginalization. The idea you can always overcome whatever disability/disorder/whatever with hard work and the right mindset is not accurate at all. And that's not you wanting to be a victim, it's you advocating for what you need. Accommodations exist for everyone, they just cater to abled/neurotypical people instead. Once I finally admitted to myself I was disabled and stopped trying to live my life like I am 100% able bodied improved my life A LOT.
And disabled/chronically ill/neurodivergent people DO face a lot of discrimination regardless of if you want to admit it or not. We should be fighting for improvement in treatment, acknowledging people treat you like less of a person doesn't mean you actually are less of a person. ESPECIALLY in the current political climate... once LGBT+ people are dehumanized sufficiently disabled people are going to be next.
I can see how you interpreted that last part that way I didn’t mean it like that, what I was trying to say is I’m arguing that the word disorder is strictly that it’s a genetic disorder and having it doesn’t make you any less of a person it’s a biological issue
I’m not advocating a positive mindset cures all (otherwise depression and anxiety wouldn’t exist) and people with disabilities don’t experience hardships, of course they do but at the same time you are a person that can try to not allow others to dictate your feelings, life is hard enough as it is don’t let someone who looks down upon you determine your worth as their opinion is just that… an opinion
I didn’t read other comments, I just came to say this: for your child it doesn’t matter what you lack or what you are not able to give him. With a healthy relation, full of acceptance of your own problems that child will respect you no matter what because you will teach him things no other parent would: that everyone has some difficulties in life and it’s a matter of your own decisions how you deal with it.
Kids love their parents in so much shit situations that it’s unbelievable. If you love that little human they will love you back no matter what.
I have some speech problems like stuttering and more and my son never considered it as a problem, because that’s who I am and that’s how I speak.
That’s also something kids do that we adults don’t, they take everything as is without questioning it. Dad sometimes can’t pronounce everything like others and that’s how it is. They don’t judge whether it’s bad or good. It is what it is.
If you try being a good parent (and parents who fear being a bad parent usually are good) it’s gonna be all right.
Glad you said this because I initially came to say the same thing. The line “I want him to be able to socialize and have friends and his autistic monster father gets in the way” was so sad to read because to that kid their dad is their dad and one of the primary centers of their world. They don’t see a monster. Socialization and social growth will come for the little one.
To OP: Just give them love and continue to invest in their growth and development, and continue seeking professional help as appropriate. And don’t forget to give yourself grace and space. Give yourself the space to grow and learn and make mistakes, and grace when you do make mistakes or have days when everything feels like it’s falling apart.
This is exactly it. I know what having a "monster" father looks like because mine got tangled in alcohol, but because he demonstrated love and affection for me most of the time, I loved him and was willing to overlook the bad days. Kids are so much more resilient than we give them credit for.
Your friend is at least partially misinforming you. It’s fine to write k instead of ok in almost all situations. But either of them can be rude if the other person would expect more emotive words. For example here’s when k is fine:
Them: Bring my pen when you come into the other room
You: k
And here’s where k is not fine:
Them: Wanna go grab some drinks tonight at 8?
You: k
That’s rude. They would want to hear you actually be interested in their invitation. Like saying “great” or “I’m in” or whatever.
…Ooooh. I think that’s what she was trying to tell me actually and I just completely misunderstood. That second example is a type of situation I used it a lot in. I didn’t realize people needed to know how interested I was. I thought they just needed a quick confirmation.
Yay, glad I could help! Yeah essentially if they’re asking something that might have an emotional aspect to it then they want to hear more than just k.
Neurotypical here, and the comment you're replying to is just right. Not to be rude, but your friend didn't do a good job explaining this stuff to you. Maybe they don't know how to properly articulate that.
Proper grammar is way less important than proper punctuation in the content of INSTANT MESSAGING. It's a matter of tradition, a certain style that came to be before a huge amount of such conversations were held over a computer keyboard without any autocompletion, as opposed to modern smartphone keyboards that correct a lot of your writing. So, back in the day, people basically used to type lazy, shortened messages to each other, akin to SMS (which was like that because the phone keyboards back then weren't all that great for long-form texts, and many tariffs charged you per character), and since that was the domain of personal conversations, this kind of style (little to no punctuation, same with capitalisation, short forms and abbreviations) is associated with informal, laid back tone.
This is fine when the context is informal and laid back, too. As your friend noted, there's many situations where people message you and feel excited or vulnerable, so they kind of expect to see... effort, I guess? I'm saying effort because you can show effort and interest with bad grammar and no punctuation - you can use words and phrases to signal your empathy and compassion or whatever they're seeking at the moment; this here is the reason why some people may see plain "K." as offensive - traditionally, it's an effort-saving way to agree with/to something, and it makes people feel like you just don't care. The comma at the end has absolutely nothing to do with it.
As for proper grammar and punctuation, it's just a stark opposite of the laid back style I described earlier, it's associated with formal speech, business, bad news, something serious in a way, etc. People don't have beef with that at all. Well, some may belive you're trying to show off your writing skills, but those are not the typical bunch even among us.
Often people are looking for some sort of validation, even when it's not obvious.
If they say "I can't join you in the bar today, I have too much work to catch up on", "K." is not a good answer. Several aspects needs to be addressed, ideally:
That's too bad
Next time
Commentary on the state of work: Keep your head above water/your boss is such a jerk/we'll make up for it after your deadline on Thursday/whatever, depending on the situation and your relationship.
Basically, it's a way to show that you care about what they're telling you. It can be a bit exhausting at times.
This is really helpful. I didn’t realize there were so many situations people were looking for validation. I just assumed when they said something like that it was just to quickly let me know and “K.” was all they needed.
To expand on this, consider that others cannot know what you’re thinking without you telling them.
You might feel “I’m looking forward to that and I think we will have fun together.”
But if you don’t tell someone that, they are left to guess for themselves. That uncertainty is very uncomfortable.
Neurotypicals learned to give and use clues to help navigate life and determine if they need to change their actions. But it’s a complicated balance. Most people don’t like being told “I’m not interested in that.” They’d rather hear “no thank you, maybe some other time.” But they’d also much rather hear “that sounds like fun!” than hearing “yeah sure”.
It can be very difficult to imagine what it’s like to have a different set of information than what you yourself know. Practice this skill! It will help you in lots of situations. Do your best to reduce uncertainty while considering how it might feel to hear the new information you’re sharing for the first time.
Ah, I think the hangup for me wasn’t so much not understanding that they had different info than me, but that they wanted the info I had. Moreover, that they might feel differently about things than I did, and they knew that, so I needed to make sure they knew how I felt.
When I see somebody just respond “K.” or “Alright” to an invitation to do something, that always made me happy enough to know that they were gonna be there because I figured if they didn’t want to, they’d have found an excuse to say no. I didn’t suspect that others might not just assume somebody was happy to be there the way I did. It’s helpful to know I need to clear up how I feel in some way for them to understand that I want to be there and enjoy their company.
People can agree to go to an event but have very different feelings about doing it. Some people will be extremely stoked about going, some will be happy about it, some will be like meh its better than sitting at home, some people won’t want to go but decide to anyway because they want to be nice, some may really not want to go but decide to go anyway out of a sense of obligation. The particular words you reply with express your interest level to some degree. A plain “k” will be interpreted as a meh at best.
I see. I always just determined that by their reactions once they showed up, and figured all that mattered until then was whether they had any desire to at all, which was usually conveyed easily with single word responses. I didn’t realize other people wanted to know your feelings beforehand.
Ideally people want to have a general sense of how you’re feeling at all times. Not like in a disruptive way of always making announcements, but through things like the particular words you choose and facial expressions and body language etc.
I can definitely adjust my words to express how I’m feeling better more often. The facial expressions and body language though I’m probably incapable of unfortunately on account of me actually having two separate disorders that make me unable to show physical expressions of emotion. Way back in middle school I was put in a special class to teach me both of those and I couldn’t even figure out how to trigger the muscles in my face to actually make any expressions, nor was I even capable of recognizing the body language I was supposed to be mimicking even when it was described to me.
The disorder is schizoaffective, but the inability to express emotions isn’t usually a big feature of it. It comes with psychosis. Usually, antipsychotics are all it takes to trigger your brain to start expressing emotions again, but I can’t take a high enough dose to do that without serious side effects, so I instead deal with minor psychosis symptoms, like having to remind myself constantly that no, the order of my songs when I hit shuffle is not a secret message telling me the future, and also the fact that I can’t express any physical emotions unless they’re very strong. It also shows in my tone of voice, which is a consistent, flat, unchanging tone that I try to vary randomly just so people don’t tune out my voice.
That sounds hard. But it seems like you’ve got a good understanding of yourself, and that’s huge! It’s clear that you’ve put a ton of work into all this and have achieved real accomplishments. I give you a massive virtual high five!!!
To make things more confusing, responding to an invitation to drinks with “k!” might be ok, depending on who’s asking and the context.
If it’s your roommate asking, and they’re doing it because there’s a sporting event or because drinks are an established ritual, it’d be fine. If it’s your boss, or a new (potential) friend or colleague, a possible romantic interest, or a close friend and it’s not something they usually do or invite you out for, then those situations have a lot more weight, and expect a more fulsome and engaged reply.
Also known as the .30-30 Winchester. I have no idea what a hunting rifle cartridge has to do with Russia. Perhaps they were thinking of the 7.62x54R (used in various Russian military rifles) and mistyped?
You mistyped. The 7.62x54R is a Russian military cartridge used in a number of rifles, perhaps most famously the SVD.
I don’t know. I hate the fact that I was born autistic. Unlike a lot of autistic people, I refuse to think of it as some kind of ‘superpower’ or positive thing.
I was born defective. I’m literally a broken human who doesn’t function correctly.
I know that I sure as hell wish I wasn’t born, and whilst I’m sure those mothers are going to do a great job with their children, I also don’t think that I should have children at the risk of passing it down and letting another person suffer the way I have.
We think similarly. Autism makes life difficult. I think scanning for defective genes early in pregnancy is worthwhile to avoid life destroying issues.
Of course autism has a scale of sorts, you can still live somewhat normally, but it sure as hell doesn’t feel beneficial
My life is hard, therefore I am okay with eugenics
Yeah righto, mate. Sucks for you, but maybe we should just make life easier for the disabled instead of preventing us from existing entirely. Just a thought.
Yeah sure, but when people single out particular demographics as being somehow less deserving of life, people within those demographics who don’t hate their lives tend to get pissy about it for some reason. Go figure.
You are so, so privileged in this regard, you know that right?
It's like insane the amount of luck you have to be in your position in life where you are autistic and happy and supported and capable of interacting with the world and rich enough to enjoy it.
It's wonderful you and the others in this thread like you are so privileged. You are rare and that is special and I'm genuinely very glad you all had a chance to exist.
But I have to ask: why do you get to override the views and beliefs of those in the autistic community who are not as privileged as you? You don't speak for us, just as we don't/can't for you. We're not advocating for eugenics or telling anyone how to live their lives. All we've done is talk about ethics and not procreated.
So many of us with autism struggle immensly our whole lives, the world around us is so overwhelming, many of us cannot communicate efficiently or at all, and many of us are isolated, vulnerable to abuse and/or have been abused.
Why are you so angry with us for sharing with our autistic community that our lives are so difficult that we wouldn't want to have children who would suffer far worse that we have?
Maybe you can't comprehend this? Idk. Maybe you think we're too autistic and retarded to have our own voice and make decisions about our own bodies?
This instance on us needing to happily want to add more overwhelmed and suicidal offspring to the already overwhelmed suicidal world around us, is creepy.
It really is great that you are young and privileged and hopefull enough to want to make the world a better place because you have so much faith for humanity changing and everything, but we're kinda running out of time for all that now.
Potential offspring will suffer worse than any of us ever have as climate collapse and resource depletion, and not to mention the global rise in fascism, economic collapse (and potentially ww3) and all happening and escalating in the very real near future.
But you keep protesting and doing your social activism work though, I hope it works out for you and you succeed in making having autism easier for people like you and all your children, and you all enjoy the few decades we all have left before the food and water run out and the planet becomes to hot and unstable for human life.
You do you. And let us do our thing please.
Yeah, I am very privileged in a lot of ways. I understand that much, and am extremely grateful for it. I also understand that my opinions are at least in part derived from my privileged personal experience. You’re absolutely right in that I cannot speak to the experience of someone who lacks the support I have. I just think that of the billions whose lives are less privileged than my own, many would nevertheless consider their lives to be worth living. I find it tragic when some don’t, but I don’t think that that is necessarily a universally held opinion by the underprivileged.
I just have to ask: why do you insist on putting questions to me that have false premises? Nowhere in this thread have I said that mine is the universal Autistic^TM view, and yet you ask me why I feel I have the right to override people’s opinions. Hell, I don’t think anyone else in this thread has argued that there is any obligation to procreate. On the contrary, I have seen people people making the universal claim that autistic lives are especially not worth living and making the prescriptive claim that autists should not reproduce. That is a eugenicist argument.
So you and all the other's in this thread who have been actively insulting and angry and putting words like 'eugenics' in our mouths to shut us down, and calling us stupid, mentally ill, edgelords and psychopaths etc.
You don't think you've been overriding our views as members of the autistic community? Or claiming we are wrong and dangerously mentally unsound for holding them? And you haven't seen anyone advocating for this topic to be banned on social media so we can no longer discuss it?...
Your opinion that autistic people with antinatalist views are advocating eugenics, is so full of logical fallacies I felt like a dick writing them all out (I can put them back if you want tho, I'm just trying not to be too offensive here).
Most people who hear about antinatalism assume stupid shit and get angry and start with the character insults and accusations of racism and eugenics, and about how antinatalism means wanting to mass murder and segregate society.
And most people, like you, refuse to listen when it's explained.
Antinatalists are individuals who have independantly chosen not to procreate for the shared ethical reason of reducing suffering.
I doubt most antinatalists are even aware of the term, they're just people who have looked at the world around them and chosen not to add to it because it's awful.
And yeah, as a person with basic empathy It's really hard to look at the world and not feel sad when you learn people willingly procreate with debilitating hereditary conditions and are knowingly bringing potential suffering into the world for purely selfish reasons.
This is not a world ANYONE should be looking at and wanting to bring more life into, autistic or not.
Talking about it being upsetting and unethical isn't advocating for eugenics.
Antinatalists, autistic or otherwise, aren't forcing anyone to do anything, and talking about our feelings isn't hurting anyone unless folk like you decide to assume nasty shit about us and be rude.
Antinatalists having this conversation somewhere you can see it, are not some eugenist plot to harm people with a sterility causing memetic virus, nor is it some wild attempt at converting the masses into ''"genetic purity"" by forcing idiots like you to call us names because you won't fucking read what we're even actually saying but you're convinced we're evil.
I genuinely doubt most antinatalists even really talk about this anywhere but online in antinatalist spaces, and when it comes up on other forums like it has here. It's not exactly light conversation to have irl when most people react like they have here, or worse.
.
And forgive me if this is a false equivalency but if you believe antinatalism is stupid and we're all crazy eugenicists for not passing down our suffering, but apparently don't believe we should instead be popping out kids like bunnies and gurning about how great everything is,
what do you want from us instead then?
To just not fucking talk about it?
(Sorry, I failed at not being offensive. I'm too tired to care much right now though tbh but if it's any consolation, it's really not personal, I'm just tired, hate most people, and trying to finish this before i go to bed)
It’s like insane the amount of luck you have to be in your position in life where you are autistic and happy and supported and capable of interacting with the world and rich enough to enjoy it.
Autism is a spectrum, not a binary. It is likely that the vast majority of autistic people lead lives that are, for want of a better word, ‘normal’.
Of course, it could also be that all people are autistic to some extent.
You can’t check genes to determine whether people will have a fulfilling and interesting life or whether they are some point will wish they weren’t born. You can only make horrifying filtering based on crude guesses, also known as eugenics.
I feel like everyone in this thread are arguing two different things. “My neurodivergence has made my life hell and I wish I never existed in the first place” and “you can live a fullfilling life with neurodivergence” aren’t conflicting concepts to me.
Big same, yet when I got old and stopped caring about anything, and started paying more attention to others than my own problems, I started to notice autistic tendencies in almost everyone I have interacted with. Even people that bully or hate on autistic people. The hyperfixation on negative things or on really awful views on people and the world is always strong in those ones, paired with other weird brain shit like complexes coupled with total denial and inability to accept that they are wrong. I’ve been feeling like everyone is autistic and there is just more axes to the spectrum than I had been told in the past. Like rather than a point on a line, it’s a coordinate in a cube. The most central ones are ‘neurotypical’ and it moves outward in all directions in 3d space.
On a side note neroatypical/nerotypical as a term kinda pisses me off because I swear it’s more typical for people to be neuroatypical than what is considered neurotypical. People just think they are ‘normal’ but they are wrong. And it’s not lesbians or vaccines, if anything its the forever chemicals and microplastics that these evil fucking corpos have been pumping into us and the world and we are only going to see more and more autism, and only the ultra wealthy will be able to call themselves normal while the rest of us will be considered defective.
I don’t know how autism affects your life but I can speak for myself and I know it can be tough, executive dysfuntion has been beating my ass hard for a few years at this point.
Still, I do not think I’m broken because of it, years of conditioning by a society that doesn’t give a shit about us and want us to do as much or more than everyone else while also laughing at us really fucks me up, even while being aware of these expectations and lack of structural support.
Also, I wouldn’t consider myself really me without the special interests and obsessions I had throughout my life and the ways I have talked and expressed it.
What I have just said most likely won’t change anything in your life, but I just wanted to aknowledge how hard it can be while also showing a little bit of what makes me happy about my experience being autistic. I hope for the best for you, friend.
Antinatalist here - the rhetoric in that post is horrible, and is not representative of antinatalism as a whole.
Antinatalism isn’t the belief that a certain group shouldn’t reproduce - it’s that nobody should. The world is fucked, and nonconsensually bringing anyone into it is morally reprehensible. It’s not eugenics, it’s voluntary extinctionism.
For the people that have been born, however, everyone deserves respect and equity. Ableism, or any other kind of discrimination, is just wrong, and makes you a shitty person. Just like the person who made that post.
Consciousness is required to give consent, requiring consent to be born is a paradox.
This is a philosophical debate of which i see only 2 possible outcomes.
Life itself is a fundamental bad and negative the only ethical thing to do is fully halt the circle of reproduction to minimize all harm
Life itself is a fundamental good and positive, we must nurture and protect it to minimize harm against it. Prioritizing well being and personal happinesses while finding a “cure” for intolerance, hate and greed.
Forcing birth upon someone is fundamentally wrong, and the only ethical thing to do is halt the cycle of reproduction to prevent further harm. We should also strive to minimize further harm to those already alive by prioritizing well-being and personal happiness, while searching for a “cure” for intolerance, hate, and greed.
Can you give some context on how that would look like in practice that is not akin to everybody suicide? If we stop the cycle of reproduction then humanity will go extinct in about a century (not considering Longevity escape velocity which would significantly alter the subject context)
Trying to create a better world and to find cures for harm is a difficult challenge, i am willing to sacrifice some of my own life (time, body and energy) for the common good knowing that future generations will be better off. But doing so knowing that in a century none of that work will matter at all would be detrimental to my ability to find meaning and therefore wellbeing in my life. Besides that, knowing that we have collectively chosen extinction rather then trying to archive the vast untapped potential our conscious minds still hold to grow would bring me great pain and sadness.
There is also the matter with what are we going to do with all other species on our planet? Do we respect their ability reproduce because they have no conscious concept of consent or we will we nuke the entire planet in the hope that their is no and never will be any other life out there?
Also a different question with a more spiritual angle: How can you be certain that there was nothing within you that existed before conception which did consent to being born as a human being in a random family. If we halt reproduction then we are forcing non existence on potential consciousness. In absolutes you can chose to end your life when you have it but you cannot give life to yourself when you don’t have it.
It's not eugenics to be sad for 3 new autistic kids being brought into this world to suffer and die in the catasrophic climate collapse we're so dead set on, it's fucking empathy.
You don’t know if said persons are gonna have a bad life, you just don’t know.
Autism can be bat for some, maybe more than few, but is not for everybody, Humanity always has faced existencial crisis, we will fix climate change on way or another.
People are born neurodivergent but they are not born suicidal, the reason suicide is the leading cause of death is because we are a minority that is not well understood by the dominant majority, that is where almost all the hearth comes from.
Schizofrenia is also understood as a form neurodivergency and has quite some overlap with autosm. Most people know it as a horrible, scary mental illness but this is only the case in modern societies. Where in a big city people experience hallucinations of yelling, monsters and many intens negative emotions in natural communities they experience quite the opposite, visions of ancestors, angels, positive emotions and artistic beauty in things.
Instead of conceding that ‘life is pain, so we should not live,’ we should advocate that ‘society is inflicting pain, and we must reform it to prevent such suffering.’”
I think your belief system is a rare example actual Evil. You're literally advocating for the elimination of music, of art, of science, of anyone who could even appreciate those things. No more Rembrandt or Dali or Mozart or ... anything. And you've gotten so twisted up inside, ostensibly because some people live sad, hard lives, that you think that's a good thing.
Isn’t it just the belief that nobody should have kids though? I’d have thought the while extinction part would rank higher than the culture loss. And evil seems a bit extreme, sounds more like apathy and loss of hope to me. Not saying there aren’t some messed up people in the group though.
Yeah, this. My biggest issue with the fundamental anti-natalist position is that it’s a totally blackpilled one that ultimately devalues any positive experiences life brings when compared with even the potential for any bad thing to happen, regardless of magnitude.
Your assuming antinatalism is a plague that will infect everyone with “I aint having kids”. 99% of people out here trying to have ten kids it seems. There are more trans people than antinatalists. Y’all are freaking out about a niche philosophy.
They’re not advocating for a lower population. They’re advocating for human extinction.
As in, we should all let the torch of consciousness burn out. I don’t know if I’d call it evil, but it’s definitely one of those severely misguided takes that you almost exclusively see on the internet.
At current rate we will never leave this planet, and it will die. If not by climate change then the Sun will go Red Giant and swallow us. Or a meteor. Something. All species will go extinct sometime.
You’re here afraid a few people believing that we should go extinct when there are 8 billion people and rising is gonna cause actual extinction. Fucking calm your tits, dude.
I’m advocating for the elimination of poverty, disease, death, pollution, war, hate, and all human suffering.
Sure, there are some neat things in this world that are worth experiencing if you were forced to live. If you’re already alive, of course you should seek to find happiness and enjoyment in the little time you have.
Still doesn’t justify forcing more people into the world to exacerbate the problems we have - overpopulation being a major one.
It’s not evil. Things were fine before us, and things will be fine after us.
"Things" were not observable by anything with the capability to designate them as such, so no they were not "fine" in any meaningful sense of the word.
You're literally doing the speech the villain does to make him seem reasonable.
Semantics, but if you really want to get into it, a lack of ability for things to be good or bad is still better than the existence and perpetuation of suffering.
Also, responding to differing worldviews with “see a therapist” and comparing them to a villain is fucking disgusting
Surely the core arguments that an anti-natalist might bring forward apply to any sentient beings, right? Like, a cat didn’t give prior consent to existing any more than a human did. Ergo, I do think it’s reasonable to point out that there would be no observer that could witness, much less enjoy any benefit from, the anti-natalist ideal world.
Arguing that people must exist so as to maintain art and science is rather silly. Art and science exist for our utility; we are under no obligation to them. If people decide not to reproduce, that is their right.
I’m not saying we should kill people, I’m saying making more is wrong.
It is a nonconsensual act whereupon you are forcing life and all its travesty onto another being, when they were perfectly fine not existing.
Call me insane if you want, I couldn’t care less. Humans are a plague upon both other humans and this planet as a whole, and bringing someone else into the world to be both a victim and perpetrator of the issue is wrong.
Yes, and I think that is bad. I just also think that this isn’t because of anything intrinsic to being alive and/or autistic, but largely due to external factors.
Yeah righto bud, I’m not victim blaming anybody. I’m just shit-talking a bunch of sad defeatists on the internet who think they’re smarter than everybody else just because they’ve taken the fucking blackpill when in reality they’re so far down this hole that they’re running defense for fucking eugenics against their own community.
On the off chance that you were being sincere in your question as to what we can do to actually improve the situation, the answer is to participate in an existing community dedicated to that very purpose. Collective action is generally way more effective than anything an individual can do. Are there barriers to doing this? Potentially. What can you do about that? I guess you’ll just have to figure it out; I don’t fucking know the specific circumstances of your personal situation, nor those of any groups around you.
So what are you doing? I mean aside from making lots of silly assumptions about me and the other people here who are politely trying to explain our points of view about this.
How are you making the world better for people with autism? And how many kids do you plan on having? Any plans for how you and all the kids will cope with the water and food shortages over the next ten to thirty years?
What the fuck do you want from me? I don’t owe you shit. You asked a question I suspected and am now convinced was in bad faith, and I answered it anyway.
You’re talking a lot of shit about me making baseless assumptions for somebody out here asking questions that are entirely premised on baseless assumptions yourself, such as (wrongly) assuming not only that I’m capable of having children (I intentionally had my gonads removed, not that it’s any of your business) but also that I’d want to (children have a tendency to be noisy, outgoing and energetic in a way that doesn’t jive with my own autism). I just don’t have a problem with people who genuinely believe that they can give their children a good life having any, as I’m not convinced that a good life is impossible (yet).
Piss off with your bullshit “politely trying to explain our points of view” civility politics, we were past that when you took the least charitable interpretation you could have done and misconstrued my point of view as somehow placing blame on the victims of the current state of affairs.
Genuinely asking here.
nonono: you’re “Just Asking Questions.” At least, I believe that’s the vernacular.
My position is simple: for as long as there is any positive experience to be had, life can be worthwhile and it’s not up to anyone to make a decision based on the contrary view to that on the behalf of anyone else. Also eugenics is fucking vile.
Firstly, I don’t have a kid. Being sterile (and also just not wanting any), I am quite unlikely to ever have a kid. Ideally we as a society would work to avoid water wars happening. My point is that we should improve our collective state of affairs somewhat, rather than resigning ourselves to the idea that to exist is to suffer like a bunch of loser doomers.
If someone experiences so much suffering that they are pushed to “opt out of it”, it would have been better not to force them to live and experience the suffering in the first place. Just because someone can take themselves out of it doesn’t make the suffering okay to inflict.
Yeah but like, why not let those with the best understanding of the particular circumstances make that decision on a case-by-case basis instead of unilaterally saying that because some people are probably going to have a shitty life no one gets to make more (people)?
I think your perspective about life is blinded by pessimism, and you’re treating that pessimism as absolute fact. Many people view life as a wonderful thing, are thrilled to exist for the time that they do, and see creating a new life to experience the wonders of living as a gift.
Humans are a plague upon both other humans and this planet as a whole
You’re sounding like Agent Smith from the matrix. Come on. Unplug from the negative feedback loop for a bit.
There are good things to experience, yes. If you’re already alive, then by all means, seek to find happiness and enjoyment. Don’t force someone else into that endless struggle. You can make no guarantees that their life won’t be one of pure suffering, and that’s not a risk I’m willing to take.
And again, we are destroying this planet - not just for us, but for all life on it. We are the problem.
I agree with the other commenter recommending therapy. When you don’t see it as “life is pain and the future is hopeless”, you might sound less like a scifi villain calling for human extinction.
“Existence is suffering” is a foundational tenet for many worldviews and religions, not just antinatalism. Existence is literally the first cause to all suffering - no existence, no suffering.
Acknowledging that doesn’t make me depressed or pessimistic, it’s just acceptance how things are.
You’re free to live in whatever fantasy you want, though. That’s your right.
Also, responding to differing worldviews with “get help” is generally bad form
Your worldview is literally calling for the extinction of all humans. You need to come back to reality and stop convincing yourself that this is normal or healthy.
Just know that you don’t have to feel this way. Depression is a sickness that convinces you “that’s just the way it is”. It’s a chemical disfunction of the brain. It can be treated most of the time. It’s a hard path, starting with finding the right therapist, but it’s worth a try. Talking as someone who’s life was saved by therapy.
If you knew and understood what actually goes on in this world, you would be "depressed" regardless of the chemicals in your brain working or not. All the happy pills in the world, and trust me from experience, all the best drugs in the world, would not get rid of genocide, fascism, or a world built upon capitalism, that at its very core is based upon exploitation, subjugation, and oppression of half of the world, and the mass destruction of most of the Earth's species and the planet itself to fuel the greed and sole benefit of the worlds greatest sociopaths, wherein you happen to be one of the few lucky ones who can live in a tiny bubble where you are completely unaware of the extent of mass suffering and death that is occurring in the neighborhoods you don't go to and the countries that are too far away for you to care about. If you read through the publicly available documents of what the CIA in the US did in the 20th century alone, you would not think coming to the conclusion that humans as a species are irredeemable could only be the result of a disfunctioning brain. I'm not even an antinatalist, I'm just autistic and study a lot of history.
It’s a gamble. Literally gambling with human lives.
If one never exists, they face neither pleasure nor pain. If one is forced to exist - remember, this is never consensual - then one may experience pleasure and pain, and simply hope that pleasure is more bountiful. Hopes, dreams, goals, ideas that may or may not be met. All of it essentially left to chance. Will their life be pleasurable? Possibly. Will life be painful? Certainly. Suffering is guaranteed. Pleasure is not. Are we to keep forcing others to play, simply in the hope that things work out well for them?
According to some predictions, climate change will cause up to 3 billion refugees by the end of the century. The world isn't exactly the most stable right now either, in part due to the beginning effects of climate change.
Not that I necessarily agree with it, but coming to the conclusion that it's not necessarily moral to bring a child into that world or contribute to further suffering, isn't particularly insane or inhumane.
It's not a particularly novel or outlandish idea either. From Sophocles to Shakespeare. To be or not to be, is an age old question.
Not that going on about how much you hate children and people who have children all day on the internet, is a particularly healthy hobby, obviously.
And to add to all this, the ice caps will likely be melted completely in the next decade causing the Blue Ocean Event, where massive amounts of previously reflected solar radiation will instead be absorbed by the oceans, causing the release of huge amounts of methane from the sea bed and the earth to cook in it's own atmosphere.
This is a good explanation for anyone interested in further reading on the BOE. Look this up for yourselves with other sources though.
(You'll want to find out how much ice coverage is left at the poles, how much we've lost this year so far, and the loss projection for if the next 5 years are as hot as 2023. Then look up what will happen to the earth with all the unreflected solar radiation we'll be absorbing without the ice caps).
Billions of people are going to die in the next 30 years due to climate collapse. There may not be 3 billion of us left to be clinate refugees by the end of the century.
See, look at that - @some_guy showed up to generate the second half of the equation. He hasn't yet shown the capacity to form complete sentences, but he loves to follow me around downvoting after I told him his battle is with the troll within. Each time I see his downvote, it makes my day a little brighter knowing that no matter how hard he tries, he can't answer the arguments I've posed him, but they're still in his head, driving him to hunt me across the Fediverse, downvoting without commentary because he truly has nothing to say.
Just a troll that's been following me about - he popped up six minutes after I posted. He seems not to understand that we can see downvotes over here on kbin. It was hilarious that he showed up to prove my point.
I reduced this post because it does not contribute to the discussion. If you believe you are being harassed, you should use the report button or block the user in question. You are probably just adding fuel to the fire by continuing to post paragraphs complaining about the user; if they are trolling you're giving them exactly what they want by letting them live rent-free in your head.
No worries - not a problem. I have performed all the steps you suggest, but the Fediverse tools are still a bit lacking for cross-instance harassment, and this particular chucklefuck has been sending IMs threatening doxxing (which come through despite blocks). Just pointed it out here as it proved my point and made me laugh.
Besides, I'm living rent free in his head now... ;)
It’s actually somewhat hard to be both, but dude when it happens one thing really adds to the other so much!
Most of us are are constantly masking among neurotypical folks and one of the reasons we do it is to not be seen as an asshole. If you actually are an asshole then you can also be yourself much more easily, which in turn often make you be seen as an even bigger asshole by them.
That’s not how the autism spectrum works. For one what you’re describing is a gradient not a spectrum and for two the autism spectrum is a spectrum of autism, not a spectrum of everything. To be on the spectrum you have to be autistic.
Autism or any behavioural disorder isn’t a neatly packaged thing. We can’t measure it or study it under a microscope. The typical autistic behaviour exists in everyone to a greater or lesser degree. It’s hilarious to me how people worry about things like AI making decisions and we cannot determine the origin of the decision, as if a sophisticated neural network can be examined like clockwork. The human mind is nondeterministic and may always be.
If you are just trying to share knowledge then you aren't an asshole. Those same people will do the same endless rambling about pointless sports statistics and how they made 3 touchdowns in high school or whatever thing they find interesting.
No, it could be none, both, one or the other. I’m merely suggesting it as a possibility since they’re doubting his character so they can assess the situation thoroughly.
This is the kind of post that makes me think that maybe people with autism just have prohibitively much self-awareness. As far as I can estimate, you care more than most parents already.
In my personal opinion as an autistic person, I would argue that the non-autistic participants underestimated the negative consequences of their actions, and simply chose individual benefit over their principles.
I may not be autistic, but I strongly agree with this statement.
You may very well be autistic if you agree with this statement. As do I, an autistic person.
Also, autistic people tend to see patterns very easily and extrapolate without effort:
One possible extrapolation is that it would be better to have autistic people make important decisions of grand scale then neurotypical people.
You could also extrapolate that an autistic whitness is more trustworthy than a neurotypical one.
You could even go as far as saying that neurotypicals tend to be hypocritical as they tend to fight for a cause publicly but undermine it privately if that benefits them.
I could go on for hours but I‘m pretty sure we‘re not allowed to hate on NTs here. I think you can very well see where this is going if you try to assert individual value for mankind.
people interpret tone as emotion, where a more serious tone conveys that you might be mad about something they think (true or not) they are not at fault for; a playful tone makes that “load” lighter and doesn’t sound as “accusing” (for lack of a better word).
it’s just a byproduct of language and culture that can be as difficult to overcome as it can be understood. lots of things could be easier if everyone changed, but when’s the last time everyone agreed on something?
(at least this is what I’ve come to understand)
edit: also!! comments like “you are not responsible for others” are only half-true. while you shouldn’t be bearing the weight of others, you can’t ignore it completely! people come to expect a certain level of comradery when close to them. if you act without care to others, they will become distanced since they may not see you caring for their mental/emotional well-being (as one should, including you and I!).
a certain amount of care is required to keep eachother comfortable, this amount can vary and requires experimentation if you’re not already accustomed. it’ll be scary but it’s the best way forward (in my option)
This is what I was going to say, tone equals emotion. When I get very tired I lose the tone in my voice and sound like a flat robot. For poeple who don’t know me well this comes off as being very disinterested and cold, even if my words aren’t. Poeple react to tone as much as the words spoken.
yessss I feel like my “normal” tone or whatever you call it is generally perceived as cold no matter what I’m talking about. and usually I can cover it but when I’m tired or stressed it can be exausting doing it all say
I definitely want to communicate in a way everyone likes. since I can’t control how my words are perceived, i try really hard usually to fit other people’s standards. I don’t want to make communication hard for others like people make if for me. and I don’t want to upset anyone. but then when i ignore how i want to communicate, when im stressed all the bluntness comes out in full force. I really hope we can find a good group compromise, cause I don’t want people to be offended or me to be exausted.
learning to use tone correctly and actively thinking about it (as opposed to passively using it like others do) can definitely be tiring since it’s basically an exercise to your mind. the only way to get to the “passive use” state is to do it until it doesn’t get tiring anymore.
however, the stressed->blunt part does sounds like a normal response, since that tone seems to convey your emotions at that time. if you’re feeling stressed alot for this to be common, i would also try to manage stress better, like cutting up tasks into easily manageable parts (but don’t cut them too small, as that can make them unmanageable and hard to keep track of!) and giving yourself time to destress by doing things you like to do (video games, shows, videos, music, … hobbies in general, …), but also don’t overdo it and leave you actual responsibilities behind
(remember that this comment, like most here, comes from experience, not study so might not work for you or need tweaking)
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