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I think many NTs also struggle with social situations.
- Thread starter Poppy98
- Start date
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.
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.
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.
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The combination of extreme, paranoid over-protectiveness combined with micromanaging hyper-judgemental dictator style of parenting makes me sad for both parent and child.
(That said, in my opinion, being abnormally attentive as a parent is not always bad, can actually be a positive rather than a negative and paradoxically lead to more well-balanced, socially responsible/sensitive-to-others and independent adults -- depends very much on the kid, the parent, and exactly how and why all the supervision and attention are enacted.)
I think the phenomenon of widespread, culturally-accepted paranoid over-protectiveness (not anything else about parenting -- that still seems to vary a lot) happened later in Canada than in the USA;
And thankfully is not a universal norm here even now...there are still communities where children can be seen outside playing without adults constantly monitoring feet away, taking public transit without accompaniment, etc.
I also think there have probably been "helicopter" parents as long as there have been parents, just how common this type of parenting was or was not has waxed and waned through centuries and varied from place to place. It's just recently we have digital communication and easy travel between continents, arguably underpinning a global culture developing, with certain human behavioural trends are becoming increasingly global phenomena with unprecedented rates of the uptake of certain ideas and practices across vast regions or across the world in very short timeframes.
I was born in the later half of the 80's.
My childhood had lots of freedom. (My dad disapproved but he was rarely ever home, and my mother ignored his insane paranoia and abusive dictatorial expectations for me and herself for the most part - they split up when I was 7 and it was the best thing that could have happened for all of us.) I should say as a caveat here that I was also actually neglected but that is a separate thing - I consider the neglect to be neglect, not freedom.)
I was never banished from the house, but neither was I told I could not play outside -- not even in terrible weather. I liked being out in the rain, and was just harrassed (or scolded) about wearing (and usually not actually wearing) a suitable jacket.
I remember being allowed to play outside by myself and ride my trike to the end of the block in either direction and back when I was 3 and 4.
By the time I was 7 I allowed to go anywhere in our sprawling 3-section townhouse complex either alone or with friends, and a few blocks beyond to a covenience store or to the playground of my school.
I always had to say approx where I was going and if I would be with anyone else, but this was a wise precaution for a boy who was vulnerable and would be wise for any
child because life in unpredictable and if you suddenly need or wanr to locate your kid (for happy or unhappy reasons) its easier to do if you have some idea where they might be.
By the time I was 11 I was allowed to go literally anywhere in my small city on my bike, be at home alone all day.
By the time I was I think 12 (almost 13 -- definitely by 13) I took public transit by myself on routes I knew once my mom had gone with me -- even if it meant travelling hours through 4 municipalities. This freaked some people out but it was fine. I always carried quarters so if I got lost or stranded or something bad happened I could call my mother. (This was only allowed if I had my chain wallet with bus pass in a clear window inside, attached to a belt loop -- otherwise I could not be trusted not to lose my bus fare and get stranded; and always a check in was done before I left, to make sure I had what I needed, to my great annoyance -- but in retrospect this was 100% necessary, as I could not reliably do this for myself until I was 21 and to this day struggle to remember all essential items for whatever I'm goin out to for)
I would be asked to come home before dark until I was 13, and after that just asked when I would be home.
I was taught personal safety rules in childhood (I wish someone had taught me a new set of rules for later adolescense and young adulthood -- that is big gap for boys and men, and so so so important for those of us with autism or any kind of developmental disability affecting social judgement) and since I generally didn't talk to people because I couldn't, and was known to not trust people generally (from victimization) nobody worried too too much I would be kinapped or exploited; And my mother knew how important it was both to my self-esteem (given how far behind my peers I was in so many things, and apparently always would be) and my future independence as an adult, she let me be as independent as I could be and tried to just encourage me to ask for help if I needed it and to ask me about my life.
The funny thing is that, to the extent she was able to be (there were some serious lapses in judgement when she was unwell and because of her own childhood experiences that led to actual neglect) my mother actually was kind of a helicopter parent ...because she had to be. She just managed it somewhat covertly and held herself back from intervening until it was absolutely necessary to step in for safety or for something important to me to be sorted out/happen, because I couldn't do whatever needed to be done no matter how hard I tried.... for example:
I could take the bus from memory of the route by age 12, by about 14 or 15 I could also very rarely get on an unfamiliar bus if I was familiar with the stop where I would catch it and the stop where I had to get off;
But I could not figure out nor even just follow an unfamiliar route plan by myself in any city, not even with trip planning tools (because I would get horrifically lost or not understand the directions and be unable to even find the first bus), until I was 23....
And until I was 19 and my mother ["and I" - left out -- typo; was a joint effort and my idea but 100% impossible without her to tell me the words and the sequence, and to her credit she even figured out what I was trying to ask her to help me with] made a detailed, color-coded if-then flowchart with verbatim dialogue options for both me and the transit system system employee, and blank spots for information given by me or them, I could not even call the trip planning phone line to ask for directions...I would insist I be allowed to call, even if I would not be making the trip somewhere on my own (because I wanted to learn to do this for myself, and if my own powerful desire to achieve self sufficiency hadn't been enough -- it was -- there was also the fact that I had started to become aware most people thought it was pathetic and weird or looked down on me and misjudged and dismissed ALL of my abilities for being unable to do things like this...it was important to me to eliminate as many reasons as possible for people to underestimate me), and my mom would find me sulking, avoiding her because I did not want to face that I had failed and couldn't solve the problem AGAIN, after several failed calls that inevitably ended with me being told by the very annoyed and confused transit company employee to only call back when I could tell them [whatever list of things I could usually not remember all of] and she would gently ask if I would let her help and make the call for me;
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My mom always paid attention to what I was doing when she knew I was vulnerable or needed help, but she gave me space and was careful not to make me feel constantly supervised even when I actually was supervised out of necessity and she just didn't let on....she had, imo, overall a very well-balanced perspective on her role as a parent -- she balanced my needs as a human being to have agency and independence and self-ownership with the denied-by-me need for protection and support.
Others sometimes (probably more often than not) accused her of "coddling" and stifling me because they saw her help A LOT more than was expected for my age all my life, and jumped to uninformed and truly unwarranted conclusions about the reality of the situation...In retrospect I feel so sad for her, because on the one hand she had a child who so often refused to listen and refused all help and guidance, became furious at the slightest hint he couldn't do everything for himself without help despite the unending actual disasters ...and then once this child FINALLY would recognize (usu with much difficulty and argument) the need for help and support and actually accept it -- or even occasionally (probably seemed like a miracle to her when this happened:_) actually ask for it, outsider and sometimes even friends and relatives who knew truly almost nothing about me, about her, about any situation they witnessed one tiny fragment of in which she helped or supervised or supported me in developmentally appropriate ways but not typically AGE-appropriate ways, they would judge attack and criticize her...and she would also be criticized sometimes by the same judgemental idiots for, in their PERSONAL opinions giving me too much freedom and independece.... despite that it had no impact on them and their lives and never would, and they were standing up for and supporting literally no one -- not me, not my mom. She did so much right, and almost nobody gave her any credit -- she was in fact constantly fighting against unwarranted and truly pointless and harmful rather than helpful judgement.
I cannot stand people doing what was done to my mother to anyone when I witness it or when comments are made to me gossip-fashion about other people and their kids -- it pisses me off: I want to adopt the speaker's judgy holier than thou scolding voice and topple them from their high horses by telling them how stupid and awful they are being, but I don't...to properly explain anything to them would require interrogating them about how much they know about the child and parent in question (which is always nothing, but these people cannot see that because they actually believe their unfounded assumptions based one or a handful of observations of the parenting behviour they criticize compared on norms/trends in human developmental that they assume is all that exists, as well as however they personally happened to be raised and assume is the best or only acceptable way to parent anyone, is the same as a properly reasoned judgement based on factual knowledge about the child and parent in question -- they don't see how little they know about what they speak and even if I could give anyone a crash course in all human diversity applicable, I don't want to because such people usualky have closed minds, so:_) there is never any point.
Ironically mom gave me more freedom and had more faith in my abilities than most of her critics (those who disapproved of developmentally appriopriate parenting because it would not have been age-appropriate in their view for a normal child) ever would have had they actually understood any of the realities of the situation; I expect they would have been far more of what they called "coddling" and "stifling" than she ever was.
My mother believed in the power of natural consequences and allowed me to try and fail and to learn from my mistakes like she would have allowed any child to do: she didn't actually assume I couldn't or shouldn't do things where most people would have. She had a lot of respect for everyone, including children and those of any age with significant impairments. And pretty much all of her parenting and social judgement philosophy was basd on extensive research about child development and human development, about psychology, about the impacts of adversity on human beings, about peace and conflict, about various cultures and religions - she was informed, extremely well-read and far more intelligent than she ever believed herself to be (I actually think she was probably a genius, she was never tested and was raised to be meek and deferent to everyone else, and she was very socially awkard and spectrumy and rejected even worse when she showed her incredible intelligence, so a lot of people treated her like an idiot child and that informed her perception of herself ..heart-breakingly). In my opinion, the world would be a much better place if all the people who criticized her learned from her and followed her overall good example as described (not her mistakes obviously) instead.
There is no single right way to raise children to be responsible (socially, behaviourally, financially, etc), accountable, and considerate human beings with all the skills they might need. There are often many solutions to a single problem, and many paths from one place to another. What works for person doesn't work for all.
I think the biggest problem for all people when it comes to socialization is that we often fail to consider the enormity of what exists beyond ourselves and our own experiences. And it's a hard one to solve. Diversity is beautiful and functional and I will always believe it should be and needs to be accepted (whether it ever is or not), but it also can be problematic....it is especially problematic when its existence is not even acknowledged or is fought against.
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Omg yes
Even in New York City and other dense concentrations of population, there are many people who are lonely, unable to find even one kindred spirit despite the available variety.
JayLapointe
Active Member
This rant is based on what I recall of my cultural Anthropology studies in university.
That's an incorrect position. For starters we're descended of omnivores, not "carnivores". Yes we can hunt, and yes we are descended from primates that occasionally hunted but from the larger perspective it's being omnivore not carnivore that has lead to our intelligence and diversity. The smartest of animals in the animal kingdom are all omnivore as you need big brains to keep track of the different food sources and means of accessing them. Even our primate ancestors that hunted occasionally preferred if possible to gather and eat the fruits/nuts.
Second, this idea that we have always been warring feudal groups is simply wrong. That's a western eurocentric view that likes to think the path that happen in Europe was universal. It wasn't. Most early groups weren't out warring, and honestly did their best to avoid it because violent confrontations in early societies were incredibly costly. Now yes ultimately the most "successful" groups, happened to be the ones that warred the most and conquered territories making the world what it is today. But when compared to the diversity of human groups throughout history they are not in the majority. And on a long term evolutionary scale, we're still not sure if this 10'000 year experiment in modern society is actually working or if we are just currently going through a human self-extinction event, that is another tangent though.
The truth of the matter is that humanity has formed itself into 1000's of different types of groups, structures, and societal models. If there is a way of organizing we've probably tried it. Some have failed, some have been successful. Some were peaceful, some were not. But it is ultimately a wrong position to think that we are descended from violent apes. We're the descendants of very smart, mostly peaceful apes, but there are always a couple that just can't handle the peace.
Just like today most humans inherently seek a position of peace and non violence, but there are a handful that are not, and they are ruining society while the rest let them. But that right there is an entire tangent on its own.
Actually, it's an Austro-anthropic view taught to me by people who are still partly living their paleolithic lifestyle today.
"Stop! You're both right!" - Patty Duke
For most of human history, we were few in number and competing with other hominids, through good times and bad. In good times, the best way to pass on your genes is by cooperating to increase the population, but in bad times, the winning strategy is to be greedy and ruthless. Ma Nature knows that, and she wants to ready for anything, so I think that there are genes that predispose us to being liberal or conservative just as surely as genes make us male or female, tall or short, etc. This gives us a lifetime of practice at being cooperative or combative, and makes sure we will react that way even in ambiguous situations. Our genetic programming is so strong that we assume that deep down, it is the same for the people we debate, but the assumptions are never stated and the arguments go nowhere.
Human Nature is as much a spectrum as AS. We need to learn to work with our differences, not condemn them. For some people, life is mostly about survival of the fittest. They feel reassured when they see others losing, and are keen to grab their stuff. Others are loath to use physical force, trying to reason even with lifelong criminals who lie constantly. They want to save every kitten, even though that would be ruinous before long.
Agriculture brought wealth, which we are ill-equipped to manage, and now we have machines and computers to challenge us further. I think we have to understand our roots if we are to cope successfully in a technological future.
For most of human history, we were few in number and competing with other hominids, through good times and bad. In good times, the best way to pass on your genes is by cooperating to increase the population, but in bad times, the winning strategy is to be greedy and ruthless. Ma Nature knows that, and she wants to ready for anything, so I think that there are genes that predispose us to being liberal or conservative just as surely as genes make us male or female, tall or short, etc. This gives us a lifetime of practice at being cooperative or combative, and makes sure we will react that way even in ambiguous situations. Our genetic programming is so strong that we assume that deep down, it is the same for the people we debate, but the assumptions are never stated and the arguments go nowhere.
Human Nature is as much a spectrum as AS. We need to learn to work with our differences, not condemn them. For some people, life is mostly about survival of the fittest. They feel reassured when they see others losing, and are keen to grab their stuff. Others are loath to use physical force, trying to reason even with lifelong criminals who lie constantly. They want to save every kitten, even though that would be ruinous before long.
Agriculture brought wealth, which we are ill-equipped to manage, and now we have machines and computers to challenge us further. I think we have to understand our roots if we are to cope successfully in a technological future.
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I think many NTs also struggle with social situations.
- Started by Poppy98
- Replies: 14
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