Quote: (10-18-2016 06:25 PM)dain_bramage Wrote:
I think some of the autists are so lost in their obsessions that socialization doesn't get the right amount of attention.
A lot of the hobbies and careers in the modern world are very logical and by-the-book. To program a computer, for instance, you research how a programming language works and then express a procedure as commands in that language. The challenging part is the amount of focused attention that's needed to think through the implications of every branch in the decision tree, and come up with the optimal method, using the available tools. Having an obsessive interest and a comprehensive knowledge of a niche topic comes in handy for a programmer, so autists thrive in that world.
Obscure specialties have multiplied. An inventor has to not be deterred by the fact that no one else cares about, or even understands, his invention till it's brought to market. If you're the Wright brothers, all that matters is the truth of what will or won't fly; the naysayers are irrelevant. Autists tend to be very focused on what's "true" and "right."
The social world, on the other hand, is full of unwritten rules. Often what you're supposed to do, in order to succeed, is the opposite of what you're told is the proper and ethical way. An example from
The Right Stuff was "the unscrewable pooch"; if you made some gross error, like causing a spacecraft to sink to the bottom of the sea, you had to falsely claim it was due to mechanical failure, in order to save your career.
The idea of what would happen if you put a highly honest, logical, and literal-minded person in with the rest of society seems to have always fascinated people, to the point that it became
a trope. I wonder if there could ever be a social world that didn't require constant lies and hypocrisy in order to get along with others? Perhaps not, because usually the way new cultures emerge is by finding gaps in the way the dominant values and norms of a society are enforced. That typically involves deception. For example, the way you can be red pill in a blue pill culture is by pretending, when necessary, to be blue pill.
There's such a disparity right now between the blue pill lies that everyone has been taught, and the red pill ways that have to be followed in order to succeed in today's mate market, that it's no wonder autists struggle.