Eccentric Flower talk:201003/Blue Paint

Jette:

The thing that struck me about theferrett's article you linked to (I have never read this person's stuff before) was that it was written in style that many columnists use to pretend they don't understand something so they can gripe about it. So I took it on that level -- of someone who is deliberately not "getting" social conventions and therefore refuses to do them.

This second paragraph was originally trying to present a parallel situation about people who know they should have food around (or find it) for a substantial lunch so they don't get cranky and awful, especially to their spouses, and screw up their spouses' dinnertimes, but I decided it was getting a little too personal and deleted it.

I am mostly willing to do the blue paint, to a point. The point where I have to watch sitcoms or sports and be ready to discuss them in order to fit in with the office? I can no longer be bothered. Some of the blue paint rituals also border on sexism or a kind of good old boy elitism that I don't like, either.

-- 23:00, 5 March 2010 (GMT)

Iain:

Conversely, I am always exceedingly polite to the people who could have me thrown out of the building if I'm not. I don't like doing it, I don't understand why I need to do it

I point out, purely for the sake of argument, that the first sentence above is a direct refutation of the second. You most certainly DO understand why you need to do it.

In short, my being harsh on theferrett is actually a compliment, in an extremely rough way.

...Um ... no. Just ... no.

Really. NO.

-- 23:13, 5 March 2010 (GMT)

Mrissa:

We have a long history of what happens when we decide that "learns differently" or "has difficulty with some aspect of learning that some of the other monkeys do not" means "cannot learn." We, as a culture, did it to blind people, and to deaf people, and to people with Downs Syndrome, and a dozen other types of person. We, as a culture, assumed that we already knew what people with those conditions were capable of. And when we don't make those assumptions, we see how wrong we were and how much more those people can do than we thought.

I will be good and goddamned if I send my autistic godson down the same path because I buy into some guy's self-serving rhetoric that he *can't* learn that he needs to wear clean clothes. He might not spot it on his own in the same way as I do, but all the more reason for me, as his godmother, to bother to translate and help him learn to speak the language, rather than saying, "Oh, well, his brain isn't wired like mine, so I will just treat him as inherently incompetent."

Probably that means one of us is being hard on the kid and limiting his life. But you know what? I do not believe it's me.

-- 23:19, 5 March 2010 (GMT)

Bunny42:

Oh, Jette, I'm with you! I was just telling Sean that knowing what to kiss and when is all well and good, to a point. The fact that I didn't always comply is the reason I was not selected for promotion for the last several years of my government service. All else being equal, it comes down to the one who's more socially adept. I wasn't that one. Of course, to be fair, I rarely tried for promotions, but this still applies. Sitcoms! Gaaaaaa! No one could understand that I never actually watched a single episode of Friends all the way through. That's beyond the call of duty, if you ask me.

-- 23:22, 5 March 2010 (GMT)

Columbina:

That's the problem with overloading "understand," Iain. The sentence is not actually contradictory. Let me try again: "I know why it benefits me to be polite to those people, and I know what I have to do in this situation, but I do not understand why politeness should be on the table as a factor in the way they assess me." I mean, I do the same job for them, and do it equally well, whether I'm polite to them or not. (In fact I'm likely to do it ever-so-slightly better if I don't have to be polite to them, because then I assume they're interested in results and not ass-kissing.)

But, as I pointed out, I don't have to understand that.

And I'm sorry you find my language abusive or co-dependent or whatever, but it's true - I must have at least some modest passing regard for theferrett, or I wouldn't have bothered picking on his essay at all.

(Have you ever noticed I'm harsher on left-wing commentators than I am on right-wing ones? It's because with the left-wing ones, it's at least a tiny bit important to me that they Get It Right, whereas the right-wing ones I dismiss entirely.)

-- 01:49, 6 March 2010 (GMT)

Ursula:

"I know why it benefits me to be polite to those people, and I know what I have to do in this situation, but I do not understand why politeness should be on the table as a factor in the way they assess me."

That sounds a lot like this Ferrett person's argument against wearing a clean shirt. And I think we can agree that politeness is probably more important generally than a clean shirt. (After all, one can politely explain away a stain, but clean clothes won't do you much good if you're a big grump.)

>"I'm 42 and my birthday is always a reminder of what a failure I am."

Wait, when's your birthday? Was it yesterday, then? I would've wished you a happy one, had I known.

You're not a failure until you quit trying or you die having failed to achieve anything you set out to do.

-- 07:46, 6 March 2010 (GMT)

Columbina:

That's the thing - it's a very similar argument, but he comes up with the wrong answer(s).

My birthday was in February. The exact date is a state secret.

-- 15:49, 6 March 2010 (GMT)

Joy:

Just wanted to post a title and abstract from the most recent issue of Psychological Science:

Eavesdropping on Happiness: Well-Being Is Related to Having Less Small Talk and More Substantive Conversations Matthias R. Mehl, Simine Vazire, Shannon E. Holleran, and C. Shelby Clark Is a happy life filled with trivial chatter or reflective and profound conversations? Participants completed personality and well-being assessments and wore a digital audio recorder over four days (it recorded 30 seconds of sounds every 12.5 minutes). Researchers coded the recorded conversations as small talk or substantive conversations. Compared with the unhappiest participants, the happiest participants spent 70% more time talking, had one-third as much small talk, and twice as many substantive conversations. These findings suggest that the happy life is social rather than solitary and conversationally deep rather than superficial.

-- 14:38, 9 March 2010 (GMT)

Danima:

For some reason, this (very long!) post seems relevant: Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore. I don't know whether the author is neurotypical, but he seems to regard himself as speaking from within "normal."

-- 23:42, 15 March 2010 (GMT)