Counter-cultures and aspergers

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You are right. How my hippiness meets my aspieness is still a mystery to me.
Same here, although I no longer dream about wandering round the world with just a tent.
I was so afraid of using the hippy "toilets" at the European Rainbow Gathering in Yorkshire in 2006, I found myself going all the way back to London just to have a s**t (and didn't go up to Yorkshire again).
It is also the main reason why I only do one night excursions to the Rainbow Gatherings here in Israel. (the other reason is because I get bored really quickly).
It is related to being neurologically different. (it is like that for me and I'm sure it is the same for you).

You may want to read Caiseal Mor's autobiography, "A Blessing and a Curse: Autism and Me".
Caiseal Mor is totally autistic and totally a hippie.

Many autistics do have flexible boundaries.
While most professionals claim autistics require a fixed routine, I think there are many autistics who do not require fixed routines.
I can even see how free love can suit some types of autistics. (personally, I only craved free love when I was young, stupid and couldn't find any love at all).

While I did dream of wandering round the world, my main motivation was my hope for meeting like minded neurodivergents (not necessarily autistics) through my wanderings.
By this day and age, thinking about wandering round the world mainly reminds me of "The world is just a little town,
Everybody trying to put us down" (from John Lennon's song "Isolation"), or of "Travel the world and the seven seas, Everybody's looking for something, Some of them want to use you, Some of them want to get used by you, Some of them want to abuse you, Some of them want to be abused" (from Erythmics' song "Sweet Dreams").
It even makes me think of the Beatles' song "The Inner Light" in its entirety:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7ubI-MTLVM[/youtube]

Really? Not me. Still dreaming of the parade, don't rain on it please. x

I know I am complicated for other people to deal with and sometimes I am sorry for confusing them with my own state of semi-continual confusion. I guess I somehow make up for that by being rather towards the liberal side of the spectrum. However odd somebody's view of the world may be, even if I do not understand it, I can respect it and treat them allright - at least as long as their particualar way of living does not interfer with others' safety, dignity or selfesteem.

I've certainly lived a hippie/punk/raver-ish bohemian lifestyle since my mid-teens, but I'm not sure if that's directly related to Aspergers'.

It is possible that a lack of acceptance by whatever can be said to constitute the social mainstream leads us to seek companionship and a sense of belonging elsewhere - but then I also know aspies who look and act in a very conventional manner on the surface, at least, so I'm not sure it's correct to make generalisations.

Last edited by Locustman on 07 Nov 2010, 8:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

I found their tolerance allowed me to be relatively inflexible myself, though getting them to keep appointments was rather frustrating ("hi man, sorry I didn't show up, I was tripping, it was really cool").....the most enlightement ones would simply refuse to make any appointments so they wouldn't let anybody down. I had to pretty much shelve my special interests (too many hippies visiting me without warning), which I saw as a trade-off for social acceptance.

One brilliant thing about them was that they usually had a taboo on bad-mouthing people behind their backs, and they had no time at all for that odious mainstream habit of distancing themselves from anybody who seemed different.

Hippy toilets can indeed be squalid, but have you seen the toilets on British trains and ferries?

As for kitchen hygeine, if they were into eating meat they'd all have died of salmonella by now. If anybody wanted to cook, their first job would be to wash the dishes and pots that the last cook had left.....there was no rota, you cooked if you felt like it, and with that mountain of filthy dishes, there wasn't a lot of cooking got done.

More of a problem was their strange "open" attitude to relationships and fidelity. They seemed to see jealousy as always entirely wrong, so if your partner wanted to hang out with sexual rivals, you weren't expected to object. Most of them were nudists as well. They wouldn't even allow a lock on the bathroom door......they felt it was wrong to expect people to wait for a pee just so you could keep your privates out of view while you had a bath. Even the bathroom window was clear glass, not frosted. And not even a net curtain.

Most aspies are far from being hippies. I met more than a hundred aspies, so I know it.
Yet, there is a small sub-group of hippiesh aspies. I am fascinated with this sub-group.

i have found myself more accepted within various countercultures (there isn't just one), but never quite feeling at home there (rightly so). i see it as a positive development lately that there are though who want to create aspie culture, separate from its (often strong) outcroppings in scifi, tech-geek, ktp subcultures. not so much, the separatist idea itself.

as has been mentioned, the hippie scene (or as in my experience, the Rainbow Family) is somewhat of an odd fit. a person with an instinct for order can easily gravitate toward drudgelike roles. but i think there is lasting value with having tried these alternative societies (each just as mysterious as the one you left). it is good to practice learning coping strategies in a less punitive space.

yes I have. Now there's an idea for a truly terrifying Halloween costume...
at least now it's winter the naturists tend to hang around indoors.

I came of age during the Hippie era, so I think of myself as one, even though, on analysis I'm sort of a fixed routine, drug avoiding, rule bound Hippie. The important value that I took away from that era is to be myself, so I never worried about fitting the Hippie or any other model. Another important value is appreciation of the simple life, which has served me well in reducing the need for employment and all the special terrors that holds.

Aspies apparently acquire their knowledge the hard way, learned - not intuitively absorbed from the surrounding culture. It is not surprising they often see themselves as part of the counter culture. Personally, I cherish that aspect of my nature and would never regard it as an abnormality. I do not consider myself an aspie but I do have an autistic son. I suspect many parents of autistic children are a bit nonconforming, suggesting the trait is a perfectly normal deviation from average.

http://30145.myauthorsite.com/

Ah yes...."work is a four-letter word" was a mantra that resonated with me. Not that it's really the work itself, it's the working environment that upsets me.

Their frugality thing is also very refreshing.....much better than hearing a load of suits sniggering about my simple lifestyle. I only get the modal salary but I find I don't need more than half of it to live on, so the rest goes straight into my early retirement fund.

not hippie but i wouldnt say anything about me is or ever was mainstream. if it wasn't for a variety of counterculture type people i would never have succeeded in making any friends at all.

i hate the word "nonconformist" though because it implies you are being different on purpose, which is a lark. there is no bravery involved, and no statement making or deliberate defiance involved.

i have always had trouble with people's social behavior even amongst counterculture types though.

I'm a rocker.

I've always gravitated toward non-mainstream views and social groups, and I too wouldn't have had friends at all if it weren't for such groups, but I have not found acceptance there either. I went to art school and was involved in an art scene for many years that was outside the mainstream. About ten years ago I was involved in the anarchist/lefty scene and did a lot of volunteer work for groups like Food Not Bombs, but I ended up getting myself all tangled up in misunderstandings and my own ineptitude in getting along socially as well as my intransigence and tendency toward anger, and I was, in the end, bullied pretty awfully and actually kicked out of the community group where I was a volunteer. It was partly my own fault, but I certainly didn't get the understanding or acceptance that I naively thought might flow from a group of people with that particular mindset.

Even among outsiders I am still an outsider.