Autism Is Not An Excuse To Do Nothing

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I understand. And sympathise if you have been at the raw end of welfare officials who care little about individuals as individuals, who see you as a caseload number not a human being. They appall me.

PS I am not defining meaningfulness as solely paid employment. And am not welfare official type I assure you!

Sympathy accepted and appreciated B19 - my posts here are no attack on other posters, it's the original article that needs filleting imo. I've got nothing but anecdotes, the authorities don't record people like me, so here's an anecdote.

Perhaps 2001 (13 years before dx), most people who worked at the welfare office understood a little about me and conspired as much as they could to leave me alone, out of sympathy both human and political. We're talking of an area in economic recession, like up north in the states. It was obvious that I was mentally unstable and very unlikely to be given a job. I stank.

Then one day, I got a pressure interview off a smarmy bloke in a suit. Being myself, I started to explain how anxious I was feeling that day. He took my language, re packaged it back at me and sneered very coldly and loudly "Why are you anxious? - is it because you're GOING TO HAVE TO GET A JOB?"

That is the harsh cold point where I devoted myself to being a psychological stormtrooper in the British class war, to the hilt. If the state presents me with a cold hearted sadist, there will be a mark left by me. The harsh realities of a scenario where there are no longer innocent bystanders are better glossed over, though no physical violence was done in my dealings.

How did it all end?, chased by pretty much the same mentality of the guy from 2001, years later I called Saul (so to speak). Issuing instructions to a solicitor to destroy the government, and also to have a try at my local NHS Primary Care Trust for libel, resulted in an astounding victory in my case. Hopefully my case will actually contribute via being one of a thousand legal nibbles that will lead to the death of the present British Welfare ideology.

So my advice is don't get even, don't get angry, forget revenge, but get a lawyer.

Any rhetoric that has the whiff of neo liberalism, neo eugenics and the "capitalist swindling machine" sets off the attack rottweilers of my critical sense.

There certainly is not a depressed man sitting at the other end of these pixels. Thanks again, I'll take as much sympathy as anyone wishes to give me.

You probably don't get it in the states, but dealings with public officials in this country can be like something out of a Franz Kafka novel.

Gaining an asd diagnosis in adulthood can mean dealing with bureaucracy that is by no means sane. It takes years.

There's big big trouble coming for the British Government over their treatment of the disabled btw, hundreds of court cases on the way I've heard. Don't want to go into detail about that here - some of it is harrowing stuff. The UN have recently taken a legal interest in how badly our present government has behaved.

If anyone tells me "Life comes in cans!" I chuck 'em back.

Hey you lot! - hope my posts aren't being depressing, good nature to all

(in response to Alexanderplatz previous post on previous page)
It can be in New Zealand too, there is an appalling blame the victim mentality in the ministry that is supposed to support people who need help through periods of unemployment or illness.

I was told to get a job when I was halfway through treatment for cancer and crippled in both hips, and had medical certificates attesting to these facts. They saw no reason for me not to work full-time, and at that time I needed some income to tide me over.

It never used to be like this here but neo-liberalism has infiltrated everything (except our public health system) in policy, politics and governments. We will fight tooth and nail and in the streets if we have to, to hold on to our health system.

I am appalled at what that man said to you. Insulting and completely unnecessary. Unprofessional.

Is it alright if I use it as an excuse to do next to nothing ???

@Goldfish21 = thanks a lot for responding. It's an example of wordplay, some NT people can do this a lot. As a kid I could not understand what the stories in Bible Class meant, asked for an explanation and still didn't understand. This made me feel bad, so as I grew up I took extra care to find out a lot about wordplay.

One word can mean two things, or more. Here the word can can mean a metal container you buy food or drink in, like a can of beans or beer.

Or the word can can mean something else like as in "I can do that!"

There are different meanings in the phrase "Life comes in cans!", though the literal meaning is nonsense, and if anyone actually knows where life comes from then they are luckier than me.

One meaning is a lesson as if to say that you shouldn't say "can't", - that if you say "can't" then you are not taking life as it comes.

The saying comes from a senior welfare worker. So when people who have no jobs say they can't get a job she says "Life comes in cans!" as a lesson, a witty way of telling them to buck their ideas up. I think the words work like a very bad joke, and that the words are patronising to the listener. If someone said that to me I'd think they were telling me how to live, and I don't like that.

Another meaning is that there is almost a picture in the words of the kind of work that people with no jobs sometimes end up doing. After college I ended up in supermarkets shelf filling, and I put a lot of cans on shelves.

Another weaker meaning is that beer comes in cans, beer costs money, and there's your reward for a terrible job in a supermarket.

Another meaning I really don't like is that products come in cans, so the words seem to say to me that life is like a product - an idea that I disagree with very much.

Another more hypnotic meaning in there is that lessons in life come in little bits that you open up everyday, like cans.

"Life comes in cans!" doesn't make literal sense, and if said to many NT people they perhaps would not understand it at first, but then the meanings, or some of the meanings would dawn on them. These meanings often do not dawn on Aspies.

"Life comes in cans!" is supposed to motivate people to be more positive. The words make me feel ill. If I want to be positive, I'll do it myself.

So, I'm actually an expert in understanding all these meanings in words FOR MYSELF - and there may be meanings I've missed. I'm not an expert in showing other people how to understand these meanings in words, not a trained teacher at all - so if I've made any mistakes please be kind to me, and feel free to PM me if you wish.

MORE ON THE MEANING OF "LIFE COMES IN CANS"

Also important here is the context of where the words are spoken. Here is a very obvious example of the way that the meaning of words can change using the shouted word fire.

If you are in the army, holding a loaded gun and the enemy are advancing towards you and an officer shouts "fire", you shoot.

If I was sitting in a theatre, and saw some flames I would shout "fire" to warn people to get out of the building before it burnt down. Same word, different place, different meaning.

With "Life comes in cans!" it is not so obvious, but if I was buying a hot dog and the salesman said this to me, I might well say to him "Cans? cans? where's the cans? you're talking rubbish, I can't see any cans. Life? what do you know about my life? You know about hot dogs".

If I was young and nervous, depressed and not able to find a job, and said "I can't get a job" and an older more confident Welfare worker said to me "Life comes in cans!" I'd probably not understand it like you - but over time the meaning would dawn, I'm not NT, but the meaning would dawn slowly. My urge to say to the welfare worker what I had said to the hot dog salesman would be crushed inside me by the authority of the Senior welfare worker, if I was young and nervous. This is where my idea comes from that the words are a lecture or a lesson - it is the Welfare worker's job to instruct me how to get a job, even when there aren't any jobs, or even especially when there aren't any jobs. The idea that the words are an instruction come from her authority.

How the authority of the Welfare worker would have crushed me into silence is difficult to explain. Asd wasn't even known about when I was a child, and while I was clever at school, my bad behaviour was controlled by a combination of threat, humiliation and physical violence. This was entirely normal when I was young in my town, the world has changed. People in authority can actually use old pain that you still feel inside you to manipulate you. It's been done to me.

What would happen now if a Welfare worker said to me "Life comes in cans!" is that I'd take their words and change them, which is a very hostile thing to do to someone without being violent. It might take me time, and I might have to wait my moment, but I would change the word "cans" into a well known unacceptable obscenity, one that women find particularly offensive, and say "Life comes in (expletive), and you are one!"

This is one of the reasons the British state excuses me from going to welfare offices. I cannot control my offensiveness once I've met someone who deserves it.

I'm a nice good man, never violent, but can be verbally aggressive. I think that a welfare worker saying "Life comes in cans!" is actually a form of psychological bullying. It is meant to show the listener that the speaker is smarter than them, has a better take on life, and it puts the speaker as standing over the listener in judgement. I humbly suggest that my adapted version is nearer the truth, and would say so in court.

There is a well known saying: "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me". One rapper poet once said in reply to this "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words are ******* deadly". The rapper's right. It's even better if you take your words to a lawyer and get them to speak for you.

So hope all this has helped, and by accident I've given some of you a few slices of my life history. Sorry it's a bit of a nasty tale, but the good times are here now.

Aaaah.. makes perfect sense. When I read it earlier I was thinking about soup cans, not can vs. can't.

_________________
No for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.

@goldfish21 - great. I'm new to communicating with other aspies, except one lad I knew who was a super literalist. I broke things down to the maximum, imagining I was explaining things to someone like him. The lad was really brainy - he's probably on here.

It gives me a good tingle to know my writing worked, and thanks.

Even at my level of reading, I still, still, still infuriatingly stumble over literal meanings. Some people think I'm thick, which can prove interesting when they find out otherwise.


Autism is no excuse to stop posting! (Ironic)

It isn't? Awwww dangit.

i know i'm coming a little late to this conversation, but autism does sometime seem to immobilize. My diagnosis didn't freeze me, though. It was my mentality. What i do has to be purposeful. After being stopped in every effort i made to use my talents & achieve in some field i actually liked, i made the observation that i just wasn't going to succeed. If there's no chance of my succeeding, why try? Add the general lack of executive function to that, followed with my inability to talk about what's bothering me.. roadblock.. That leads to the nihilism that someone had mentioned a page or two back. This had happened years before i found out what was wrong with me.