Quote:
Originally Posted by LundiHvalursson
True, both in Britain and USA, as well as Canada and various European countries, the working class are being relegated to a status where no one really addresses concerns. Monied interests just care about maintaining the status quo and power. The only places where the working class have power are in the Scandinavian countries like Norway and Finland.
I often get berated for being very left-wing economically. I also believe in a society without money, without social and economic classes. A lot of my economic philosophy is based on the anarcho-communist government of Barcelona and Catalonia in general in the 1930s. No money, no classes, everyone equal. Close to no one whom I have met knows what I am talking about here. And if I explain it, you can imagine why people making six figures or millions hate me. And my trying to date women who make six figures or millions--which I have tried before because I had not known about their income levels before--quite clearly never works out.
At meetups, often you encounter people who are unbelieveably proud that they work for a big tech company like Facebook or Google--indeed, walking Downtown you see all of the headquarters for tech companies like Google, Uber, Twitter, Facebook, Lyft, Dropbox, etc--but often you will see how they often find themselves to be better than others. A few acquaintances told me, "Some guy asked what I did. I said I do sales. He said that he is a coder at Google. Then he basically brushed me off as a nobody." and similar comments. In addition to discrimination based on class, there is also a discrimination based on profession. Non-tech people are of a lower social stratum compared to tech people. Finance people get a pass, as well as high professions like doctors and lawyers. But anyone less than that is relegated to the second (or third) division. People like me.
I think that Social Darwinism is particularly popular in San Francisco due to the IT sector. I have met countless people in data or IT who basically treat people like data points. In other words, they treat people as numbers--as entities that have no feelings or worth as human beings. So the attitude of displacing working class people from their homes is nothing to them. They think of it as, "Well, if we shift 100000 poor ones out, we can get 100000 rich IT ones (one of us) in the city." People are just a number to them. Likewise, I am a "number" and they consider me as less than they are because, also due to numbers, I earn less, I have less wealth by number, less cars, less space in my home (sq.ft. or m2) than they do, I have a lower number of friends than they do, a lower number of girlfriends than they have had, a lower number of sex experiences than they have had--the list goes on.
It took me a long time, probably just until October, to realise that I was living in some sort of dystopia where I was not the only one being treated like this. I notice that I am also not the one with low self-esteem. I have met a lot of male acquaintances at meetups who had told me that they also had some self-esteem issues based on how they get treated, both in dating and in social gatherings. Probably not as bad as my case, because they do sometimes have success, but there is a general sentiment.
But thanks for telling me about my self-esteem. I am very dense when it comes to interpreting things. I am basically of the nature, "If I am not told, I never know". So when people hint things at me, I often do not even sense it in the first place. Yet people think that I am purposely ignoring their subtle hints. I have to be told extremely explicitly to the point that it is blatantly obvious.
We often have differing traits no matter having ASD, true. Everyone has a little bit of a better understanding on how to do A, and another person maybe B. I have a poor, almost non-existent, sense of humour. This probably puts off many women here, since I have heard many times that sense of humour is important in a guy, in addition to physical looks, sexual history, income, etc. My sense of humour is quite lacking to the point that I cannot tell when someone is making a joke. My default is to think that someone is always talking literally and seriously. If someone wants to make a joke to me, they must tell me explicitly, "I am only joking" or, "This is a joke", lest I just think that they are speaking factually. This weird quality, in addition to my aversion to smiling or any sort of body language, probably contributes as well to my being considered "unattractive" in dating.
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People who think they have something to lose in a society that's more egalitarian need to really think about their privileges. Yet so many will get offended or even angry if you point out their vast privilege. Stratification is certainly nothing new--it's as old as civilization itself--but as wealth gets concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, so does power.
Placing human lives at the level of a collection of numbers is ubiquitous; that isn't your area alone. Some people even call that being objective.
Just scroll through these forums and you'll see how ubiquitous certain issues are. Low self-esteem, loneliness, social isolation, lack of meaning or purpose in our lives, growing inequality, fear of a future that almost guarantees global war/climate change/treatment-resistant pandemic, and a sense of powerlessness and futility. All over the world people are bitterly, even violently divided. People turn to substances, extremism of religion or politics, hate groups, or cults, all to gain what's missing and try to gain control. My chosen candidate is the only one speaking of a crisis of belonging that underlies so much of what's going on in the world, and he's 100% right.
It isn't just you or your ASD that made you think you were the only one suffering form self-esteem issues and trauma from so many negative social interactions. Reading through the forums, any of them, and you'll see that EVERYBODY ends up thinking this way. The self-compassion exercises I found on here have helped me restructure this in my mind to it being part of the shared human experience. Thinking of it this way makes it impossible for pain to feel isolating.
Please don't insult yourself by calling yourself dense. You already get too many insults from other people; don't do it to yourself too or you'll never heal. Everybody on the spectrum needs clearer instruction when it comes to social stuff. Hints and vague implications won't get through, and that
isn't your fault. You can't beat yourself up for having a brain that's structured differently.
Literal interpretation of words is gold-standard ASD, especially for males. That's one reason I think I'm subclinical rather than fully on the spectrum; I tend to interpret the figurative before the literal and I enjoy humor, so long as it's clever, and I love subtle plays on words (but no silly puns). I never had issue understanding sarcasm or making eye contact. Actually, I find it hard not to make eye contact, and in some areas making accidental eye contact with somebody is considered a hostile act and I've had some uncomfortable experiences as a result. This quality in you is not weird in the context of ASD. Please pay careful attention in how you speak to yourself. I did this too and once I stopped, I was amazed at how much better I felt. Please check out the self-compassion website if you have not done so.
Self-Compassion
Body language and facial expression are hard for most people on the spectrum, and something I have struggled with too, both understanding it myself and others. Watching some TED talks on it, and skilled actors like Natalie Portman and Eddie Redmayne, have helped me to understand it a little better.