Not respecting authority - Aspie trait?

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I think most people detest having to deal with people who have authority over them if they are treated without respect from the authority figures, but some instinct for self preservation keeps them from getting zapped. I'm a NT and hate getting in the position of having to deal with something or someone I know is unfair, but I instinctively understand I have to deal with them on their level if I know they are in a position to cause me harm.

I think the "respect for authority" phrase is unfortunate, because it's a phrase often used by those who feel that there isn't enough of it, "respect" is a buzz-word.

Purely and simply, I recognise no authority without a good evidence-based reason to do so, and I haven't seen many such reasons.

Why? I guess my upbringing pretty much guaranteed such a result. Mum abused her power over me right through my childhood, so my first and strongest experience of authority was very negative. It was extremely rare that any of the restrictions placed on me turned out to be for my own good, and the punishments were mostly unjustifiable. Dad didnt exert any great authority, being rather eclipsed by Mum's aggressive personality, and when he did wield his power, there woud always be an almighty war that would threaten to end them as a couple. As I grew up, I could see that their ways of doing things were deeply flawed, and I rejected them as role models.

I'm ambivalent to hierarchies......in many ways I can't stand them, but frankly I've felt relatively comfortable in strongly-disciplined situations where I know the rules, as long as some tinpot twit isn't forever moving the goalposts. But I see equality as the real attraction, and every time I defer to an authority, as an adult, I feel cheated, repressed, and humiliated, and I'd feel guilty if I were getting authoritarian myself.....even if I know best, it doesn't count if the other people aren't convinced. One of the things I'm really looking forward to when I retire early, is my liberation from the corrupt authority of the workplace......apart from the occasional clash with the local council/police, I'll hopefully never have to tolerate authority again. Certainly I'd never tolerate inequality in my social life - if anybody gets above themselves then they won't be welcome to share my life.

Perhaps a better word than "respect" would be "trust." I don't know of any authorities that I trust. I might accept somebody like Gandalf, he was quite authoritarian but very wise and incorruptible. There's nobody in real life who comes close to him.

[quote="ToughDiamond"

Why? I guess my upbringing pretty much guaranteed such a result. Mum abused her power over me right through my childhood, so my first and strongest experience of authority was very negative. .[/quote]

Did you ever ask your mother why she was so harsh? (I realize she might be an innately harsh person, but maybe she was partly reacting to the era and her own harsh upbringing.) You're the age of my older son who didn't know he had Asperger Syndrome until he was forty-eight. (No one in this country even knew the syndrome existed until 1994 so he's not alone.) As you were, he was raised in the era of the "refrigerator mom" where everything the child did wrong or didn't do right was blamed on the mother. Even profound autism and things like cerebral palsy were Mom's fault. My husband was the authority figure in our household and he bought into the idea that I was to blame for all the things our children did wrong. Even I bought in to it. Having police, teachers and judges berate you for behaviors you would never do yourself can make you a bit cranky. I don't know who was the more relieved to realize my son's difficulty in translating a high IQ into "normal behavior" was genetic.

I've known normal kids who didn't respect authority. Maybe that is why they wouldn't follow the rules. They would break them when the teacher wasn't around and I remember mom telling me kids like testing authority just to see how much they can get away with. Even small children like testing it to see what would happen. Mom told me I did the same thing. She would tell me to not do something and I would act like I was going to do it and I would wait until she was looking my direction before doing it. Then she would ask me if I want a spanking and she always kept her word and boy did that teach me to listen. If I didn't follow any rules, she would punish me for it and I remember her telling me that was why I liked rules when I was older and followed them because she always punished me when I was little and I hated being punished and all those other kids who didn't follow them were never taught or they just didn't care. So any teacher they had that made them follow them thought they were mean. And as a child I could never understand how was my third grade teacher mean and my fourth grade one. They were nice teachers but lot of kids thought they were mean and then mom told me that was because they made them work and follow the rules or there was a consequence. I have also noticed when a child doesn't like a rule their teacher has, they think they are mean. I never thought like that.

And recently there have been mods here who do things I didn't agree with and does that mean I shouldn't respect them as mods? I would get banned if I decided to rebel and break rules just because I didn't respect their authority. But I guess some people are willing to get fired or arrested or face other consequences for not respecting authority. Yeah I agree there are people who abuse their authority and kids and grown ups are willing to get the consequences for not listening. I bet it makes them feel powerful because they stood up for themselves and they don't let any punishments defeat them because they don't care or they do care but they would rather stand up for themselves.

I've recently read somewhere it's wired in our brains to test authority and see how far we can go when we are kids.

Yes, I think it's an NT thing - I think they have it in their genes because they started to develop tribal societies tens of thousands of years ago, while our kind remained in little independent hunter-gatherer families (among the few hunter-gatherer families left, it is well known that members spend a lot of time out in the forest or desert alone).

Tribalism requires two things - people who can dominate and people who can submit. That's wat authority is all about. The NTs have been doing it so long that natural selection has installed 'respect for authority' in their genes.

So I think it is quite natural that people like us have trouble with the concept.

AC

I respect those that respect me. I find alot of people with 'authority' are extremely disrespectful and abuse the power vested in them by their title/position/rank/etc. If anyone comes at me with attutide, I usually dig in and resist no matter who they are nor how sound their reasoning/request may be. I've tried to subdue this tendancy but... no luck yet.

I think it relates back to my need for fairness. Even playing field. People meeting as equals. Inequity usually sets me off whether its me or someone else or a another group.

Mentioning to Mum that she had any faults was very risky. When I was a teenager I told her she was hard to live with - she was furious, and called my sister in to ask her if she agreed. My sister just looked at me and said "don't be so stupid," but she wouldn't answer the question, because she knew I was right, and she didn't want to start any trouble. My sister said years later, after Mum died, that she had occasionally (but very rarely) admitted to her that she'd got problems, but couldn't do anything about them. Mum had no concept of a limited fight, she'd escalate the slightest friction into a war in no time. Nobody ever worked out what was wrong with her. Even if it had looked safe to do so, it would never have occurred to me to ask why. She'd always been that way, I didn't know it was unusual till I was a teenager and noticed that other kids' mothers were much more liberal and easy-going. And negotiating skills simply weren't taught in my family.

I remember when I was about 10, she was being very restrictive with me, not letting me go out and play very much.......I hadn't objected (there was no point), but she volunteered that she hated to restrict me but had to do it because otherwise she'd be waiting with her heart in her mouth for a call from the hospital saying I'd been killed or seriously injured. In other words, she had so much anxiety about my safety that she had to wrap me in cotton wool or she wouldn't have been able to function.

Of course I've tried to find the reasons for it. Her own upbringing was pretty awful, by all accounts. Her parents were so poor that they had to shoplift for food, and they got caught and sent to jail sometimes, leaving her as the eldest to care for her siblings. I gather her father could be pretty nasty and violent, and I noticed her mum was always grumpy and negative, with a violent tendency - she hit one of my uncles on the head with am iron frying pan when he was in his 40s. Mum was very strong and protective in a crisis, but when there was no crisis, she'd create one - I got the impression (years after leaving the nest) that she must have grown up in such a warlike environment that she couldn't settle in anything else. She also seemed to be deeply ashamed of her lowly roots, and spend most of her adult life trying to negate them by aspiring to middle-class pretensions and a stuffy kind of "respectability." She'd angrily scrub and clean everything, and wouldn't tolerate any behaviour that was even slightly vulgar or relaxed. She seemed afraid of anything loud, unkempt, or out of control.

There's been this political polarisation about whether or not to blame the mother. One pole is that the mother is usually the source of the child's emotional problems, and that society is blinded to this by its reverence for maternity......the other pole is that society hates women and loves to blame them for everything. All I know is that mothers have a huge impact on their kids' development, because they're by far the closest significant other to them during the very early years. So any personality defects are likely to infect the kids too. Mum had severe personality defects, and I still struggle with the legacy. That's not to say I think she could have done anything differently. If Dad had been and NT then he might have been able to help bring her to her senses, but her anger scared him too much, and it was only when he'd completely lost his temper that he would stand up to her....he'd bring her back into line, but he'd do it by hitting out too hard, and her remorse never lasted for long. For me, it's nothing to do with blame. Those parents of mine were doing their best, but they just didn't have enough light, and couldn't rise above their own legacy.

I have alot of issues with autority especialy when the people concerned are incompetent or are blinded by the power often one leads to the other.

Also I don't folow the law.. not to say I aim to do somthing ilegial just that when my morals/views clash with the law my morals/views win.

often the law makes sence.. dont steal, murder ect but I think situations can make these null and void..

basicaly I abide by the law when it is the same as my morals...
not strictly related to authority but linked..

i was diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder when i was a child (as well as autism). some people think that most children with ODD will eventually develop "conduct disorder", but in my case, the ODD became less severe as the impingement of authority lessened as i grew older.
i think persons with ODD who develop conduct disorder have an underlying psychopathy. i was determined not to be of a psychopathic disposition because i love animals (among other reasons).

the longest i ever lasted at any mainstream school was 11 months. i was expelled from all of them due to my ODD.

i can not really explain why i am resistant to authority, but i will try. i am not really resistant to authority as a noun. i understand why rules are necessary. i am resistant to "enforcement" and it is a very deep character flaw.

i guess if i want to construct an analogy, i can think about dogs who happily run along with their owners on the end of a choker lead. the moment any pulling force is felt on the lead, some dogs suddenly go into reverse, and they roll their eyes back and blindly resist the pulling force with no real logical reason.

that is how i feel as soon as someone tells me what to do in a way where they expect that i will follow their orders. if someone "tells" me to do something, i will most likely refuse without reason.
i have an ingrained tendency to block authority and then to annoy it. i can understand the way i feel well, but there are no real words to convey it.

it causes many problems for me in day to day life. an example:

* i was eating my dinner at a tavern that was crowded (i found to my annoyance when i got there), and i was at sitting at a table by myself. it was standing room only elsewhere in the tavern, and a man came over and said "i'll just get that chair there mate" (referring to the empty chair beside me at my table). i grabbed the chair and said to him "the chair stays where it is". he said "you don't need the f*cking chair mate! there's no one sitting in it". i then put my bag on the chair and told him that the chair was reserved for my bag. he got annoyed and said "f*ck ya bag mate" and i stood up and started to push him away when i was then restrained by security guards. the chair was given to him and i was allowed to finish my dinner as long as i left straight away after eating.

another example

* i was told by a teacher to take my hands out of my pockets. i did not think his direction was warranted so i did not act on it. i was then yelled at to take my hands out of my pockets, and i suddenly became ODD, and i told him that he had no jurisdiction over my pockets since i own them. he again yelled at me to get my hands out of my pockets or get to the office, and i felt like annoying him so i told him that i did not have any of my hands in my pockets.

he said "are you all there lad?!?!" and i then gripped the deepest lining of my pockets with my index fingers and pulled them out to show him that there was nothing in my pockets. then i pushed the lining back into my pockets and i held the insides of my pockets tightly with all my fingers after that. there was no way i was going to take my hands out of my pockets. ...blah blah time went on, and when i was in the office waiting for the cane, i warned him that there was no way that i was going to take my hands out of my pockets, and that he was attempting to perform a futile protocol, and he went to grab my arm to pull my hand out of my pocket and i said "touch me and your reputation will be in tatters". then my parents were rung, and i was expelled.

i could have just taken my hands out of my pockets i guess. looking back on historic scenes that i have caused, i easily see how it was all my fault. it is just while things are happening now that i can not see with hindsight what i immediately decide to do.

once i was sitting in a police station giving evidence because i saw a mild incident, and the "constables" pen ran out, and he saw a pen that was lying on a table within easy reach for me, and he clicked his fingers and pointed and said "yeah that pen mate".
the hackles went up my spine and burst into my mind and so i said "sorry? i never asked any questions about that pen". he said "what? just give me that pen". i then told him that "that pen" was not my pen to give, and he suddenly became very annoyed and asked me if i had a psychiatric condition. i just saw the pen over there and the constable over there, and whatever he said, there was no way i was going to pass the pen to him. i said "everyone has a psychiatric condition, you can get the pen yourself. it's not my fault you are sitting there, and it's not my fault that the pen is over there. i am therefore not going to lift a finger".

i was arrested under the mental health act and assessed the next day at the hospital i was sent to and let go.
probably i should have passed the pen to him. it would have been so much easier than the hassle of the saga that i endured due to my anti cooperativeness .
that is just me anyway

my life is full of "examples" of deleterious repercussions due to my peculiar character flaw.

I'm impressed by your thoughtful perception regarding your mother (and father and sister.) That was a vivid description of your mother's grim childhood and the ways it helped form her approach to the world. And the ways this would affect her response to her children. She would have needed predictable children who never made waves and who would have reflected well on her mothering skills. And that doesn't describe the Asperger people I know or their parents' reactions.

I guess if the cop had any interpersonal skills, he'd have simply let it go. He doesn't seem to have had much of a handle on the criteria for a mental health arrest - refusing to pass a pen doesn't constitute a danger to self or others. Either he wasn't properly trained, or he was corrupt and just acting out of pique, to get back at you for being non-compliant. Such people aren't worthy of our respect, but as they have superior fire-power, we're usually better off if we pretend to respect them, at least for the time being.

ALL of the repies to this are just GREAT, and this is a great topic for me!

I can completely and totally identify with this post! I never had a childlike naivete, but I would start out thinking that the person in authority knew what s/he was doing. But all too often these "authority" figures would spend time manipulating situations to their liking or would only be interested in their own viewpoint at the expense of doing what was/is best for the organization. And since I would seem unable to keep things to myself, I would proffer what I thought was the correct solution. This would often anger the so-called "authority" figure and thereafter I would be treated with the utmost contempt. My ideas for solutions to problems often involve(d) ideas and concepts that made other people uncomfortable because it didn't include some variation of "doing what we've always done." And I am not given to groupthink to the extent that others are.

I am 44 and this has wreaked havoc on me in the workplace. That and the fact that I am rigidly fixated on the idea of trying to fix situations that really call for someone from the outside coming in as an even higher authority who can force the necessary changes to take place - and even remove those not capable of executing the necessary changes. This and other issues will contribute to being abused and bullied at work overtly and covertly, FWIW.

Quite. You should have seen the drama when anybody spilt a cup of tea. Anything out of place in the house, and she'd go ape. When she locked my sister and I in the house (to protect us while she was out at work), we'd forensically restore all the "do not touch" objects to their original positions. Otherwise she'd notice something had been moved, and she'd go berserk.

This sounds like what my older brother and I did when we used my father's tools. (He was a research Engineer who worked on the initial harnessing of the atom--probably an Aspie) He was so exacting he had us convinced that he knew where every wood shaving or splat of soldering lead was. Then my sister came along and she ignored him with no repercussions followed by my little brother who was so audacious, he not only used the tools, he rented them out.

I don't see anything wrong with taking an empty chair from your table. Others have done it to me. They say things like. "Excuse me, I am going to steal this chair if you don't mind." "Can I steal this chair?" "Are you using this chair?" "Can I steal this chair from you?"

Honestly I see nothing wrong with it. Same as saying "I'll just get that chair there mate."



Now that didn't make sense. Why did she want your hands out of your pockets?



I would have just asked "Can I have that pen please?" or say "Can you pass me that pen?"

Is that how people talk down there anyway, saying "mate?" Up here, we don't say mate.


There was only one story I could only agree with and that is with the hands out of pockets. The rest seemed reasonable.