marshall wrote:
Are all the NTs who talk about love and compassion afraid to honestly reveal how conditional those items are? Or is this view tainted by a bias of negative experience due to our disability?
Both.
LabPet wrote:
... I actively look for better and try to ignore the extraneous although that means disregarding certain unscrupulous individuals and superficiality. One cannot ignore all bad intentions though or we would far more vulnerable, as Autists, than we already are.
I sometimes hate that I cannot sense those NT bad intentions and comcommitant negative emotions, such as jealousy, which is an emotion I do not have and cannot really know except vicariously. I cannot see them coming but they can leave a bloody trail.
I think it is a common trait for people to ignore bad intentions if possible, and it has become more widespread than it should be. There may be too much expectation that someone else will fix it, and that it is no longer possible for ordinary people to have a say in how the world around them behaves. This seems to have resulted in an over-protective attitude towards children, which restricts them and keeps them uninformed. Even childhood stories and tales which have previously shown children that the world is not as safe as it might appear, have been deemed too frightening.
All people on the spectrum have probably needed, and rarely got, explicit explanation of both good and bad intentions, in order to compensate for lack of instinct and the ability to detect affective states in others. This becomes even less likely to happen, if the prevailing attitude is to keep all children uninformed.
anbuend wrote:
Part of the problem is that really scary kinds of people are attracted to being around autistic people and other people they consider gullible. Including sociopaths. So we see a higher than average amount of such people.
conundrum wrote:
One of the reasons so many people on here speak of negative experiences and a view of "a world that is rotten at its core" is because that is the only side of human nature many have been exposed to, due, in part, to being "different."
We do need instruction to balance inherent naivety, since it may be the consequence of not expecting the bad, but continually receiving it, which ends up distorting the world view towards so much bleakness. There are most definitely good people, and surely more good than not. But isn't it really about time all people started to acknowledge that there is good and bad, and look towards limiting the bad, rather than leaving those least able to cope (not just people with autism) to have to stand against it.
marshall wrote:
[Or...
What we are really seeing isn't a battle between people with AS and the NT world. It's a battle between the have-nots and a world that is controlled by and for the haves. The haves must remain nominally polite and careful not to feel like they are causing direct harm to the have-nots as thier guilty conscience will not allow this. Yet they can be free of guilt if they merely brush them off subtly. The have-nots are always going to be inconvenient to the haves. Thus the perceived duplicity.
Yes, perhaps some of apparent hostility towards the have-nots is more to do with guilt than inherent badness, since guilt can inhibit many good intentions. Guilt, and fear of losing those things which keep the guilt and fear at bay.
Another way to say that: a fear that, by recognising someone has needs, you may lose the complacency which allowed you to ignore those needs, and may become disillusioned with what you have as a consequence.
28 Jul 2010, 2:50 pm
) And I wonder what those who are in professions that must listen to humans confide on a routine basis (yucky job!), such as priests (?) or related. They must hear everything and I cannot even imagine. By virtue of their job, they cannot be judgmental. However, for those of us who take the brunt of "mean people" we cannot ignore/accept since they'd badly hurt us. A distinct difference.
