My entire life I've been made to feel like I'm at fault for bad communication because I'm not "thinking enough" at what I'm saying, and now when I've reached the point where I'm pretty comfortable determining what is "enough" thinking for myself I realise that this is just what *all* humans do, that I've been guilted about it for nothing by people who are even worse at it than I am, and no matter my effort, everyone is just gonna keep doing it anyway! So what the fuck did I suffer all of that looking-down and made-to-feel-crazy *for* if other people can't be bothered to do the same?
Oh, I see, this is a valid complaint and probably the nub of the issue? I would guess that this complaint is... (ironically?)... a poor attempt at expressing whatever it was the people actually wanted to say to you, or at least an unsuccessful attempt at communicating whatever it was they meant. I'm hardly an expert, but I'm pretty sure that NT and non-NT communication difficulties are generally not ultimately caused by non-NT people not thinking enough about what they say. Possibly it's an attempted replacement for "Remember that other people are alien beings whose internal processes won't make sense for you, and always make plenty of allowances for somehow deducing what the successful way to communicate with them would be, or else it's your fault"?
Either way though, I feel your pain, but it's totally in character for society to be sending completely inconsistent and mixed messages like insisting it's morally required for you to internally audit everything you say and do however many times it takes to completely avoid any inconvenience for NT people, and also insisting that any communication breakdowns that do happen were the result of accidental carelessness, if any, on the part of NT people and therefore can't morally be held against them. Of course part of the reason for these mixed messages is that the people who deliver them are often different people and sometimes the inconsistency is simply because society isn't a monolith, so maybe on Monday you really did meet someone who earnestly believes that all you have to do is think harder and it will all be okay and maybe they would earnestly swear that everybody does the same (and they'd just be wrong). But in practice that doesn't matter if it's always some loud person showing you, personally, the unfair end of the stick and giving someone else the benefit of the doubt. (I hope that wasn't too much figure of speech, as I realize you just said you hate it...)
having our worst and best feature be the same fucking feature is fucked up.
Well, you could say that banding together for survival/against threats and living cooperatively is humanity's best feature (although I'm not sure I'd give it #1 and there are many other animals that do the same), and it's aggression that is really the bad one, albeit aggression filtered through the whole group-bonding thing. After all, lower aggression could remove or reduce the violence without erasing the tendency to form groups in the first place, perhaps even without getting rid of the instinct that members of other groups are 'enemies'.
no subject
Oh, I see, this is a valid complaint and probably the nub of the issue? I would guess that this complaint is... (ironically?)... a poor attempt at expressing whatever it was the people actually wanted to say to you, or at least an unsuccessful attempt at communicating whatever it was they meant. I'm hardly an expert, but I'm pretty sure that NT and non-NT communication difficulties are generally not ultimately caused by non-NT people not thinking enough about what they say. Possibly it's an attempted replacement for "Remember that other people are alien beings whose internal processes won't make sense for you, and always make plenty of allowances for somehow deducing what the successful way to communicate with them would be, or else it's your fault"?
Either way though, I feel your pain, but it's totally in character for society to be sending completely inconsistent and mixed messages like insisting it's morally required for you to internally audit everything you say and do however many times it takes to completely avoid any inconvenience for NT people, and also insisting that any communication breakdowns that do happen were the result of accidental carelessness, if any, on the part of NT people and therefore can't morally be held against them. Of course part of the reason for these mixed messages is that the people who deliver them are often different people and sometimes the inconsistency is simply because society isn't a monolith, so maybe on Monday you really did meet someone who earnestly believes that all you have to do is think harder and it will all be okay and maybe they would earnestly swear that everybody does the same (and they'd just be wrong). But in practice that doesn't matter if it's always some loud person showing you, personally, the unfair end of the stick and giving someone else the benefit of the doubt. (I hope that wasn't too much figure of speech, as I realize you just said you hate it...)
Well, you could say that banding together for survival/against threats and living cooperatively is humanity's best feature (although I'm not sure I'd give it #1 and there are many other animals that do the same), and it's aggression that is really the bad one, albeit aggression filtered through the whole group-bonding thing. After all, lower aggression could remove or reduce the violence without erasing the tendency to form groups in the first place, perhaps even without getting rid of the instinct that members of other groups are 'enemies'.