No wonder there's an AS epidemic!! !! !! !

Post Reply New Topic

In many ways, I come to learn about various items that can & do tend to hinder people with AS in relating to the occupational world..I'll admit that I've often found myself in occupations that were not so thrilling and often seemed to be dehumanizing still, over the many years, I've been able through various people that I've been working with to help myself have a greater amount of sucess in this area overall.Not only learning pertinent job-interviewing skills but, how to cope with various job-related situations that might arise from time to time, something which has been very helpful indeed..

In following this thread there are many issues to cover and I will try to cover them.

First off, yes there is an ethic in the USA of recent of not doing the best job using the best available tools. It seems as if the employment system is based on not what you know but who you know and then having the personality to fit in the company mold rather than the skills. I think this is the effect of our current schooling (which is not really that much different than the work world other than overtness.). The trick for us is not to try to fight the system. We represent maybe 1/2 of 1% of the population. There is no way the system will change for us. We therefore have 2 choices, figure out the system or work around it. It seems that there is a overwhelming amount of us who are trying to figure out or fight the system rather than try to learn how to work around it. I have seen it in the language of this discussion.

To be honest, I do not think NT's understand the social rules either, they just know how to follow them as some sort of instinct. I think that is why they are so resistant to try to teach them to people who do not understand them the normal way. By doing so, they may find out that they themselves really do not understand them much consciensely but more by intuition.

Do you have any proposals on how we can work around the system? I am thinking your right demeus. One NT I do know is very blunt. She told me and this comfirms what you said. She and other NTs cannot answer our questions. I've been beginning to suspect this myself.

Even my own father whom is an NT has said what you said and that is to work around the system entirely.

Again, do you have any proposals offhand? Maybe we can work together with what we do and think we know to come up with some ideas. What do you think?

We can start by realizing that what was taught to us in school is a lie. Stuff such it is our fault that we are bullied, that we will not amount to anything, that you must consume to be someone, that you must get a college degree and work for a large company to have a decent pay and retirement. It is all BS and must be unlearned.

We also will need to pick out which skills in society need to be learned and which ones we can do without. You do need to know how to meet with people and to be able to discuss your concerns and opinions in a manner which is acceptable to both parties. You do not however need to attend a party every weekend.

Finally, again I say, if you want to be employed but no one will employ you, then employ yourself. I know it is more than simply producing your product or service as I have done it myself (successfully mind you). You can learn most of the stuff needed to run a business through the library, talking to others, or through government services such as SCORE. By having your own business, you set up the social rules of the office, how things get done, and who is hired. If those who are able to actually do this, eventually, there will be enough businesses looking for employees and they will probably hire aspies/auties. Of course, you may also find that an employer does like your skills and will want you bad enough, regardless of social issues. This is the route I took when I found out the major employer here hires based on personality rather than skill.

There are other ideas for working around the system. The above is simply given to get your thoughts going.

demeus

I have another question for you. You say having a loserish or a negative attitude is and will lead you down a path of destruction am I correct? If yes, what would happen if a person was so negative and so loserish they were negative about there own negativity. What if they were so loserish that they were even loserish about their own loserish attitude?

What if instead of being positive why can't we be negative-negative thereby negating our negativity. I say why can't we be so pessimistic that we become pessimistic about our own pessimism.

I don't know if the law of attraction is true or not http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Attraction

Basically it says what we want is what we get. If we want positive things bad enough then we will get them. If we want negative things then we will get them. If the Law of Attraction is true and not a bunch of crap then why can't I want the negative of the negative things. This means should be able to attract positive things because the negatives cancel out and we get what we want and we can still be negative.

What this means , if you can't beat the system and cannot join the system then I say cheat . I found a way to cheat the laws of attraction if the laws of thisthis concept is true. If you can't win, then cheat.

doesn't those people saying personaltiy can not be changed include your personality as well?

Yes, that's why it's harder nowadays to find and keep a job as an Aspie. Because they give social behavior such big importance.

I was just reading in Money Magazine that more companies are contracting out work because it's so much nicer on their profit margin, and they see a trend shifting from being employed to being self employed. But that's still a hard thing to do, and still it requires a certain amount of social skills (both on paper and face to face).

NT's tend to be very vague about these things. I think it's because they don't know. They never analyzed it beyond that. All they need is something vague like that and they instinctively figure it out. Because that's how their mind operates, that's how they expect you to operate (is that empathy because I don't think it is). I noticed when talking to my family about these things, if I try to use logic, they take it as excuses. But, if I finally get to a point where they draw some emotions out of me to display my emotions, they tend to understand where I''m coming from better. I have yet to turn that into an art, but it seems to work better to reduce the "lectures" I get from people who really have no room to be talking.

But, let's approach some of these concepts one by one. Negativity. That's something all people can be. I don't think AS vs NT has anything to do with this except that I think AS can become more negative because NT's tend to deal with AS people out of their, dare I say, dark side more so than their light. I know many AS are not religious, but it has helped me to find the positive side of things by having faith in God that He's got a reason for all the things that happen to me. But, if God isn't part of this equation, look at it like this... Everything in life is a scale. Hot vs Cold. Light vs Dark. Only time water is cold without any warmth to it whatsoever is on paper in math, and even then, H2O doesn't give a temperature requirement. In real life, your water is a combination of hot and cold at all times. Everything is like that. You get hired. Well, that's a good thing, but it like everything else including getting fired has pros and cons. If you focus on the cons, of course you are going to be miserable and it will reflect in things you say and do. If you focus on the pros only, then you will have a naive sense of this world and people will take advantage of that or see you as more stupid than what you are. As an Aspie, you have this amazing ability (beyond what NT's can do) to look at both sides without much emotion to it. Now, when it comes time to putting emotion in to it, my inspiration is actually from two lesbians. To make a long story shorter, I'll go with my example that resulted from this inspiration. I move in this house I'm renting. Most of my boxes are in the basement. 2 days into unpacking the upstairs without going to the basement, I walk to the basement to get a thermometer because one of my kids had a fever. When I get down there, I notice it's covered in water. Then, after closer examination, it was poopy water. Landlord was at the beach, and he wanted me to remove all my items (some destroyed, some still good, some needed cleaned and disinfected) so he could have a team of people go in and clean it out. I had renter's insurance (and I fully suggest looking into it). So, my husband and I had to spend a couple days playing in poop basically trying to move things, clean things, and sort things where all the dirty couldn't just be thrown away without taking pictures and writing down info about it. Only my husband and I can find ourselves standing in s**t making out. We had fun with it. We made jokes. We almost threw up. We flirted. We sang and danced. We wore gloves and made a lot of use of the hand sanitizer. As broke as we are (he just got laid off and i wasn't working), the insurance money was actually a God Send. Attitude is a state of mind. Happiness is a state of mind. Your grass doesn't have to be green to enjoy a picnic. If you can't be happy with what you already have, then nothing will bring you happiness. I always tell people with money, it's not about making money as much as managing what money you have. Metaphorically, the same goes true to everything. If you can't manage what you got going on in life, good and bad, then all good things can happen to you and you still will see it as a bad thing.

On being more responsible, that means taking control of your life rather than allowing your life to control you. Like in my example, I had renter's insurance. That was a pretty responsible thing for me to have. My parents didn't get it for me, or even recommend it. My bank offers free financial advice, and I often call on whims just to assess what's going on. I figure I may be okay, but maybe there's something I can do that's better. But, I do have a tendancy to worry so much about something that I want to avoid it, like money. Like, sometimes I'm so scared to see how broke I am that I don't want to balance my checkbook. But I do it only because I've learned that if I don't, I will make myself more broke in the future. Nothing will get fixed unless you get up and fix it.

Quit blaming others is a tough one. Aspies tend to blame where it is due. If it's our bad, we are pretty good at admitting that, at least to ourselves. When it's not our fault, it's really tough to get us to take fault for something we didn't do. NT's will never understand that. They are very irrational when it comes to this. Like, Joe could ask you to drive through McDonalds and get him a big mac. When you come back with a Filet of Fish after ordering and paying for a big mac, it's somehow your fault that the guy at the drivethru window screwed up the order because you should have known to check it when really, Joe should have gotten up off his lazy tail and got his own big mac. NT's are very hypocritical on this one too as they will blame you for their wrong doings. It's like kids and the remote control. No matter who lost the remote control, it's the child's fault. One thing I noticed, Aspies are always at fault according to these NT's. My way around it, I don't focus on the blame. I have a mission in life, and I do what I need to do for that. If someone else tries to screw up my game, I just keep moving forward. I'm always trying to improve myself irregardless, so I don't need to blame myself to learn from my mistakes like NT's do. I think a lot of Aspies are like me on that. But, if you focus on blame at all, you will see where others mess you up, and it's frustrating. You have to kinda watch it to an extent, like if you are always late for work because someone you live with keeps talking your ear off on your way out the door, then you know you have to deal with that somehow. Again, it's not their fault you are late as much as they have become an obstacle to you accomplishing your goals and therefore you need to find a solution that works for you both.

Listen and follow instructions... I never heard that one personally. If someone is telling me to do something their way, and it's in my better interest to do things their way as opposed to the correct way, I will do it wrong just to please them (like homework, small things on the job). I do put my foot down when it comes to big things like someone wanting me to do something illegal in accounting on paper (where it's documented that I did it wrong) because I could get into trouble with that. I've lost jobs over it, but better to lose a job than to serve time. I don't call it instructions when the person is too incompetent to dish them out. But, if I disagree with them, I don't say okay and just do my thing. I argue it right then and there, and if I don't discover they were wrong until later, I bring it up at discovery. Sometimes, i call a family member to get their take about how I should approach it and if it's a battle worth picking. But, I've been told i'm better off to say okay and do it my way, and I've been told that I make a big deal out of stupid things like staying legit in my accounting methods. Beyond that, when given instructions, it doesn't hurt to ask questions but only ask questions where you need the answers to do your job. I think Aspies tend to ask unneccesary questions when they know the person they are talking to is an idiot, or they know they are possibly getting screwed over but can't quite pin point how, or when they really don't want to do it that way, or sometimes, for the amusement of it all. That, though, annoys NT's and they won't answer you at some point.

Quit making excuses...oh my favorite. Okay, NT's don't know the difference between excuse and reason. They also base "excuses" off what they want, and it's kinda a default to their own ignorance (like they don't know what to tell you). First off, the difference between excuse and reason in my mind is Excuse means that it was okay whereas reason is just why things happened that way which in no way excuses it. For instance, Hans is a little clumsy as a result of his Aspergers. He goes to a big social event for work, and the CEO and his wife walk up to Hans right next to the buffet table full of self serve food. The CEO looks at Hans and makes a comment about how the shrimp was overcooked. Hans all nervous about what to do and how to act reaches for a piece of shrimp going to taste it and knocks the cocktail sauce all over the place including the CEO's wife's dress. Now, Hans saying that it was okay to destroy a $3,000 dress from an accident as a result of his Aspergers would be using Aspergers as an excuse. But, Hans saying that the whole situation occurred due to his Aspergers and he's sorry it happened and he's working on trying to overcome some of his issues as a result of Aspergers...now then Aspergers is no excuse but the reason...the method to the madness as nobody in their right mind would dump cocktail sauce on their CEO's wife's dress. NT's do not make that distinction that I make, but I make it because the guy that believes the CEO should understand his Aspergers is making excuses to himself which hinders his ability to fulfill his missions in life. The guy that recognizes his Aspergers, recognizes how it is a problem and wishes to make it work for him rather than against him will be more apt to overcome any obstacles that stand in the way of his success, therefore, the odds are in his favor to find success, more so than the guy using it as an excuse and more so than the NT who takes blame without caring about solving any problems.

I don't think Aspies deal well with any social network within the workplace (outside the workplace like sales is better to deal with). Face it, we suck at office politics. So when you have two supervisors who contradict each other, I don't know what to tell you. It's really not a matter of which one to follow as much as how to deal with the guy you didn't follow and choosing your enemies wisely (and in which case, it might be better to follow the enemy's advice than the friend's as a friend is more apt to forgive, but it's so wrong to do that to a friend). I really think it goes against Aspie grain to deal with politics like that to a point where we may not be able to adapt to it. A lot of your entry level jobs like Kroger is like that. One thing about self employment is that you don't really deal with politics like that all day long. Instead, it's only in spurts when dealing with customers and clients, and I think Aspies tend to do well with customer service. It's the politics that goes on nonstop all day long that gets us. Maybe you might consider working those odd jobs (even if you go through many in a short time period) while receiving training you need to do something on your own. Services will always be needed in the US. You can make a decent living as an interior decorator, computer repair, accounting, private investigation, psychology, etc. You can aim for two things like something fast to handle your short term needs while working to achieve something very long term like a PhD so that you can eventually consult.

My real advice to you is to grab a bunch of magazines and start reading. I don't know if it's me or an Aspie thing, but everything I needed to learn that wasn't taught in school, I learn from magazines. I once was ugly and wanted to be pretty, and Cosmo, Vogue, Self, YM, etc. all taught me to be pretty. I probably need to refresh myself on these now as trends have changed (especially with my hair because I hate my hair). Money management, I've learned some tricks from money magazines. Same with organizing my house and cleaning it, and cooking. Some magazines are useless, some are okay, and some are awesome. You just have to kinda take the time to read through them and get a feel for it. Also, I love the "For Dummies" books. I usually read those though for more school work type things like marketing for dummies, statistics for dummies, and things for leisure like women in the Bible for Dummies. But I'm sure I would benefit from Nutrition for Dummies or something to that effect when it comes to making sure my kids are getting the nutrients they need.

Sorry so long, but I had a lot of turf to cover, and I don't want to risk being taken wrong by trying to edit too much. Vague isn't helpful, and short posts are generally vague. So I hope this was helpful. When it comes to success, how do you measure that? Remember, it's your life. Your goals should be yours and not someone elses. Where you want to be in life might be different than what your parents had in mind for you, and that's okay as long as you aim for your desires and not projected ones from other people. IN addition, the path NT's take works for NTs. They don't always work for Aspies. NT's will follow a wide path to the destination. Aspies are more apt to map the jungle on their way, which takes a little longer at the risk of getting lost and dying in the jungle, but where would civilization be if it weren't for the guy that mapped out unmarked territory? I truly believe that Aspies are better off doing things their way than someone elses. If you are a computer nut, then why force yourself to bank on paper when you can do it electronically? If you are a kinesthetic learner, then you want some on the job training rather than sitting in a classroom all day. NT's got an epiphany to do that to popular stuff like learning preference. They just haven't gotten the epiphany for unpopular stuff like Aspergers.

How exactly do I display the emotions they are looking for? I don't understand. What do you say to them to reason with them? Isn't the idea to fix the freaking problem?



Lol @ poopy water. I like that one. Well I have some property in dumpwater that you and your hubby can send all of your poopy water to. It's called dumpwater lake. Here is how I develop my prices 2000 pounds equals a ton. I charge $10 per pound of s**t that you send me to my property in dumpwater lake. Now, since we have 2000 pounds per ton of s**t and I charge $10 per pound of s**t 2000 * 10 =$20,000 per ton of s**t you can send my way that I will dispose of in dumpwater lake. This goes for any BS anyone tells you. Just tell them to look me up online by typing in Cubedemon Corp and they can send their BS my way as well and I will dispose of it properly.

Check out my post about pessimism and negativity at http://cubedemon.blogspot.com/2009/06/p ... imism.html

"On being more responsible, that means taking control of your life rather than allowing your life to control you. Like in my example, I had renter's insurance. That was a pretty responsible thing for me to have. My parents didn't get it for me, or even recommend it. My bank offers free financial advice, and I often call on whims just to assess what's going on. I figure I may be okay, but maybe there's something I can do that's better. But, I do have a tendancy to worry so much about something that I want to avoid it, like money. Like, sometimes I'm so scared to see how broke I am that I don't want to balance my checkbook. But I do it only because I've learned that if I don't, I will make myself more broke in the future. Nothing will get fixed unless you get up and fix it. "

Thank you, Thank you. You give such clear answers that are non-vague. This is why I'm a negativist myself. Tahatti calls me a disillusioned optimist. I say we're saying the same thing but from a different persective. I thought an optimist always saw the good in anything that was bad like in pollyanna. If you watch pollyanna, she offered no solutions to anything at all except to see all the positives in things. I say if you see something negative I say freaking fix it and make it good. I see the bad but I say fix the bad and make it freaking good or take the worst of all possible worlds and make it the best of all possible worlds. Let's say we have a glass that is filled halfway with water. The typical question is do I see it as half full or half empty? I ask half full or half empty of what? Air or Water. Depending on what you want to fill the glass with I say we fix the problem by filling the all the way up and now you have a glass full of water. If you want the glass full of air I say you can spill the water out and now you have a glass full of air.



I would end up being frustrated at Joe and probably would lose it and say why don't you do it yourself if you think you can do it better?

This is what I don't understand. This is crazy NT logic to me. If something happened that was someone else's fault then why wouldn't we point that out. Why not do that so as to prevent the situation from occuring again and put in a preventative solution for next time? Maybe aspies like greentea, you, tahatti and others should be running the companies.




I guess you could say the correct way is the way they say it is am I correct? What is wrong with staying legit in your accounting methods? I wish I had an aspie as a boss especially someone who was patient.




I understand reason vs excuse now. Personally, I want to do my own business somehow. I want to make my own aspergers work for me. Since I'm not good with NTs I may have a niche I could do business with. Guess who. Other Aspies. Maybe I could do computer repair services for them especially for those who do not have computers as their special interest.

In fact, we could use our special interests to help each other out and to get an economy going for ourselves. We have the tools like the internet. For instance there are those who have a special interest to clean and those who hate to clean. I say those who have a special interest of cleaning could make a profit off of those who hate to clean. Maybe we shouldn't hate the NT anymore but empower ourselves almost like the black panther party did for black people. http://www.blackpanther.org/



Yeah we do suck at office politics. Why do we have to deal with all of this political BS just to keep a f*****g job. It's stupid, childish, lame, and did I mention stupid? I would love to do computer repair for other aspies who aren't interested in computer repair. Other aspies could be my target market.



I will get these magazines and the for dummies as well.



You did fine. In fact, you did more than fine. You gave me details that I needed. I appreciate that from you and other aspies like Timelord and Greentea.

On the emotions, I don't think they are looking for a specific emotion, but of course, you don't want to go overboard. Like my friend will get on me about how clean my house is. My house is very normal clean for a house with a 1 and 2 year old more often than not. In fact, more often, it is too clean for a house with that age group in kids because I'm a little obsessed with germ control (not a germ phobia because there's good germs that eat the bad germs, and no one can develop a decent immune system without germs). But when I tell my friend this, I'm in denial when in actuality, when her kids were the age of my kids, her house was disgusting. When I go into my time management issues, things that are normal that all moms face and should increase understanding from other people, especially other moms, she tells me I'm making excuses. But when I just start crying a little stating that I'm just overwhelmed and my husband doesn't help out much and nobody wants to help by watching my kids and woe is me there's no hope...then I get support that I'm a good mom, I'm doing the best I can, and all those excuses I gave out are now what she tells me is normal, and she all the sudden understands what I am going through, and she's so sorry she doesn't help me watch my kids and that I watch her kids all the time. So, when you are thinking or talking to yourself, then the idea is to fix the problem. Always consider the audience. When you are talking to NT's, you might have to reach them better by using emotion, even if you aren't that good at it and might need to fake it temporarily.

We don't point blame for mere purposes of ego. NT's don't like to take blame because then it destroys their popularity levels. Aspies don't like to take blame because it insults our intelligence. In the end, nobody likes to take the blame. But, it is beneficial for ourselves to accept blame when it is due, but ridiculous to try it when it isn't due. So you do easily have the power to prevent situations from occurring again when you are the cause. When you are not the cause, you can kinda more look at it as to what causes the problem as opposed to whose fault is it. When you do, never approach it as someone's fault. Approach it as that person is the problem and it isn't their responsibility to be the solution. The solution is your responsibility. So you can stop the problem from happening again by taking ownership to the solution (not the blame) and taking control of the situation. Again, NT's can only seem to give themselves ownership to the solution when they think they are to blame, but I promise you, an Aspie can't dish out that blame. You'll have to get another NT to do that for you for the person to believe it.

As far as my problem for staying legit in my accounting methods, managers often don't know what they are doing with accounting. They think doing it wrong serves their better interest when it doesn't. If they knew anything about accounting, doing things right serves their better interest. In addition, there's a big difference between doing things right and doing it right on paper. Of course, Enron took that to an extreme, but a drugdealer, let's say, can easily launder money by paying taxes on it, and if he claims it from a personal business, he gets to even get a deduction for his expenses in his illegal drug dealings. While the drugs may be illegal in that situation, his accounting would be legit. What's even better, I've heard a story about a drug dealer who did just that. He filled out his personal taxes and put down "drug dealer" for his occupation and paid taxes on all his illegal money on a Schedule C. He did that for 20 years. He gets caught dealing drugs. In court, he gets off because in that state, it is illegal to incarcerate (I'm sure I spelled that wrong) someone for their primary income, and he proved drug dealing was his primary income from his tax returns. Now the judge did tell him to find a new day job as that only works once. But that is more for small time drug dealers as opposed to the big wigs who deal with millions of dollars worth of drugs in one transaction, and even then, i think they could still incorporate in this day and age. And considering drug dealers usually go down from tax evasion long before the murders and illegal drug sales, it would serve their better interest to at least keep the money legit. If drug dealers were accountants, they'd know that. I'm not saying I worked for any drug dealers (I haven't), but I can't think of any way to communicate how stupid some of the people were that I worked for.

I think your computer business is a good idea, and I think you can expand to the NT market as many expect their computer repairmen (nerds) to be a little different. If you have any NT friends, they could help you with your image if you wish, and once you get enough work, you could hire your own NT's to answer phones and deal directly with customers. Most aspies though can fake it for the time it would take to repair a computer. Again, it's the 8 hour shifts daily does it eventually drive us crazy where we can't control letting out our Aspiness.

I don't like the Black Panthers Idea. I think it would be more like how Martin Luther King Jr was. Black Panthers were very militant, violent, and semi irrational on many of their ideas. Martin Luther King was intelligent, non-violent, realistic, and patient. I truly think if you want an Aspie Community and society, forget Aspergia or whatever and come here to Wrong Planet. This has got it going on.

1. I would love for you to give me lessons on how to keep a house clean especially the kitchen. I get overwhelmed and start overthinkin and I shut down.
2. I am the slobbish kind of aspie. I do need and want to work on that. I wish I had help to do that.
3. I know about considering the audience. I think NTs do not want to deal with a cold hearted person. They may consider us cold-hearted. I could be wrong and have been wrong plenty of times. I will be wrong plenty of times more.
4. I am a male so I don't think crying would work for me lol.
5. My fiance who is an NT complains I do not help around the house as well. The honest truth is I am as bad as your husband. I want to work on that but I don't know how to coordinate myself with that. Maybe this is a guy thing whether NT or aspie. I don't know. The truth is I cannot stand house work. I have difficulty switching gears and to quit perservating on something.



As an example of this are you saying that I should just remember to check to food to make sure it's the right order and then just go back for the correct order? In that situation I would just do that.



Again, with the food situation? It sucks to get blamed I can tell you that. Maybe what is being said is don't do the blame game at all even if someone else does it and just consider the blame game as a stupid thing to do.



I can say arguing with the manager will not help you. What do you do to get your point across to the manager?


You could be my accountant and to make sure I am above board with my business taxes lol. I think you would as well



Wrong planet is awesome. I think though we can get some stuff going if we worked together. Not only can we work around the system like deamus suggests but maybe as our own mini-economy grows we can add our values to the system like honesty and integrity and hard work and thinking. Personally I want people's words to mean something again. I want to be able to live in a society in which I say "I give you my word as a gentlemen" and this would be acceptable. What do you think? Personally I'm going to scrap my blog and from this day forward I'm not bashing any of the NT's values but I want to promote my own and the aspie community as well and add to the melting pot of this planet. I want us to promote positives and quit harping on negatives. I say our role model should be President Barack Obama. He offers positives. This is what we need to do. All of us need to do this together.

This "needs people skills"/"good team player" fad is moronic, such things seem to have be required for EVERY job no matter how irrelevant "people skills" are for the job. This BS happens in school and college, too, if you suck at group activities it hurts your grade because you "are not participating".

Exactly.
So I had so many bad experiences.
This approach hurt my grade (even though I was reasonably good at the academic subjects) and is one of the reasons why I decided to leave education much sooner than I planned. This enforced group work ethic also one of the reasons why I'm depressed and paralysed with fear about the outside world.

I've always had difficulty trying to "sync up" for participation, almost as if my body wasn't built for it, but instead was built for working and studying mostly alone.


I've been given several books on team work.
I still don't get the dynamics of it, even though I've tried really hard to understand.

I'm sure that some of the activities could be accomplished in half the time with a quarter of the stress, if I had been allowed to do them on my own.


One book even read something along the lines of:
"If you were a rare genius like Einstein or Edison, you wouldn't need to pick up this book. Unfortunately, the majority of us aren't geniuses, so need to collaborate with other people."


I can cooperate with one or two people sometimes and I see getting along with others (to acquire occasional guidance and help) beneficial.

However, I don't believe this is the same as having the "join in or you're dissenting" ethic rammed down people's throats. I'm sure that quite a few people are reasonable and just want to do what they have to do on the job. This doesn't mean that they can't be sociable occasionally.

Perhaps some people just aren't built to move around and interact with large crowds for extended periods of time.


This doesn't mean that I can have informal discussions with a small group of people.

Say there was a short non-assessed assignment and the options were given to either
A) Work in a group
B) Work alone

In this scenario, I'd choose A) about 25% of the time and B) about 75%.
Maximising grades wouldn't be such a pressing priority here, so I could allow myself a bit of leeway for errors/delays.
I do enjoy discussing things with people sometimes as this can actually help me learn.
The main problem is finding a group to work in to start with. The process of finding people (if they don't find me first) is traumatising and demolarising. If someone approaches me first and invites me in (this hardly ever happens) I'm much more comfortable.


If it was a long assessed assignment, however, I'd choose option B) 100% of the time. This because personal control and regulation of stress would be the important priorities for me here to try and maximise grades.

If you do an assignment alone, it's much easier to tell yourself what to do and you can assume full responsibility for the work ("If I don't complete the work by the deadline, it's entirely my fault"). In this scenario, you don't have to worry about chasing up other people. In many cases, that's actually a more efficient method of working. You're more in control of what happens. There's also a clearer focus too. My family agree.

I said it in another Greentea thread and it applies just as well in this one. It comes down to Doing things Right, in a world of Do things Together. Here's the thing folks, sometimes doing things together actually is more important than doing things right. One of the more useful ways in which humanity has learned to compensate for the unreliability of our perceptions, memories and understandings is the tendency to check ourselves against peers. The problem is that left unchecked this leads to the tyranny of the masses, hence the necessity of a consistent application of logic and reason.

When your brain is shifted away from the ability to "relate" and towards the ability to "systemize" enough, you end up in a catch-22. You are better able to understand how things interrelate and therefore make accurate extrapolations and predictions, but you are less able to express what you observe in a way that those who don't systemize in the same manner can still relate to. In the World of the Blind, the Seeing man is Schizophrenic. In the culture of getting things done now as a group, the person who wants to wait until we can all do it the most beneficial and rational way is a poor employee.

We are herd animals because herd animals have distinct survival benefits that we have capitalized on such as the ability to specialize. In modern cultures we often express this herd behavior and specialization via the mechanic of employment in industry. Somewhere along the line of establishing these modern cultures of ours, we took our eyes off the ball. Some of us learned how to co opt the will of the herd to work toward ones own benefit rather than the benefit of the herd and chose to make use of that knowledge to engage in all manner of exploitative purposes.

It is my belief that much of the conflict AS individuals experience interacting with society at large has to do with an understanding, on the part of the AS individual, of the system of language and culture present in modern societies. The ability to systemize our perceptions and experiences in a more in depth manner leads to the realization of these abuses being perpetrated all around us on a constant basis.

One of the traits associated with strong systemetizing ability is greater capacity to consider multiple related aspects at once and the way in which they interact. If I were writing down the concepts I am expressing in this post for a primarily NT audience as opposed to my expectation of a primarily Spectrum audience, I would be breaking this all down into a lot greater granularity and spreading it across multiple posts. It would simply be too much information to expect the majority of people to process at once while still having a high level of comprehension. Note that I don't mean ability to agree with me, I refer to comprehension whether they agree with and support or disagree and refute.

One of the tools by which a society institutionalizes exploitation is through the discouragement of individuals below a class threshold learning the skills of logic and reason. The language by which communication happens between individuals can be rigged to make the application of these skills more difficult. Cultural rules regarding the use of language and establishing specific taboos to discourage the exploration and understanding of certain concepts are important parts of this rigging.

End result? Many AS individuals (and a significant portion of NTs as well to be sure) find themselves more aware of things then those around them and the deck is stacked against them being able to explain it to those that don't figure it out on their own to some degree first. You know who hears what you are saying and understands it? The people making use of this knowledge to exploit others. These are the bad managers, the corrupt CEOs, the dictators and tyrants. The bullies. The parasites. You are trying to out them and oust them. You are a threat. You are fired.

Very true.

And regarding team work: maybe it's just me, but I never saw actual team work at play in the companies I worked for. The best example of team work I have is staff meetings. Several entities, each from a different department, meet in a meeting room and discuss the problem at hand. Each gives his input, all of them totally unrelated to each other (because each one sees only THEIR own interests, i.e. they support the solution that will let them work the least and give the best conditions to their own department and position), no conclusion is therefore reached, and the end time comes. Then an email comes from whoever is highest in the hierarchy of those who were in the meeting, saying what solution we will implement. Since this is the most powerful of those involved, nobody dares say a word, they all obey. And that's the end of the team-work on this issue.