EVOLVING PAST ASPIE I have many aspie traits. But I have evolved around those th

EVOLVING PAST ASPIE

I have many aspie traits. But I have evolved around those that determine preferences. I simply cannot evolve beyond those of perception – I cannot choose to be more empathic any more than another can choose not to be color blind.

In person I come across as socially competent. But it was hard won. Mostly by listening and trying to understand.

We all desire the world to speak to us in our terms. But this is just exporting the cost of understanding into others – theft.

Seek to understand, not to agree, and not to be understood.

I suppose that my advice to aspie friends is to take advantage of your gift which insulates you from the pressure of empathy and norms, by pursuing truth.

It is logical that we sound self centered to others because we have no empathic method of comparison and judgement. Only appeal to our own methods of comparison and judgement. So we say “I would” or “I do” too often for normals.

But despite our lack of empathy, we display the same desire for human contact and interaction as do normals.

But the way to obtain that human interaction is to work hard to understand others. And mention the self only in our internal voice.

You see. Autism eliminates the sense of self. We struggle to know ourselves as hard as we struggle to know others.

But in practice we can only come to understand ourselves by understanding others. Otherwise we are attempting to draw water from a dry well.

Our function in the division of perception and cognition is to detect error, and when possible provide correction.

But our gift comes at the expense of emotional maturity.

So it is best to think of our objectives in life as the struggle to understand and communicate with the same level of effort that normals use in their struggle to insulate their thoughts from normative, emotional and cognitive biases.

When we meet in the middle and exchange information, together we have greater understanding than either of us can have in our own.

Revel in your gift. But recognize that as a minority norms and education are constructed for normals. And so we must find a way of educating ourselves without the vast institutional structures that normals have to assist them.