A different point of view (shamelessly stolen from an imgur dump)
I like this approach. "funny meme" aside, I think it is a good way of showing how much a certain language can affect how other people think and feel about a subject. Just read it THAT way and "being neurotypical" suddenly sounds like a disorder that isn't fully compatible with the public, doesn't it?
We live in a world that isn't exactly kind to people on the spectrum. It is loud, flashy, hectic, overwhelming, unrewarding but you're still expected to work like a cog in a machine, despite having fewer and fewer places where you'd actually "fit in" without grinding gears, and whenever there is some sort of public talk about that topic, it always, always sounds like the affected person is the problem and personally responsible for fixing themselves, when a no small part of "not fitting in" is due to society itself. Maybe a change in language is due to remove that stigma.
I think of it as a dialect difference. Allistic people aren't "not saying what they think" they are saying exactly what they think. That combination of words just has a specific meaning to other Allistic people outside of their Webster definition. It's gibberish/meaningless if you speak a different dialect though.
Iâm not so sure. Letâs say your boss says âI want you to make a spreadsheet that compares these sets of numbersâ, and then you do that and turn it in. But then your boss says you didnât do what he asked. He says he wanted you to separate each section with a black line and each section to have a different color, and these particular columns should be hidden, and these parts should be in a different order. There was no way to know he wanted all those specific details based on the original request. Now, Iâm not saying people shouldnât make their spreadsheets look nice and presentable, but if there were very specific things they wanted, they should have said those things up front. I donât know how anyone would be able to interpret something like that.
Now, this was a hypothetical situation, but this is very similar to something I have experienced quite often at my jobs. I am expected to know certain specific things without ever having any realistic way of knowing them, unless I just assumed those things and got lucky that what I assumed just happened to be what they wanted. It doesnât seem like merely a different dialect, but people refusing to be clear in what they say.
What people on the spectrum may not understand is that language is more than just the exchanging of raw information. It's culture, it's artistic, and it's a way to communicate intangible feelings and emotions.
Like other commenters, I also think that most neurodivergent people understand this very well. Their problem arises where they understand it even much further, like seeing the implications of such normalities. For example, that this must be one of the sources of so many misunderstandings between different cultures (and subcultures!). I can not just assume that everyone I meet speaks the same social language that I grew up in.
And is it not rude to assume that everyone's mind works in the same way ... or that others would camouflage in a die-cut way as someone they are not truely; is it not kind of intellectually flat to assume self-similarity, given that this is so obviously not the case -- I mean divergent or not, everyone is just so engraved by their past experience that we have no true idea what mental process is going on inside another person unless we get to know them more closely.
e: or put in different words, what to do if the intangible feelings and emotions communicated by someone just don't match their verbal message? Or worse, what to do when we cearly see someones cognitive dissonance but we are expected to somehow follow that (it's an illness and following through would be self-denial)?
"You read into phrases past their actual meanings"
"Instead of saying what you think, you expect others to infer it based on subjective social rules"
The main issues is that you have to do that because other people will use double meanings no matter what. For exemple to double cross you regarding something. So you have to be able to read them.
Meanwhile there's actually an other case when people use double meanings : when they can't foster the courage to tell you something really important that would change everything, or to which you could react badly.
Like that they are in love with you. In that case infered double meanings will allow the other person to react by sending similar double meanings to signify that they are on the same page, creating a much reassuring envirronment to finally confess their feelings.
Our species is insanely bad at finding partner. Like wildly bad.
That sounds as if a daltonic found it horrible that other people use and enjoy colours he cannot separate. I understand it makes your life harder, but you can't tell people not to use something that is extremely usefull just because you can't participate.
No, there will always be people who lie and have bad intentions. This is something everyone needs to consider.
The problem is the honest people who aren't clear about what their expectations are. Then they get upset when those expectations aren't met. I don't think people do it intentionally, language is hard.
Points 2 and 5 are waaaay off but the rest are pretty funny.
Point 2 is literally the definition of ND folk who get ankle deep in a new hobby then abandon it when their interest passes.
Point 5... I'd wager the vast majority of ND people blow at math. They also absolutely suck at seeing patterns you aren't hyper focusing on lol. It's literally baked into the diagnoses of ADHD comorbidities.
âYour interests are shallowâ â âYou arenât interested in things for their intrinsic use value, but for their exchange value in forming social bonds with other neurotypicals who have imprinted on the same token (TV show, political party, sports team, etc.) Talking about these interests is not primarily an exchange of information, but rather a grooming behaviour, like chimpanzees picking lice out of each otherâs coats, only done with language â
I mean yeah if I described autism using a bunch of statements that absolutely do not define autism, then it would sound dumb and bad. OP is acting like this is a list of neurotypical behaviors when it's actually just an inverted list of neurodivergent behaviors. Neurotypicality is not the reciprocal of neurodivergence.
A turtle is different than a lizard, the two lineages "diverged" evolutionarily at some point. I could describe a lizard as a scaled, heterothermic, terrestrial organism. If I describe something as a scale-less, homeothermic, non-terrestrial organism, I'm not describing a turtle, I'm just describing a "non-lizard".
Don't confuse "neurodivergent" with "anti-neurotypical", they're not the same thing.
By your logic, for a person to be considered "neurodivergent" they would have to be completely 100% unlike a neurotypical person in every single way, which is simply not the case.
How would you define âneurodivergenceâ if not âeverything which is not neurotypicalâ?
I would say "exhibiting at least one behavior that differs from neurotypicality in a significant way".
IMO, âeverything which is not neurotypicalâ would define the complete set of "neurodivergent behaviors". "neurodivergence" on its own is just a property that a person can have.
The set of neurodivergent people, however, contains all people who are not neurotypical.
Per my definitions: "Josh is neurodivergent" means that Josh is not in the set of neurotypical people.
Per my definitions: "Stimming is neurodivergent" does not mean that sitting stock-still is in the set of neurotypical behaviors. It means that if you exhibit stimming, you are in the set of people with neurodivergence.
You and that other person are disagreeing about the definition of words, but you're arguing about those words' meanings in different contexts.
wait the number pattern thing is autism? I'm sorry, I have ADHD and the ADHD doctor also told me I'm probably on the spectrum. wow I love number pattern stuff though, I didn't know it was associated.
I got 81 as a table number the other day and I was stoked because it's 3^4. on reflection the doctor was probably right.
I mean I fucking love planes but less particular models and more that I'm still blown away they work at all. I love sitting on them and thinking about all the engineering.
Hey, I love neurotypicals, they're great, hell one of my freinds younger brother has neurotypicalism and he's such a quirky lil goofball but he can actually behave himself most of the time too, we get along really well.
Tbh because I've had to adapt to a neurotyp society in my own way, different from how other autistic people have had to adapt in THEIR own ways, I actually get along better with Nuerotyps better than other Autists, and no, fuck changing my terminology I dont mean Autist in a derogatory sense
The point of the post isn't to express dislike, it's to make it clear how they feel when they're being described in a stigmatized way while venting some frustration about social norms they don't really see a point in.
Neurotypicals are an important part of a full and inclusive society, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't spend resources looking for a cure, or look into causes and ways to prevent it.
Also Iâm pretty sure this would have been an issue for many neurotypicals too, since the info wasnt communicated properly.
Yeah, thatâs usually my first thought when I misunderstand someone; that they just didnât convey the information in a way that is understandable. I just feel like this has happened so often that it must have something to do with me.
True. I think the larger point is that we have to be careful what social norms we adopt as a society to make sure we aren't leaving a large group of people out.
I see this post as just venting and trying on a new perspective.