hyperlexian wrote:
reading people's astonishing conclusions on WrongPlanet make me wonder if people reinforce their own reality. if you approach society with the assumption that people are shallow bullies, i believe you will be surround yourself with such people by default. i have friends all over the world, so i think blaming bad behaviour on culture is a cop out
There could be a touch of that but I don't think "You did it to yourself" is in any way a fair or accurate representation of how it works either. People do things to each other from ages where they're too young to have thoughts of the kind of sophistocation that it takes to swing their environments under control. School's a whole other problem as its socially a bit like prison-lite in a lot of places. Add these things together, have a society that's filled with mixed messages beating you from every side and for even being two opposite things at the same time, and create it to *want* to back away from you as it classifies and judges you and you pretty much have a situation that's difficult if not impossible for almost anyone to dig their way out of.
As people become adults that active judgement becomes more passive generally but ends up manifesting itself more as a hair-trigger radar, typecasting other people, and scurrying away when perceived 'undesirables' are around. Its not just something that happens to aspies - it happens to NT's by NT, by aspies as well, all day long.
Essentially as an adult - how you were treated as a kid, what and who you were allowed to be, even if you put a fight up for your own identity and met violent opposition, all of these things are housed in your demeanor, in your mannerisms, in ways that people seem to recognized almost preconsciously - to the point where they either like or dislike a person and really may often have no clue why; they just do. Climbing out of that would just about take going back in time and throwing a wrench in the causal gears of your past to avoid or 'fix' what people did to you one way, all the while crossing your fingers and hoping something better came of the later option (Ashton Kutcher in 'Butterfly Effect' rings a bell here).
With most well-functioning people (ie. people without much self-improvement room left to be exercised) I really think that their crosscurrents in life are generally first and foremost what's been done to them by other people, then a combination of both their defense mechanisms and then simply their lack of data or even wiring that is built to conceive a 'them' in a different paradigm let alone be there functionally - to other people's standards of social whole-hat perfection.
_________________
The loneliest part of life: it's not just that no one is on your cloud, few can even see your cloud.