Aspie culture and Aspie candor: Hope or hokum?

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For your consideration (and no, you have not entered the Twilight Zone):

Our advocates proclaim so loud and long, mere difference, even strengths and talents, rather than simple disabilities in need of remediation. -Not to mention claims of affinity and even culture and even calls for an island homeland of Aspergia!

I couldn't make this up if I tried.

My question, by contrast, is much more modest and reasonable.

We do not need to suppose if Aspies where the majority. Nor is the question of sheer charity. Downtrodden ethnic minorities, to take such an analogy, have always networked quite intensively in order to improve their condition.

And suppose we where to narrow our inquiry to the higher range of function on the spectrum?

Does any of this clarify my question yet?

I missed answering this, and you deserve an answer, as best I can give.

These problems are related to the organization of society. I see less of it in aspie to aspie interaction, and I none of it in aspie to animal interaction.

Fuzzy: The separate points of my question, being separated by terminus of each their own question marks -unlike your Quebec referendum, can, indeed, be answered separately. Also, they do follow one upon the other logically, or so I had hoped.

So, Fuzzy, you actually deny the importance of networking. Mammon does not buy lasting happiness, you say. All is vanity! Are you serious? Are you a renounciant, then? Are slacker hobbies all you need? Are all of you aging virgins by preference? Unbelievable! But no, I could hardly care less about conventional values and the esteem of people I cannot respect.

Interpersonal networking agenda:
Humdrum practicalities
Resources
Amusement
Deep emotional needs
Alliance in the common defense, security and reciprocal support
Advantage and advancement (as a means not an end)
PR (likewise)
Grander projects and aspirations
Social change
Covert action, conspiracy / counter-conspiracy

Last edited by AaronAgassi on 04 Jul 2006, 3:40 am, edited 2 times in total.

Indeed, there can be no problem in networking among those who are not observed to network! But can this truly be what you meant??

I speak of the organization of society as a contact sport with audience participation. I speak of the organization of ones own vital web of support. And I ask, again and again, are our difficulties in so crucial a priority (unless one has turned ones back on worldly concern) an incompatibility with the problematic social environment, or are we disabled regardless of social context, even in networking amongst ourselves?

It is a worthy task to "speak" with you, even though I start a new job in a few hours, and really should rest. I feel I have something to learn, and that is the reason I come to WP.

I admire your intelligence, your gift with the written word. You are an asset here.

I also see the literalness in your speech. One can live spartanly without renunciating completely. I guess I am in ways, and I suppose many aspies are.

Firstly, I dont seem to have the same motivations that a lot of people do; indeed, I seem to lack some that aspies have. It boggles my mind to see the posts of people seeking love, to see all the advertisements on TV.

As a toddler, I was quarantined due to an epidemic, and 30+ years later I still recall the sense of profound loneliness, and of being alone. I've never felt it since. I dont know if I worked that out in my head, or if AS is triggered by immunization shots, or what. I dont know if its unrelated to AS even. I probably will never know.

But like a stroke of lightning, that removed a lot of need and motivation in me. I might desire, but my needs are lessened.

I would guess that is indicative of low emotional intelligence. I see it as an asset.

I am not sure what words of mine gave you the thought that I dont value social networking. I was a bouncer for more than 4 years, and if you cannot rapport with and rely on your team, you will get hurt. I never was. I was truly fortunate.

Some of the grandest endeavors achieved by man were done by unbending will of singular people. Surely Terry Fox had someone driving his motorhome, and someone had a hot meal for him when he finished running for the day, but that man ran on one leg until he died. You dont need an NTs gifts to achieve, if that is what you want.


Most of the items in your Interpersonal networking agenda list occur to some degree in all humans, aspies included. Other than the most profoundly hindered autists, we all engage in social networking to some degree. There is no reason that we cannot advocate for them.

Animals network too. You cannot remove their networking from the list, because things like deep emotional needs are difficulties for some aspies. I have to wonder though, why can an animal bond deeply to a human that cannot bond to another human, and why can the said human bond with the animal?

You must care about the esteem of others, about conventional values, or why do you want to achieve these things you want? Why does an NT want these things? I dont know. All I know is that they do. Why do you want more than to fill your basic needs of food and shelter?

If a Spartan existence of cultivated apathy is the alternative, then you can have it, becaause, obviously, and by that very token, in the real world, impaired networking is a dear cost indeed. All that Zen frankly seems more like sour grapes than anything else. And indeed, animals do network amongst themselves. I just never heard of them networking with Aspies!

Not at all.

Let's start even with money. Escape from the bondage of wage slavery and the worried rut of penny pinching, even the enjoyment of disposable income, luxury, freedom and leisure, every conceivable priority for the allocation of resources both selfish and altruistic, these depend not upon the esteem of others, certainly not upon the esteem of those one does note likewise esteem.

Security against an enemy hardly need seek that enemy's devotion or respect, but only their fear.

All manner of pursuits are prized for intrinsic value of self realization, that do require connections and resources.

And perhaps the most important networking is, indeed, desired connections rather than any heteronymously tolerated and necessary connections.

Indeed, your entire question only reveals only the very least and the most obvious of the terrible cost of isolation from networking a web of support. I remain surprised at you that your very question even arises. Even you admit to the sorrow and frustration of other Aspies, not so dead inside as yourself.

Never the less. motivation or the lack thereof, dispair, just giving up, all does perhaps bear upon my own question, which I do still ever hope to return to:

Is there a hope in Helll in networking efectively even amongst ourselves, or are we simply too utterly demoralized even ever to try?

That's not so surprising is it? Downtrodden minorities will aways throw up an extreme reaction, even if that only characterises a minority of the minority. "We're here, we're not you and we will not be assimilated" appears an honourable cry (and the portrayal of the Borg demanding unity on their terms has done no harm here in showing the tyranny of enforced conformity!)



True: internal networking and support, very much as Fuzzy has commented on, alliances with other minority groups (even strange bedfellows) against majority agendas (but note that the larger culture is hardly monolithic)
But the networking at any scale is not the whole story. The smallest grouping or culture still contains the potential to be schismatic and strife-laden:
“All the world old is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer” Robert Owen

The networking of the French Left was so abysmal at the last presidential election that they ended having to vote (some with their noses clothes-pegged) for a right winger tainted by corruption (Chirac) to avoid getting a genuine fascist president (Le Pen)

The cry "we need to unite" is fine, but "unite on me" immediately reveals the tension.
Some of the peace movements in Northern Ireland struggled with this problem: yes, "peace", but on whose terms?

Unite, promote, an Aspie culture.
*If* negotiation or fighting can lead you to an agreement or dictat as to what it is.
Perhaps even more than some other groupings, the aphorism about herding cats might apply.

One consensus from here has come up more than once, though. The vast majority HERE don't want a cure.
And more acceptance of diversity wouldn't hurt either.

How does any of this actually answer my questions? A gaggle of effete tired old ex-Pinko burnout Frogs? Just how low are you setting the bar, now? What, exactly, are you seeking to explain away by pointing out how common is organizational incompetence? Do you perceive no discrepancy between all of the Pro-Aspie rhetoric with real world mileage walking the talk? Is that awkward truth not salient but unworthy of notice or mention?

Besides, considering your focus exclusively on politics in the first place, I remain uncertain if you at all grok the crucial importance, first of all, of the most immediate social network and personal web of support, close friends and vital contacts.

Actual definition of Asperger's remains appallingly vague. But unless I am completely confused, factors are thought to include poor non verbal ability and hence impaired emotional and/or social intelligence. And my focus here is upon the latter. Especially given the higher verbal skills, logic and intelligence also often associated with Asperger's, given also the assertion of Asperger's values and contempt for prevalent and often undiagnosed and untreated heteronomy, what then is the true nature of Asperger's impaired social intelligence? Incompatibility with the venality of the mainstream, or disability in building crucial social networks no matter the social context? Is our impairment in social inteligence and efective interpersonal networking entirely conditioned upon the insane and distasful challenges of mainstream society, or is our impairment in social inteligence and efective interpersonal networking intrinsic and global, hence even am impediment to efective interpersonal networking even amongst ourselves? Are Aspies disabled even from networking amongst ourselves? Do we network effectively amongst ourselves at any level? Can Aspies network effectively even amongst ourselves at any level? And is this entire question not central to shed any llight into heated dispute over whether Asperger's is actually any sort of malady or disability or merely a difference?

As an analogy, let us suppose that a new car design being tested steers badly. One possible reason might be a flaw in the steering system. But another might be that the tires cannot grip against the surface material of the text track. If the former hypothesis is true, then the car won't steer no matter what the track surface. But if the latter hypothesis is true, then the car will steer perfectly well on a different track surface. Likewise, if Asperger's is a condition dooming the sufferer to impaired interpersonal networking under any circumstances whatsoever, then any change in social context or environment will not help much. But if Aspies (at least high functioning) are merely daunted by an antiphony to whatever conventional social phoniness, then in so far as said may be removed simply by interaction amongst ourselves, then markedly improved social networking proficiency should result.

If networking is the cure, or the answer, I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but pointing out that attempting connections is matched by tendencies to dispute and fragmentation.


Don't let your prejudice catch you out. The example was taken almost at random, it's such a universal effect. Grouping up and falling apart is a continuing feature and to posit a permanent situation is an artificial construct. There's some truth in the Hegelian dialectic, once you leave out the pre-ordained march of history.



No, no surprising discrepancy. The world is that multivalued. What people say, and do, the ideal and the practice, the fantasy and the reality...



Oddly enough I understand it but do not grok it.
This, to me is VERY Aspie.



In order: probably, yes, yes, no.

On the latter point it may well depend on what you mean by networking, and distinguishing between positive and pathological forms of it (a trip to discussions of "ettiquette hell" will quickly illuminate the downsides of networking)

Personally, I could have a much more extensive network than I do. I have deliberately curtailed it in various directions, deciding often that "the game is not worth the candle".
If you prefer, "I will do anything for socialisation, but I won't do that."

In your car anology, on certain tracks I run very well. But I'm not a standard family hatchback, and anyone expecting such will be disappointed.

You will not let up that difficulties are common even normal. Obviously. But are you actually denying particular problems associated with Asperger's? If not, then my questions stand. Whatever you intend to infer, do please be explicit. Assertions first, then whatever reasoning and evidence in support. -Not build up to an implication that then only remains however oblique and ambiguous. And I do specify networking effectively, not otherwise. So, of the two possible explanatory hypotheses, which is better supported by the evidence?

I think we're now running round in loops. I feel you are insisting on a dichotomy of your construction which is at best only theoretical.

"Both. It doesn't have to be either/or! " (as earlier.)


As many here have repeatedly testified, AS-ness is both drawback and something that is valued. To hold either the disease only model or the peculiarly gifted model exclusive of the other is, to my mind, to indulge in an oversimplification.

And setting networking as the benchmark is not itself unchallengable. As a majority way of surviving and succeeding, it has a lot to recommend it. But since when has the majority always been exclusively right?

"Go it Alone" "Single-handed" "Lone Wolf"

Phrases that represent a minority strand which even the majority recognises,
and (sometimes) admires.

Hans Asperger spoke of the peculiar focus and driven-ness that those named for him may possess, and what that can lead them to achieve. It's not surprising that comes with a price.
Like forgetting social niceties. And birthdays... but that hurts conventional networking...

But is conventional networking the essential model, or just the convention for our culture here and now?

Never have I qualified conventional models of networking, but effectiveness. Value Vs liability, trade-offs, bane for boon, is all plausible enough, but somewhat aside from the concrete question.

And networking is by no means any moral vindication of the majority, but entirely a practical matter here. Besides, obviously, minorities network all the time, and any networks per se are each in the minority almost by definition, unless if we absurdly postulate the existence of a network so huge and extensive as to include the greater part of the population!

Why do I make such a benchmark of networking? Because, plainly, one way or another, networking is a specific and dire costly and singular stumbling block for Aspie social intelligence and source of just about every Asperger's hardship aside from actual symptoms. And it still seems that at least one of the competing hypotheses in question must be true to adequately explain the repeatably observable results.

Neuropsychology claims that Aspies, no matter how high functioning and whatever their other talents, simply suffer from low emotional and/or social intelligence that frustrates interpersonal networking, if even much distinction is made or stressed between different non verbal skills.

Whereas, the anti-psychiatric Pro-Aspie view is that Aspires actually are only pure of conventional triviality, manipulative guile and heteronomy, hence the effective stumbling block of pronounced antitypy and incompatibility. -And hence, that Asperger's poor social connectivity is entirely conditioned upon the triviality, manipulative guile and heteronomy of the social mainstream.

If the latter claim is the truth, then all such obstacles must be inapplicable among Aspies, and interpersonal networking should radically improve amongst Aspies, with a dramatic increase in effective social and emotional intelligence. But would that happen? Indeed, does that happen? And where?

Could some more info be provided please?

Not unless you can be more specific.

I would like to take the opportunity to add another obvious parameter that I had omitted, to my checklist of fundamental networking priorities: That of stimulation.

"Philosophers, writers, artists, even scientists, not only need encouragement and an audience, they need constant stimulation from other people. It is almost impossible to think without talking. If Defoe had really lived on a desert island, he could not have written Robinson Crusoe, nor would he have wanted to. Take away freedom of speech, and the creative faculties dry up."

'Conversation with a Pacifist' by George Orwell
http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/pacifist.html

Further duscussion: 'What people do for fun.. how the hell is it fun?! !' page 2 at: http://www.wrongplanet.net/asperger.htm ... c&start=15

I find that I can communicate effectivey with a boy (fellow aspie) at my school, far more adaquately than with neurotypicials.

I believe that this is, at least partly, because of our mutual tendency to ensure that we have got the message across, so to speak, and also our mutual relutance to rely on what is inferred.

In keeping with the previous setence, we do tend to express excatly what we mean.


Another thing that likely assists rather than hinders us is our mutual willingness to discard some of the more frettering social ettiquiete.

Neither of us appear to be reluctant to stop the other mid-setence and request clarification.

Suprisingly, this seldom harms the flow of thought in either direction and on the rare occasion it does, the scenario resembles this: 'Where was I? Oh yeh *contiunes*' with an even rarer 'I don't know' from the second speaker.

This may not seem to be useful but it is

A: [rambling] [something that doesn't make sense] [ra-
B: Woah, What did <insert something here> mean?
A:Huh?
B: *asks again, rephrasing question*
A:*explains*
B:Oh right.

Consider what would happen if you had to listen to something you didn't understand until the person had finished. If you're anything like me, by the time they got to the end, you'd have forgotten what it was you wanted to ask about and think of it later being left wondering. Again, if you're anything like me, because you didn't understand it, you would allow (or even help) yourself to forget it.