Self and role models

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I've only had at least one role model and I didn't even know I had a role model until my mother told me.

I think having a role model means to try and be like them or think of them and think what would this person do if they were in this situation. I never knew what a role model really means so I am just taking a guess.

After looking it up just now, it means to serve as an example. I guess it means to look up to someone, if you look up to someone, they are your role model.

I can't think of one single person I have looked up to. I wonder if I had a bunch of role models because when I started to read about Asperger's, I started to get higher hopes for myself like getting married and have kids because there were aspies that got married and had kids. But I don't know if those people were my true role models because I didn't look up to those people, I just got higher hopes is all because I thought if those people did it, so can I.

Would ASPartners be my role model if I was using that place for how not to act and what not to do? Wouldn't that be looking up to it? I have done that before but the place is too depressing and upsetting to read it all the time. Besides I refuse to think those men have AS but I am sure some of them really do have it and the others are just jerks. But at least it sets us an example of how not to treat people.

I think I need to work a little harder on what I'm saying here.

When I say that I've not had role models, this is something related to Theory of Mind. I do not have a strong conceptualization of self. Nor do I have a strong conceptualization of "other". To emulate another implies some level of my understanding their existence as a being of intention. I cannot "be" like those whose "being" I cannot conceive.

I suppose on a more practical level, role models are simply archetypes of possibility. Temple Grandin's success is what can become of an autistic with the right balance of abilities, support, opportunity and interventions. But her accomplishments are still some external thing, something concrete and measurable. I have no way of seeing more than that. Holding her up as a model, I can see the possibilities, but cannot leverage any understanding of the cognitive states within her that enabled her to synthesize her abilities, support, opportunities and interventions into a successful career.

I'm suspecting I haven't cleared up anything.

Someone online who's definitely neurotypical said that I seemed to lack an instinctive revulsion to being "fake" that apparently everyone has, but I honestly had no intuitive idea what it meant to be "fake" other than lying (And, yes, intellectually I know it has something to do with pretending to be something other than your "natural self", but I don't honestly seem to know this "natural self" or sense of identity that most people have?). I'm guessing most people have a greater sense of 'self' and so know when they're being fake?

So, I researched and found this!

http://www.autismspeaks.org/science/sci ... elf-autism

Many of those with autism apparently have an impaired sense of self! I thought for a long time maybe I was just some weird person who was having identity confusion because I wasn't adequately integrated into my community (Since identity is largely defined by your relationships to other people in society), but it might just simply be a matter of being close to the autism spectrum.

Wavefreak, do you mean you have never aspired to be like someone because you have no concept of what it is to be them?

If so, then that's a fair assessment for me too; however, we animals are more pragmatic than that, we may not consciously understand but that doesn't stop us replicating someone else (even in a vague attempt to be like them).

If I told you to copy my exact movements, then raised my left hand, what would you do? (extrapolate this out to far more complex gestures and mannerisms and you can replicate anything and generally do). This is a conscious decision to copy another person. If I spoke with a distinct accent or language you could learn how to do that, consciously.

If you wanted, you could have a way of 'being' all dressed up in another person (i.e. a role model), who through the way they are, have achieved a certain level of success/recognition. This you could copy mindlessly but it wouldn't make you that person, but rather give you a [vague] direction to follow.

I think therefore I am. I don't need to question what the self is because it exists externally to my understanding if it needs to (which is annoying for a control freak like me ). I'm an animal; whether that means I want to be like another animal and have the success they have isn't that interesting to me. I want to sculpt my existence into whatever my aspirations are, rather than an incomplete idea of someone elses.