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Jono
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26 Jul 2010, 5:34 pm

leejosepho wrote:
Jono wrote:
That still doesn't explain what being a drug dealer has to do with AS ...


That is not what is being said. He is simply saying his characteristic of having "special interest" was evidenced by the car and in his doing whatever he was doing to make plenty of money, and that waking up in a jail cell finally gave him an unavoidable clue something was terribly wrong.


That makes more sense. However, he must of known that some of what he was doing was illegal. I've just never done anything like that to per-sue any of my special interests so I don't think I can relate to it.



Jono
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26 Jul 2010, 5:40 pm

leejosepho wrote:
League_Girl wrote:
leejosepho wrote:
Do you folks really not catch this?!

Someone was moving along in whatever lifestyle he thought was okay, "feeling good" or whatever else, then wondered how he ended up with it all crashing in on him. With all the complaining people do around here about autism ruining lives, why do the specific details of this one's story confuse you?!


Because it doesn't make any sense.


In 1977, I committed a felony as a payback for a terrible wrong a bully had done to me, but there was really far more to my action than just that. In a much larger sense, I was finally standing tall and shouting to the world, "No more! No more! No more pushing me around or knocking me down and laughing behind my back. No more ... No more ..."

Most folks here can likely understand at least the essence of that.

I knew what I had done was wrong, and even while I was doing it. Nevertheless, I did not hesitate even slightly at the time and I later felt absolutely no remorse while firmly believing my actions had been completely justified ... and then still without having any clue as to why I seemed to be such an oddball, a misfit or even a complete "loser" in the minds of many, I just kept right on doing and pursuing whatever I thought was best for me in life, and that included also doing just about anything else I believed would help me "cope", so to speak. If I were to list my entire rap sheet here, most of the self-righteous would likely never talk to me again.


Not necessarily so. Being bullied myself, I understand the mindset. While I've never committed a felony because of being bullied, you wouldn't want to know my feelings at the time.



Callista
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26 Jul 2010, 6:05 pm

People with AS do commit felonies. But AS isn't an excuse. AS doesn't impair our ability to understand what's right and wrong; therefore the AS isn't responsible. People make choices, and autistic people are no different.

I suppose, of course, that you could probably think of a situation where someone with AS unwittingly committed a felony; maybe a youngster, or someone with profound difficulty with understanding people, might be given some sort of logical explanation of why something wasn't wrong, and basically tricked into it. But in this case he would not be legally culpable, any more than an NT would be culpable for murder if you tied up your victim, hid him behind a target, and took the NT out for target shooting practice.

That kind of thing probably does happen, but it doesn't happen often enough to tip the statistics: People with AS are quite a bit less likely than NTs to commit crimes, probably because so many crimes are social activities and we prefer to be introverts.


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26 Jul 2010, 9:02 pm

leejosepho wrote:
League_Girl wrote:
leejosepho wrote:
Do you folks really not catch this?!

Someone was moving along in whatever lifestyle he thought was okay, "feeling good" or whatever else, then wondered how he ended up with it all crashing in on him. With all the complaining people do around here about autism ruining lives, why do the specific details of this one's story confuse you?!


Because it doesn't make any sense.


In 1977, I committed a felony as a payback for a terrible wrong a bully had done to me, but there was really far more to my action than just that. In a much larger sense, I was finally standing tall and shouting to the world, "No more! No more! No more pushing me around or knocking me down and laughing behind my back. No more ... No more ..."

Most folks here can likely understand at least the essence of that.

I knew what I had done was wrong, and even while I was doing it. Nevertheless, I did not hesitate even slightly at the time and I later felt absolutely no remorse while firmly believing my actions had been completely justified ... and then still without having any clue as to why I seemed to be such an oddball, a misfit or even a complete "loser" in the minds of many, I just kept right on doing and pursuing whatever I thought was best for me in life, and that included also doing just about anything else I believed would help me "cope", so to speak. If I were to list my entire rap sheet here, most of the self-righteous would likely never talk to me again.

Being on the spectrum did not put me in prison, and neither did the bully whose own actions finally tripped my trigger. But can we not at least speculate my life *might* have been much different in the past if I had been diagnosed and helped in whatever way a long time ago?

That is all the OP is trying to say: Maybe if he had known ...



But you knew what you did was wrong so I still don't see how it was the AS because you knew. How would the diagnoses have stopped you from doing you knew was wrong? There are things I do I know I probably shouldn't be doing but I do it anyway because I get so mad and I am so fed up with it I have gotten less nicer. I don't go blaming it on my AS. I just say I'm a jerk to people who deserve it.

It just looks like to me people are trying to find an excuse to their behavior. What excuses do NTs have when they do things they knew was wrong but did it anyway? They can find other excuses as a matter of fact while some of us have the AS we can use.



CockneyRebel
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26 Jul 2010, 9:10 pm

There is no excuse for any wrongdoings, in my books. Making an excuse, is an act of laziness.


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DandelionFireworks
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26 Jul 2010, 9:36 pm

Let me see if I understand what you're saying, Corp. Are you saying that, having no idea you were different, you followed your special interest, and did what you were told by others whom you, naively, trusted? And are you further saying that this naive action, which you might not have performed if you had known that your ability to judge people is impaired, resulted in your getting caught and jailed? And are you saying that you realized that if you had been jailed for it, it couldn't be right, but you didn't grasp how others had known? And maybe further that different parts of it seemed to bother you than others, and you finally realized your neurology was atypical?

That seems plausible enough to me. I can even see where I might have done the same thing, in vastly different circumstances.

(After all, if everything is black and white, and some rules are stupid and pointless, then all rules are stupid and pointless. If sometimes you should disobey, then you should always disobey. I've mellowed out since, and come to understand that some rules are stupid and pointless, and some rules should be disobeyed. And grasping now that the stated rule is not the same thing as the actual rule, I notice that a lot of rules that used to seem stupid now seem perfectly sensible in hindsight.)

But now I have a totally unrelated question. How come NTs always end up suspicious of the people who least merit it? (Aspies, schizophrenics, etc.) Why is it that they trust sociopaths and hate us, when the former will rip them to shreds and we'll only annoy them a little? (Of course, I'm the same with physical environments, so I probably shouldn't condemn...)


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Callista
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26 Jul 2010, 9:54 pm

Quote:
How come NTs always end up suspicious of the people who least merit it? (Aspies, schizophrenics, etc.) Why is it that they trust sociopaths and hate us, when the former will rip them to shreds and we'll only annoy them a little? (Of course, I'm the same with physical environments, so I probably shouldn't condemn...)


Because NTs have a system that applies to most people, but not to all, and autistic, schizophrenic, and other weird-brained people don't fit into the system.

NTs grow up learning a particular style of nonverbal and verbal communication. That style suits them just fine with other NTs and people who are close enough to NT not to matter. Only trouble is, some people can either take advantage of the system to send the desired messages (sociopath) or has trouble using the system and sends messages that the NT interprets in ways totally different to what the sender intended (autistic, schizophrenic, generally neurodiverse people).

If it works 95% of the time, it's good enough for most purposes and sticks around, especially since systems with more accuracy would probably sacrifice a great deal of speed; and speed is important in the chaotic world of interpersonal communication.


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MathGirl
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26 Jul 2010, 10:10 pm

I did not read the entire thread, but I know someone who's been diagnosed when he was 6 years old. He still managed to get himself arrested, and got himself into plenty of trouble. He has mental problems, too, which is not uncommon for people with ASD.


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League_Girl
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26 Jul 2010, 11:24 pm

DandelionFireworks wrote:
Let me see if I understand what you're saying, Corp. Are you saying that, having no idea you were different, you followed your special interest, and did what you were told by others whom you, naively, trusted? And are you further saying that this naive action, which you might not have performed if you had known that your ability to judge people is impaired, resulted in your getting caught and jailed? And are you saying that you realized that if you had been jailed for it, it couldn't be right, but you didn't grasp how others had known? And maybe further that different parts of it seemed to bother you than others, and you finally realized your neurology was atypical?

That seems plausible enough to me. I can even see where I might have done the same thing, in vastly different circumstances.



That explains it though but that is if he was never taught drugs are bad and being told they are illegal to sell. I know it's illegal to break into peoples houses but if someone were to tell me to do it and it was okay to do it and I wouldn't get in trouble, I still wouldn't do it because breaking into homes is illegal, period. It's like someone telling me to kill them because they can't commit suicide and it's perfectly safe and legal just because they are asking me to do it for them when I know killing is illegal. I even asked if I still get in trouble if I killed someone because they wanted me to do it for them because they were too chicken to kill themselves and the answer was yes. I still don't think I would have done it anyway even if I wasn't sure if it was legal or not.

Yeah I know the laws and I don't break them, even if people say it's okay to do.

I used to get in trouble all the time because kids take advantage of me and keep on egging me till I do it. I lacked judgment then and was more trusting then. But thanks to that I trust people less and I tend to get nasty when people push me. I don't listen to strangers so if a stranger claimed they were locked out of their house, I still wouldn't help them because it might not be their house. But I can see some aspies may lack that judgement because of them being too trusting so they help them out by helping them get into their house and then it turned out it wasn't their house because the police came and arrested them both for breaking an entry and the owner had decided to press charges. Or the person just runs when the burglar alarm goes off after the aspie breaks in and he or she doesn't understand why the owner took off. So the police come and the aspie tries to tell the officers there was a man who locked himself out so he asked him to help him and the officers be like "Oh yeah, where is he then?" and the aspie says "He took off" and I bet the police wouldn't buy it so they arrest the aspie and tell the owner it was him who broke in so the owner press charges. If I were that aspie, I'd be traumatized by it and would never help anyone again. I don't really help people anyway. I'm afraid of getting scammed or tricked or taken advantage of.



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26 Jul 2010, 11:44 pm

Not even all Aspies treat laws that way, though. When I was younger, as I said, I noticed that some didn't make any sense, and most didn't apply in all cases, so, lacking the facility to judge the spirit of the law (and having had some bad experiences with stupid rules that I'm still certain had no spirit behind them except that of wanton abuse of power), I determined that rules sucked. (There's your black and white thinking for you. "Good kids are mean to me. Therefore, good is bad." That happened to me... a lot. "Teachers are in authority. Most teachers are not kind to me. Therefore, authority sucks." This is the genesis of my anarchist sympathies.) I would never have been deterred by the illegality of something; I could only have been deterred if I thought it was immoral or posed some risk to me, or if it were impossible (no, that's on Monday, and on Monday I have to go eat a hamburger, whether I want to or not).

"Good is bad. There are things in the world which are not bad. Therefore, at least some things which are bad are good. Drugs are bad. Therefore, drugs might very well be good." You have to admit, at least it's valid, if false. :D


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