trappedinhell wrote:
Good thread title. This was the least realistic part of "The Curious Case of the Dog in the Nighttime." To me, anyway. Here was a kid who had difficulty communicating, yet every second chapter was a lucid and easy to follow discussion of some topic that an NT would easily understand. He was not AS, he was NT who was self obsessed.
Important caveat: every person is different. Others will not share my approach. I just want to make the point that "aspie obsession" does NOT mean "open an NT book and memorize the words, then share with everyone". That is NOT how it works.
I think the key to autism, as this forum title suggests, is being on the wrong planet. An autistic person will often (but not always) see their interests in a way that others will not. This might make it hard to discuss. To illustrate, here are my special interests, how the vast majority of NTs see them, and how I see them.
Economics:
Other people talk about mainstream theories and how things currently work. I dismiss all textbooks as illogical and am only interested in the foundational logic.
Comics:
Other people see them as escapism, as "just comics." I demand realism (as a balance: I will embrace sci-fi as long as it is justified), and search for deep meanings that the writer never consciously intended, but arise due to how comics evolve.
Religion:
Other people see it as a comfort, or as history and theology. I see it sociologically: I find myself both attacking and defending it, depending on context. NTs seem to prefer either a black and white approach or they lose interest.
In each case I do not fit in. I often visit forums where people discuss economics, comics and religion, and have very little in common.
NT obsessions naturally follow the herd. I think AS people are more likely to go off on their own path. So that makes it hard to communicate, even when we want to.
Ironically, I find that NTs are more interested in the details and in lists. Economists focus on trivial details. Comic collectors care about first appearances and prices. The religious people that I know enjoy the surface details while not questioning the foundations (because that would threaten the social and emotional benefit they obtain), while the atheists I know dismiss it on what seems like narrow grounds, whereas the sociologists are only interested for academic reasons and don't really care. They are not, for example, looking for a better kind of religion, which to me seems the obvious approach.
I see the same with games and books. I can confidently state, because I have spent time searching for others, that I am the world's most obsessive person concerning the game "Zak McKracken," the book "The Man Who Was Magic," and possibly the Solar Pons series. I treat them as religious texts. I analyze their meaning. But I do not "feel" them or collect statistics in the way that NTs do.
I love the style of comic books. The grammatically correct punctuation but shortened and the vibrant colours and the detail of the images. And also the build to emotion; the most emotional scenes have barely any writing or detail to them. I also love the history of the comic book and stick to classics, but I do have a thing for Star Wars, and possibly Bat Man. I usually only buy one kind of series at a certain time. Unless, like the classics each one cost $1.
There's more to comic books than stories. I especially love when they started to integrate political and drug themes in them.
As for religion I do view it as a sociological thing too but my own religion which I hardly see as a religion because I don't go to church or share it, is a literal interpretation of the Bible. Although, maybe I should actually read the Bible.
I think I understand why people follow religions; to gain some meaning out of life or to have something to live for. I defend all types by saying you can't just blame the individual for what another group does in the name of their religion. Would you blame a tiny coastal church for a religious genocide they know nothing about? That's what angers me, because atheists use the same excuse for hating religion. My dad was Hindu, my mum a Christian, I learned about Islam and Judaism and at the end of it all I join a religion that even my mother calls a cult.
I love sci-fi for the physics and that's probably why I love Star Trek the most because the writers research physics and then try to come up with their own ideas that have to stay in the confines of quantum physics and some of it has been before its time. Although, there have been some mistakes. My own sci-fi will be very detailed.
Sci-fi actually made me feel more empathy for people and understand the importance of team work, especially when you're fighting to stay alive and save the Earth from destruction.
I never got along with other Stargate fans. One problem was they treated the show like reality, like the characters were real people and judged them based on their actions. I just felt like saying 'guys, you know it's fiction right? That happened because the writers made it happen.' And then there were fan girls and fan boys and 'who would win in a fight between Stargate characters and Firefly characters?' I'm still not completely sure what Firefly was about.
Even as a child I interpreted The Lion King in such a deeper way than other children and now that it's popular again I'm just reminded of it.
I always get stuck on one part of an interest. Astronomy is pretty much about meteor showers now.
These replies have been very helpful but I have to get back to my writing.
27 Nov 2011, 11:26 pm
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