Unpopularity of Critical Thinking outside work

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One term I don't see mentioned here enough is square Aspie difference to to me... Critical Thinking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking


Critical thinking gives due consideration to the evidence, the context of judgment, the relevant criteria for making the judgment well, the applicable methods or techniques for forming the judgment, and the applicable theoretical constructs for understanding the nature of the problem and the question at hand. Critical thinking employs not only logic but broad intellectual criteria such as clarity, credibility, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, significance and fairness.


For many, it works great in business, and the Wiki article lists many professionals where people can excel. In social, love and politics, it's probably total disaster. People feel judged, criticized, you take things too serious,.

critical thinking is not all that popular around the workplace either unless you work in engineering. even our tech support guys get criticized by management for being too judgmental with customers. they are supposed to find something more diplomatic than telling a customer that he made a mistake.

Occasionally I find people outside a work environment who are willing to engage in this kind of stuff just for its own sake. The one problem I have found is that because most such people are male, and I am female, we sometimes get into what I think is a wonderfully stimulating intellectual repartee, and when I want more of this interaction, they seem to think I am interested romantically, and then they turn to flirting with me. I can see it happening, and as soon as I see the romantic/sexual interest coming from their side I think: aw, no, not again. Now I have to manage a situation again, and wonder at what point I have to say that I know what is happening; and if I say it too soon, I look stupid; and if I say it too late, they think I have been a tease. When I find someone who can be a friend with a brain but who can leave the sexual interest out of the equation, I am sooo thrilled.

After doing some (ironically appropriate) critical thinking about this, I've realized that all I really do, at least during my free time, is critical think. I just overthink things way to much.

I used to think it was just my nature, but it makes sense now. I need to figure out how to shut it off. Because that's all I do.

Also, someone posted something about 'stimming'. I looked up the word, it is something I do all the time. I know that I do it mostly when I am in an uncomfortable situation.

Maybe because I am now consious to these facts, I can subconciously work to fix myself. Because isn't that the only hope I have?

I tell you, the future looks sort of bleak and really scary. I mean, i now have somewhat of an understanding of how things really DO work, but I never knew it up to this point, and I feel so unprepared. I am always just stuck in the moment, my mind fixated only on my current enviroment and situation. I can't see whats ahead. Better put, I don't have the capability to see what's ahead. How can I plan for it? How the hell can I live like this? It feels like I am on a one way road that leads only to a dead end.

I feel like I'm completely f*cked, for the lack of a better term.

Recently my condition has gotten me into a few messes. To make matters worse, my complete lack of context or of what really happened in those messes makes it so I can't accuratley describe them. It just confuses everyone, and digs my hole deeper. The odd thing is, only in the past week(! !) have i realized that these incapabilities are because of this thing I have.

A year and a half ago, my first year removed from my home setting, is when I realzed that things were off for me. I reached the Asperger's conclusion then, but i thought it was just a possibility, but because of the condition itself, I didn't really realize how exactly it was affecting me. When I found myself in wierd situations, I thought thats just how it really was. I didn't understand (from a lack of common sense, i guess) is thats just how it was to me. only me. Isn't it strange, that even though I suspected myself of having the condition, I wasn't aware to how completely and rediculously it was limiting me?

Am I the only one, that because he has Asperger's, growing up was just the way it was to you, because your head was just stuck in growing up mode. You really had no clue of what was ACTUALLY GOING ON. Because you lacked any perspective besides the one you were born and raised with, you never had an idea at all. This disease (and yes, to me, this is a disease) f*cks our minds so badly, we are incapable of realizing how we actually are, we can't see that something is seriously wrong (or different) with us.

And if I sound bitter, that is because I am. I know I am capable of doing so much. I have intelligence, I have some athletic ability, I can think critically, I can write relatively well. Hell, when I was younger (before I was consumed with self-awareness) I could even socialize pretty successfully. Yet, because of my mental state, I can't use these tools for anything. At all. I'm just a waste how I am right now. So frustrating.

I know that really, I need to 'grow up', and move forward. Stop dwelling. Stop thinking to much. But its hard. I can't sleep. I want to be out doing something, but there isn't anything to do. Literally, in every meaning possible, I am trapped. Stuck. and man does it blow.

GREAT post, Toby!

I, too, have found that critical thinking is not the least bit appreciated or engaged in, whether at work or outside of work. Too, I have been accused all my life of being "too serious."

I think, though--because I'm a critical thinker, of course!--that there's a tremendous distinction to be made between "too serious" and thinking critically. The fact of the matter is, most people, whether NT or AS/AD, cling to certain irrationalities, especially social and/or spiritual. Undermine those irrationalities, and people get unbalanced, upset, disoriented, etc....so I've learned over the years to do my best to keep my critical thinking to myself.

Put another way, it's best to carefully choose one's battles. Doing so helps protect against being labeled as a negative crank, bitter, angry, etc, when such is far from the case, and it also keeps the door open to others being more receptive if/when the time does come to speak up...in which case you get labeled as 'brilliant, still water running deep, etc.

Again...great post, very prescient and applicable. It's also one reason why--or perhaps one expression of--we have so much trouble with small talk.