What makes NT's so "normal"?

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EvilKimEvil,

I fall into the categories you described. My differences do not prevent me from holding a job and, in fact, are an asset in my line of work. My particular strengths help me accomplish excellence in that particular area. I also have four college degrees and did well in school.

I cannot, however, drive a car and I am not much of a cook. I need to polish my job interview skills to advance at the library and get full time employment eventually. I have a tendency to be a bit clumsy and wind up with bruises frequently.

As for relationships, people consider me nice and friendly, but I don't think I will ever get married. At my present level of functioning, I don't see myself being able to handle marriage and children. I am too routine-oriented (Work, daily house chores, my cats, etc.) to be able to acclimate to another person's needs. Cats are much easier.

That is what everyone does, some people (NT's) do it more easily than other people. When I studied post structuralism last year, I learned about "signifiers" and the "signified". Signifiers are symbols for the signified, like the word "ball" is a signifier for the toy that bounces. Signifiers can exist without a signified (foreign words or words one doesn't understand) but there is no signified without signifiers.

So, it is impossible to think something that hasn't already been programmed into you by society or whatever is doing the programming. You cannot think of something--like a red ball, without first seeing/hearing about/... a red ball. On the subject of creativity, you don't exactly have to experience a red ball; maybe just something that bounces, or maybe realizing different objects react differently when manipulated. The less you need to think up a ball, the more creative you are.

So, we are all programmed, for if we weren't, we wouldn't think at all. The difference between normal and otherwise in this particular instance can probably be explained by the possibility that we all have differing levels when it come to understanding certain things quickly. Like the previous example, some people need a red ball, and others need so much less that it looks like they were born knowing, but it doesn't make them inherently different/superior/inferior/robots. Just like being left-handed, it is only a problem when difficulties arise.

At school once when an NT talked about "normal" I asked him what normal means. He couldn't explain what normal is but said that everybody knows what normal is. So I have assumed that normal is what normal people agree is normal. It's a very abstract concept. There is something chicken or egg about it.

I'm making this post really fast so someone else may have already said this, I don't know, but anyway.
"normal" is relative, it is relative to the point of veiw of the person defining it, and it is relative to the state of the society you question.
"normal" is merely majority, our lack of social skills, our stims, and our obsessiveness do not make us "abnormal" it is merely the fact that the majority of our society is not like us.
to each and every one of us, "normal" is how close someone is to your personality, because the only person who considers themselves "abnormal" are those who find themselves in a mental state of gloom.

(of course, if you consider yourself abnormal but are proud of it, you don't cout for my last sentence )

I think what makes them 'normal' is that there are more of them.

Concider 'I AM LEGEND'. The novel it was based off of spoke strongly of 'what makes people normal' because the protagonist was the last human being alive on earth and there were more mutated people -therefore he was the oddity and they the norm.

If there were more of us, (austistic or Aspies) then we would be 'normal' and they the ones in therepy to be more like us.


At least that is my theory.

"The majority is always sane." -- Nessus, in Larry Niven's 'Ringworld'.

There's some truth in that statement. The majority always defines what is "normal", therefore "normal" is whatever the majority thinks is normal. So normality a sort of consensus. Anything outside of it becomes abnormal simply by not being the majority.

That doesn't mean normal is good and abnormal is bad.