I think many NTs also struggle with social situations.

[Poppy98]

There are just way too many social misunderstandings for it to possibly be easy for them. ND people can't be behind all of it.

 

[lunarious]

Religious perspective; i'm not sure if we can tresspass onto suffering peoples territory to help. They must reach out.

Truthfully though they can't reach out, the world is dark. But then they must yield. To whom will they yield?

 

[Tired]

Yup, many of us have social anxiety (me, mee!), and i hate it with my whole heart

 

[UFO]

Yes. Either with or without underlying diagnoseable deficits. Some even have it as bad as autistics. Or worse.

 

[Outdated]

It's important to remember what the human animal actually is because that affects the way our societies work, or don't.

Our ancestors are carnivorous apes and apex predators. That is the basis of our social hierarchies, and later on the feudal system of government. The toughest ape rules the roost. We tended to mostly live in small tribal groups that could on occasion cooperate with other nearby groups to aid in hunting larger animals etc but at the same time we would also fight with neighbouring groups over territory and hunting rights.

We only very recently in evolutionary terms started eating grains and vegetables to supplement our diets as our populations expanded and wild game became more scarce. This meant farming and farming with primitive tools needed the cooperation of larger groups of people which doesn't come inherently easy to apex predators, who in general only cooperate for someone that can dominate them.

We've been slowly adapting to that more and more over the past several thousand years and we've managed to work with larger and larger societies, but in evolutionary terms a few thousand years is merely the blink of an eye. We are still just predatory apes struggling to adapt with some of us more predatory than others.

 

[Neonatal RRT]

There are just way too many social misunderstandings for it to possibly be easy for them. ND people can't be behind all of it.

Agree.

The underlying mechanisms by which NT and autistics internalize and express their social misunderstandings is often different.

As opposed to say, growing up before 1980, before the internet social media, before cable television, before controlling, "helicopter" parents hid their children indoors and made "play dates", when people were out of the house most of the day... simply because there was nothing to do in the house (except chores). As kids old enough to ride a bike, we roamed free... totally feral... zero supervision. We weren't allowed in the house unless there was some very serious weather outside (tornados and hurricanes)... and we PLAYED outside with lightning storms in our bathing suits and high winds because it was fun! The bottom line was that we were not socially isolating ourselves like many do today. We certainly were not "safety conscious" to the point of isolation and social dysfunction.

For the typical ASD-1/Asperger's variants like myself... it didn't exist... it was never a topic of discussion... we didn't know we were different... we had to work and play and socialize... and you were expected to leave the house at 18... there wasn't an option not to. If I were born in 2007 as opposed to 1967, my life and struggles with socialization and integrating into society would be much worse... at least that is my impression from the young people on this forum. A lot of this does cross over into the NT population, because culturally and socially, everyone was a part of a similar process.

Autistics do have added components to their struggles, but young NTs have similarly been subjected to the effects of social isolation, a "safety conscious" parenting, social media, and mainstream media blowing everything out of proportion with their dramatic, fear mongering, "news alerts" and "storm alerts" often for things that, 40 years ago, would have gotten a 3 sentence acknowledgment and then on to the next storyline. I also blame smart phones that have allowed people to text and "doom scroll" through their social media apps instead of actually talking to people face-to-face.

Culturally and socially, society has changed for the worse, overall.