Is being moral to a extreme degree an aspie trait?

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I follow the rules, and get quite worked up when other people don't follow the rules.

For example, road rules. I get very angry\annoyed when people speed, tailgate etc.

I'd love to be a police officer and enforce the rules, but I hate people and communication skills (verbal, body language etc) are not my forte.

It does. I had a problem at work recently where my boss had told me one thing and a colleague had told me another, and then I found out it was essentially my call which instruction was more appropriate to follow. This was made worse when I found out that if I made the wrong call, then I'd be marked down for that when the quality assessors did their monthly review of my work. ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!! !! !! !! !! It's things like this which can give me real problems, especially since I've never been great at knowing when it is appropriate to break rules.

Equally, though, rules I consider to be stupid can also make me want to scream. For example, like many organisations, we have a style guide at work as to how we are supposed to format certain documents. I found out halfway through doing one that the team I was on was not doing it according to the style guide. When I pointed this out, the person in charge of our group agreed that I was correct, and then told me that because we had been doing it the wrong way for so long, it was better to keep making the mistake in order to be consistent. If it was me in charge I would have gone back through the entire hundred or so page document, correcting every single instance of that mistake. If that was not possible, I would've continued as per the style guide. Her approach frustrated me because, although I can understand where she was coming from, her attitude meant we were breaking the rule that we have to be as close to 100% accurate, both in content and formatting, as possible.

Last edited by CrinklyCrustacean on 03 Apr 2011, 5:41 am, edited 4 times in total.

Yes, I think it can come of rigid thinking.

Morals are a trait of your vibrational level.

Low vibrational beings are more immoral than high ones.

My husband is a rule follower like no one I have ever seen. He can NOT break rules. He is extremely rigid about that.

Even if the rules themselves don't make any sense whatsoever and it's against his interests to blindly follow them?

I guess that is hard to say honestly. Because he does do things against his interest more then most people. I will want him to say something or do something and he wont because it might hurt someone or embarass them (even though I feel it should be done). For example, the women we rent our home from let it go into foreclosure and didnt tell us. She didnt admit it even when we were getting things posted to the door about it going up for auction. I was angry as we have 4 kids and you should at least be honest about that. On the phone my husband wouldnt tell her we knew it was in foreclosure. IM like, Just tell her we have known since December. He wouldnt, and he even agreed with her in a way when she was saying she had no idea (umm ok, you dont pay for 6 months, you know it!) In his mind the rule is you treat people how you want to be treated. Even though most people would say even nicely "We have known about this, please be honest" He wouldnt. Because he didnt want her embarassed. I guess it is hard to say also because we are christians now (he was not when I met him and still had all the same morals and standards as he has now). So we do alot of things other people probably wouldnt do. Maybe if you had a situation where something would be against his interests...

I wil say we do something that is against the *man* so to speak. We do not vaccinate which is against the rules, we are a big believer in homebirth which is not popular opinion, and we homeschool which is against the grain also.

I think it's a trait to follow rules rigidly, or make your own and follow those rigidly. But I don't know if being really moral is a factor, I think sticking to your own values (whether they moral or not) might be a by-product of stubbornness which we tend to posses.
The rules thing doesn't apply to me though I'm more inclined to test them or break them.

And that is how my aspie son is. He doesnt listen and does what he wants when he wants. He is his own person and will do what he wants. Its FRUSTERATING! I think the moral issue is probably more because that is what he was taught (most people are taught this when they are a kid, you shouldnt smoke or drink or do drugs) and he is a rule follower and couldnt break from that.

I believe so. Spawned by the fear or worry of being immoral.

Also, clinging to rules and expecting others to do the same comes from the desire to work, play, exist in a dependable, reliable, consistent and therefore fair world. Who wants to play (or work) with someone who cheats or takes unfair advantage of others.
But the world isn't fair and this is the thorn in the side of the Aspie, and the injustice of this truth is hard for the Aspie to comprehend and accept.