Are these societal "rules/codes/gestures" really even true or useful?

Hey guys.

I just don't know. Finding out I was autistic has led me to question several things that society seems to mouth after each other mindlessly. However, are these things they say really true? Maybe the words don't actually mean what they mean, or maybe we just don't remember what they truly mean when they were invented for use in English, I don't know. Most words seem to come from Latin anyway, and you know what they say about "lost in translation".

When I had depression, it also made me question things. Things that seemed so obvious and so right at the time, and all my life before that.

Isn't it weird how when you're depressed you can't even do "the simple things", or when you are autistic you can't do the "normal" or "trivial" things?

Maybe all this happens for a good reason. Maybe we, the "different" people have come here to challenge long held myths or blatant lies, which are hidden under layers of seeming good-will? Maybe people had the best of intentions when saying it but said these things with half the knowledge.

Anyway, there are some things that were said which I've been thinking about. What I want to do is start a list here, and if there are some that you know of or have been thinking about, let's add it here and let's discuss it. Who knows, maybe it creates some kind of breakthrough moment for someone. Here is my starting list:

1. You have to love yourself first before you can love others.
2. God helps those who make the effort and sacrifices to help themselves.
3. The poor are poor because they don't know how to work with money properly.
4. People who look good and who are in shape are like that because they truly care about their bodies and are the ones who make the effort to look after it.

Bible verses quoted without reading a little further in order to interpret them:

1. Love thy neighbour.

And lastly, sayings/verses/taglines that are truthful, but nobody applies them for real, they just mouth it:

1. Never judge a book by its cover.
2. True love for a partner and just sexual attraction is not the same thing.
3. All you need to do, is believe.

Those are the immediate ones I can think of. There are more, it'll come to me in time. Hopefully we can share these with each other here. Also, feel free to write down those that really irk you.

# 3 in the first list posted irks me....I am poor because I am on the autism spectrum and have co-morbid conditions which when combined prevent me from holding a job, thus making me dependent on SSI, medicaid and EBT still by normal standards that is considered poor. I also know plenty of people are working their a**es off at jobs and still struggling to make ends meet, and some people end up in a bad situation they really don't have a lot of control over...Usually it is not something as simple as mis-management of money, there are non-poor people who also have trouble managing money and might end up with a tighter budget here and there because they blew money on a bunch of stuff they didn't need.

It's sad that *****s in the adult industry make more money than the average man, just for getting shafted in every orifice a boner or toy can fit inside.

It irks me too. There always seems to be one crucial thing rich people forget - the amazingly lucky breaks they all got! They are so used to blowing their own trumpet, they forget when they were starting out in life, it was a sequence of people that believed in them enough to lend or give them money that helped them get where they are. Now they lord it over others and pretend like they got there on their own steam entirely.

The "love thy neighbour" one irritates me because it is so misinterpreted as meaning you must love and be friendly with people from all walks of life and in general. If you do that, YOU WILL get stabbed in the back or get taken for some kind of ride, betrayed or be forsaken. The Bible is very clear about it, if people just bothered to read on from that line. It is the story about what we like to call today "the good Samaritan".

LOL yes, that's true. Same with rich men's wives too I guess.

And the "love yourself" one and the "good body" one kind of tie together here, as people generally believe that someone who doesn't have a good body doesn't love themselves enough to look after their body properly. Absolute rubbish. I love myself, I love myself very much. I look in the mirror every day and I like the way I look, my face, etc. won't change a thing. I agree my body needs work, 100%, but it doesn't mean my body looks the way it does because I hate myself. I have had a problem with food since being a little boy, and mainly because of controlling parents who don't understand what it means when a child says "I'm full, I don't want anymore". Then I get the whole thing about other kids in Africa somewhere having nothing to eat, like that's my fault.

I'm so sick of some people in this world and their absolutely stupid assumptions. If you are not sure about something - JUST ASK DAMMIT!

All that 'love your enemy' stuff is a pile of steaming poop, by the way. So if a crazy guy with a crazy family of inbred people hacked up your mates with a chainsaw and was close to doing the same to you, I must forgive that cannibalistic chainsaw carrying retard and his bloodline because it is morally correct.

Oh, no!

Only one got away.

There is a school of thought that says that workers in the 'adult industry' do so for understandable if sad reasons, and are in fact often unfortunate victims: Women's Support Project - Prostitution

Setting your own moral compass is a matter for personal choice of course, but I wonder if you have fully considered the issue.

To understand just how pathetic the online world has become, you need only check out the social networking site entitled Tagged. Your e-mail account will be flooded with useless notifications that somebody has discovered your profile and likes you. Not!

It is like Facebook. You can actually 'buy' people as "pets" for to obtain virtual cash and what you use the pretend coins for is anybody's guess. There does not even seem to be a feature on it any more for looking up the members in your area. Unless it is because I am a free member, yet I tried looking and was perplexed at how difficult it is to navigate through the facilities. The search feature applies more to just schools and colleges, not so much the areas you are looking to browse. But that is how all these scammer sites work. The dating ones are pretty much the same.

They say you will get the 'best features' possible if you upgrade to Gold today. You are by default either placed in Bronze or Silver status. Either way, who cares? Paying the fee won't get you laid. It ain't gonna make you become popular all of a sudden. It won't find you friends - I am sure of that. And that's what these type of websites are supposed to do, but I think it just disengages people from reality even further.

I think (and this might be true) that these companies just know there are hundreds of lonely losers out here in the real world that don't feel a part of the tight-knit cool kids and whatever. So we are classed as being rejects. They bait us in with the 'promise' of finding exactly what we yearn for. Not only are you still lonesome and worse off, they have pocketed your money, and no doubt lowered your self-esteem ever further by the disappointment you have just been met with.

StbGuy, are your lists what you believe or are they statement with which you disagree?

Hi Karen, they are statements I have heard on say the media or in "self-help" literature or wherever. They are not my own.

I disagree with the first four, and agree with the Bible verses given the caveat of reading further, and the last ones I believe are true, but nobody applies them or they just say it but don't really do it. I hope that makes sense.

I just want to make it clear, it is not I who created these, they are things I have heard/seen/read.

I find it more useful to just have a general respect for others...but loving any and everyone is taking it a bit too far. I will not go out of my way to harm others but I can't really indefinitely love anyone I meet....really depends on the individual. So I imagine it more meant something along the lines of don't make enemies where its not necessary, than literal loving of all your neighbors/peers ect...especially with all the translations its undergone I imagine some of the original meaning has been lost/altered...so whenever I regard the bible I try to look between the lines and think about the context of what's in it. I don't follow it but it can be a good point of reference for some conversations/topics.

I never have got how anyone takes the bible completely literally and treats it as though its some flaw-less manual of how to live life...I mean it is a little dated only by thousands of years so social norms have changed and it was originally a loose collection of scrolls and what not, put together into a single book and translated time and time again. So 1 it was written by man, and 2 even if every word in it is true all the translations are going to have screwed with some of the language and original meanings.

But yeah the other day I read an article about some woman who had to go on food stamps after being financially stable most of their life...she was someone who did think people on government assistance where burdening tax-payers and being lazy. Until she was in those shoes, and found no matter how she budgeted her earned money she still would have come up short on food to feed her and her family, no matter how hard she worked. So then her messege was that before people judge they should really think long and hard about how they'd feel if they end up in that position....and have to hear all the stigma about how they aren't putting in enough effort and are a burden to society. I mean no one should be made to feel like that, what is a society if it sees helping its less fortunate members as a huge burdensome waste of taxpayer money?

Thanks Hellion.

It's true. I know a woman who had everything, she was stinking rich, in her own words a b--tch who used to think she was better than everyone because of her money. She was a top dancer at a high profile franchise of strip clubs here in my country. She would easily make about $5,000 a night. Her life was a party, a rave, a 24/7 coke haze. When I met her, she was living on the streets, she lost everything. We met in the KFC, she asked me to buy her something to eat because she hadn't eaten in I don't know how many days. Today we are friends. Only such a "fall from grace" could have changed her. I'm convinced had she not lost it all she would have been 6 feet under by now. I think if I told her that, she would agree too.

Being one of the super rich is not a good life. So, let the rich mock the poor, it's fine. It's one thing to have money, but it's another thing to have so much that you don't even notice your life being flushed down the toilet at the same time.

I've always been a firm believer in a "new world" that will come one day and that money will no longer be a factor. How are the rich going to survive with no basic survival skills and only knowledge of how to "buy" everything (get it done by someone else)? It is then the poor will be on top and the only way the rich will get by is by the mercy of the poor who will let them in and teach maybe how to survive and do things when you don't have money.

I have decided I will not go to another support agency, regardless of how lonely I feel. Why should I? I was very attached to Autism Initiatives, but I had to learn the hard way that they are just doing a job. All these years were wasted on the wrong people and activities. We must look forward, not backwards.

As for another flat; I have one to view on Wednesday. I was supposed to see a supervision officer at the exact time as the viewing of the flat. I am going to haggle things around there. I don't even really care about him, but I have to see him a lot because of the court. It will be that way for probably over a year now. Sigh.

Like I said, I am just plodding along. I don't really have any plans or "structure" to my days. Everything just happens.