Laddo
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Posts posted by Laddo
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To me antisocial means being aggressive to others or very inconsiderate. I think they mean to say 'asocial', which means indifferent to others (still not true if you're actually shy). A lot more emphasis in education now is being put on leadership and speaking out. I can see this might prepare young people for the tough world of business management, but that's only one line of work, people with other skills are also needed in the workplace.
I am oh-so sick of the current obsession with 'business' in this country! When I say 'business' I mean all the worst parts of business, too - manipulating others, using ridiculous buzzwords and the constant lying and altering of truth. Young people are being pushed away from following their dreams and pushed into the execu-world. I did a Business and Communications Systems GCSE which was essentially half ICT and half Business Studies. The business studies side basically taught me nothing useful apart from a few terms and phrases. Now I know it's only GCSE level, but why is this being considered such an important subject when you don't actually learn anything? You can't really learn how to be a successful businessperson - if you don't have a manipulative, competitive and ruthless personality you will not do well in business. Simple. Plus, it's so irresponsible to hold 'business' in such high esteem when it has been proven through several stock market crashes, recessions and depressions that the current system does not work! The older generations are essentially setting up the younger generations to be drones. And what happens? The ruthless prosper, the meek are trodden on.
We need to give future children the tools they need to succeed. This does not include a load of stupid phrases like 'blue sky thinking' and all that waffle - no, they all need to be encouraged so they develop some self esteem, they all need to be able to find and develop their best skills during their school life. They say school is a horrible environment to reflect the working world, well... can't they make the working world more pleasant for everyone including shy people? So there's less unemployment? Stop the depression epidemic? Keep NHS costs down because people tend to be healthier if they're happier? Oh wait, no, that won't let rich people have even more money to buy things they don't need. How selfish of poor and shy people to be fed up with the shocking deal we're getting. How unreasonable.
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No worries Mihaela. I fear this may just be yet another pipe dream anyway as I think you need a load of qualifications that I can't afford to get in order to work with autistic people.
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Off-topic: Why does it say 'pies' at the start of my most recent post? I'm pretty sure I didn't put it there myself. Has someone been editing my posts or something? I swear something weird is going on with my account...
On-topic: Do you have any updates for us Akunin? I'm interested to hear how things are going for you with this
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I must admit, this is not going how I hoped it would. It's so sad that there is so little unity among aspies
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Very nice, UnusualPatronus. A very powerful piece once again! Reading through the poems here (excluding my own because I don't want to play my own trumpet
) is sparking an idea in my brain to get a collection of art and poetry by autistic people together. Maybe that will finally put another incorrect assumption about ASD people to waste - the assumption that we lack imagination. We're creators by nature, whether it be art, literature or solving equations. I would give anything to see the results of a brain scan of an autistic person whilst they're creating. I imagine it would be fascinating.I can be naive too and have learnt that I suffer from executive dysfunction as well. It's a bit of a pain in the neck though - where do I go from here, knowing I'm always going to find looking after myself, the things that NTs take for granted, to be so challenging? I'm certainly having a hard time convincing my parents that I'm executively dysfunctional - they're of the impression (as are an infuriating number of people) that I'll be fine as long as I put my mind to it. They don't understand that if I give too much focus to social 'norms' overloads my brain and causes epic meltdowns of Chernobyl calibre. It's depressing to think that I may have to rethink my entire career so soon after finally deciding what I want to do with my life.
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There are some good points here - it's always interesting to see others' viewpoints on such topics. Canopus, I was unaware that so many modern cultures today stemmed from Protestantism but thinking it through, I can see parallels between the religious movement and modern society. It is interesting that today's British and American societies are so heavily founded on a Christian religious movement considering Jesus reportedly denounced lust for money as sinful and was a proponent of sharing wealth - in other words, the complete opposite of modern capitalism.
Does anyone know much about the Icelandic revolution? It was woefully unreported (obviously to prevent other societies from doing the same) but from what I've heard the people of Iceland peacefully overthrew their government and rewrote their constitution.
In my opinion, a peaceful revolution would have to begin with the closure of all mainstream media outlets. They're all in the pocket of some political party or another and more and more media censorship is exposed every day. It's a form of mass brainwashing - people trust the media and therefore automatically believe most stories they read or watch on the news. It's actually quite worrying to me that people are so frequently told how to think and even more worrying that this actually works on such a grand scale. I wonder for how long the current systems will continue to operate? Will they end in peaceful revolution, multiple civil wars or will we all kill ourselves in the process? With the war on Islam that's being waged by most NATO countries, (anyone see the parallels with Nazi attitudes towards Jewish people?) I fear the latter option may be the most likely. In a kind of disgusted way, I'm almost looking forward to seeing how things will pan out.
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Well said. Violence is how the world is run now. We're taught to never harm another yet the world always seems to be at arms with some group, organisation or a contending country. You can't teach children that harming another is wrong when, over the course of a hundred years, hundreds of millions (perhaps billions; I don't have the precise statistics) have been harmed and killed in the name of another country. The ones that are supposed to be setting examples in high power, the ones who take the helm, they seem to condone this action almost disinterestedly at times.
The world is depressing, and it's the only one we'll ever know. We have to get used to it.
So very true. So many countries are founded on violent acts.
The world is almost too depressing. Every day I'm bombarded with stories of how politician X has screwed over the people, or organisation Y has failed and thousands of people have lost their jobs all because some idiot in a suit got greedy and/or miscalculated costs, or people dying in country Z because of a pointless war, and every time I hear this it hurts my head. Like physical pain shooting through my brain down my spine. Does anyone else get this when hearing of negative news? Some offshoot of sensory issues or something?
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Trekster: What does the degree in autism involve? Is it for helping people on the care side or more a study of autism?
Mihaela: Thank you, that would be great!
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Even if it's just the three of you that would be enough for a York-based meet up I think. Of course it is up to the three of you what you do but this does show there are aspies living near one another.
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I will reply to both UnusualPatronus's and Mihaela's posts later on when I've thought things through a bit more but after seeing a video of people fighting over slightly reduced products for Black Friday I have to say that Western culture is pretty damn sick. Look up 'Black Friday fights' on Youtube and you'll see what I mean. All those who took part in this absurd, shocking display of human depravity should be utterly ashamed of themselves. And society sees us as the 'disordered' ones! It's ludicrous!
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Yeah, I thought it was a bit odd that this has come back from the dead as it has. We have a zombie thread!
Anyway, I thought I'd throw my opinion on the subject into the mix.I've got to agree that I would not 'cure' myself if I was given the chance. I have seen too much of the bad side of NT life and it disgusts me. I would rather be lonely with few friends that have nine hundred thousand acquaintances whom I don't really care about and who don't really care about me. To a lot of NTs, friends seem to be little more than a status symbol, as is evidenced by social media - a lot of people have over 500 Facebook friends purely for the sake of having a lot of Facebook friends. I used to fall in to this trap, but that was in my days of trying to act neurotypical. I am now thoroughly ashamed of myself for being so shallow.
Like many others, there are parts of having Asperger's that I don't like - I don't like the social anxiety, I don't like the co-morbid conditions such as digestion problems and I really don't like the dirty-sounding name of the condition. (anyone else think it sounds dirty or is it just me?) I do, however, like my attention to detail, my ability to focus incredibly deeply on something I'm interested in, my imagination and my heightened sense of empathy and love.
From the look of things, it appears that most of the aspects of being autistic that people dislike are the ones caused by a judgemental, shallow society. To me, we are no different from any other so-called minority groups - LGBT, ethnic minorities, religious minorities etc. - so why should we arguably face more prejudices and discrimination from those groups? Because society still says it is okay. People with disabilities are still mocked frequently on TV, in films, in books etc. but you can't really get away with mocking gay people, or black people, or Jews etc. As aspies are so thinly spread around the world, there is also little chance for us to get together and plan protests and the like. Society knows this, and they actively discourage any sort of unity among aspies. I personally think we need to change that, and soon.
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This is a career direction I have been pondering for a while. I love to help people and being autistic myself, it makes sense that I should help out other people with autism. I'm learning more and more about so-called 'classic autism' and think I understand it better than I used to. Does anyone have any advice on how to get into this type of work? I don't think I could do much of the more physically-demanding side of care work as my body is weakening but I could do everything else if I really put my mind to it.
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Mihaela: Sorry to hear it. Try and take it easy tonight and tomorrow, yeah?
Waterboatman: The idea of this thread is to share ideas and debate, not a rant
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Glad to hear it! I hope it all goes well - sometimes someone showing they care can make such a huge positive difference to an autistic person's life
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You are big
We are small
We are losers
You are cool
You are smart
We are fools
You're the mechanic
We're your tools
This is your thinking
Your beliefs and ideology
Your esteem of self high and mighty
All part of your psychology
This is how you think
You believe you know all
But let me tell you a thing or two
That might make you appalled
The truth is
You're our leaders
But you know **** all!
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Masseuse
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^Agreed. Small steps are the best approach. Too much may overwhelm him and too little may lead him to think you don't really want to be his friend.
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Hi Avivaa, first off just wanna say that what you're doing is really great! All too often people in the UK are denied access to useful books written abroad due to the language barrier, so your work in translating a Dutch book for English speakers is amazing
I'll try to answer your questions as best as I can:1. An official term for someone with ASD is simply 'autistic'. It can be used as both an adjective or a noun, for example 'An autistic child' as an adjective or 'He's an autistic' as a noun. I think (but may be wrong) the correct phrase is 'someone with ASD' rather than 'someone with an ASD', although it's tricky as there is so much debate among medical professionals regarding autism as a condition.
2. Usually for people with autism this is referred to as a 'special interest'. There is probably a more official term for this, but this is how it is mostly referred to. I don't think there's an English equivalent to the word 'fiep' unfortunately - we could do with one though, maybe we could borrow 'fiep' from you?
3. The closest phrase I can think of for this is 'support group'. You're right though, they're not a very common concept in the UK.
Hope this helps!
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Okay this thread is probably going to create a lot of controversy and debate but I have to say this.
Does anyone else think that Western/white culture (I say 'white' because Western culture is almost entirely controlled by white people) is the major cause of humanity's problems? Rampant capitalism that causes people to step on anyone they see as less than them, constant stress and no rest, gossiping about each other and turning us against each other - all very white ideologies. Other cultures still actually have a concept of community, but what do we have? Nothing. We live in huge, anonymous cities where hardly anyone knows each other. Friendships now revolve around work. This is not healthy! And yet we are expected just to deal with it, act as if it's a natural progression of humanity when in reality, it's the fault of various global corporations being too greedy. And who is in charge of these corporations? White people, or at the very least people of different races who have become indoctrinated with the white way of life.
What are your thoughts on this?
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Okay let me try a little pilot. Please reply if you're interested:
First Southeastern Aspie meet up
Town/city: London
Meeting point: Science Museum
Date: 31st January 2015 (this can be changed to suit everyone's needs)Time: 11:00amActivities: A walk around the Science Museum. Let's keep things simple at firstIf enough people are interested, I will contact the Science Museum and let them know of our intention to visit. That way hopefully the staff will make any necessary adjustments so as to avoid as little stress as possible. If anyone is interested, please let me know here rather than PMing me. -
'I got caned, so should everyone else' or any 'I do/did X so why can't everyone else?' seems to be the slightly narcissistic ideology of British people today. If it were as simple as that, then it would be perfectly acceptable for NTs to say to us 'I can socialise, why can't you?'. Such black and white thinking (which if often cited as an autistic trait yet actually seems to be a human trait) will be the downfall of this species.
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To all the proponents of smacking children about to show your authority: does beating someone physically smaller and weaker than you not just reek of being power-hungry to you? Also, if you wronged someone, would you appreciate them hitting you? That's the message that beating kids sends out. It also teaches boys that it is okay to beat future girlfriends/wives later in life... But under the borderline fascist, Daily Mail ideologies that still run rampant throughout this country, that's probably ideal for a lot of people... It's disgusting and pathetic.
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Well I've known many bullies and got to know them better as they've got older. Most of them do come from broken families and nearly everyone is insecure about something or other. People just have different ways of showing it. I'm not saying bullies should be sympathised with but I think it can be obstructive to just think of them as bad people as that way they will always continue to act as they do just to prove a point. Human psychology always goes far, far deeper than if people are just good or bad. That's the same kind of logic that causes people to judge and bully aspies in the first place. Plus, let's face it, we're all bad in some way or another. Everyone's actions affect another person negatively at some point in their lives. All we can do is try to reduce this by trying to understand one another better.
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I was a naive idiot to think this would ever actually go anywhere. Sigh. Mods, can you delete this thread please?
our children being bullied
in Education
Posted · Report reply
In my opinion, the news is quite useful for getting basic information about an event, although I rarely trust the full news story these days. All too often the facts are manipulated to keep the people on the government's side. And it works. It works. People actually believe the rubbish that's vomited at them from their TVs. You should be glad you don't watch TV, Mihaela. There is still some good stuff, but most of the programmes are barely different to Victorian freak shows. So much of it these days is just poor-people-baiting.