Skip to main content

Brevity and Kindness

I read something that scared me a little. Someone on a social media platform said: "I’m occasionally reminded that brevity is a part of kindness, politeness, civility. I can be saying all the right things but if I overwhelm someone with a huge block of text or long speech those words can feel invasive, entitled, draining."
I don't know whether or not this describes a common attitude.  If it does, then I am dismayed.  I can be overtalkative.  This is common in people like me who are on the autism spectrum.  My social anxiety is related to the social difficulties my autism creates.  The above quote seems to confirm my fears that listening to me can be draining.  And it seems to support the idea that autistic people need to be quieter.  My talkativeness demonstrates interest, fondness, even trust.  I resent the implication that the way I am naturally seems invasive, entitled, or unkind.  That I seem uncivil on the rare occasion that I am comfortable enough to share with someone.  But maybe it's true.

In my opinion, many people don't elucidate enough.  Brevity feels more often like dissmissiveness.  Because I have a neurodevelopmental disorder, I need clear, direct, and thorough explanations or I become confused.  Embarrassingly, I need people to take their time and to be understanding.  But then perhaps many people are better at operating with less.

I am socially disabled.  I have no natural inclination to socialize but I have to in order to get things that I want.  And when I do I usually guess incorrectly what I should expect from others.  I'm terrified that people are judgmental.  That they will get the wrong impression because of their preconceived notions.  That the World Outside is hostile toward people like me until we prove ourselves worthy of basic human considerations like patience.  The above quote seems to confirm that fear.  I have tried to learn to be brief but I could do better.  I want to.  It's a constant struggle.  Because there is no end in sight to the pressure from the NT community on people with ASDs to be more normal.  To please them thus standing before prejudice.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Man Is Not Great: The Evolution of Anthropocentrism

Why do humans care whether their species is special? Why are they so invested in their specialness that they're uncomfortable with the idea that they aren't? Why is it a bitter pill to swallow that humans aren't uniquely important in the universe, that they aren't the intended end of evolution, and that their wondrous and diverse subjective experiences emerge from the same physical processes observable in "lower" animals? I think that the maladaptive human tendency to insist upon their specialness in the universe is an extension of an adaptive tendency to self-advocate in their tribes. Consider fear. The predisposition to turn around when you feel like something might be behind you is likely to save you when there really is something there. Most of the time, when you can't help but turn around on the dark basement steps, there's no threat. From an evolutionary perspective, it’s better to turn unnecessarily than to do nothing in a moment of danger. That...

Threat and Opportunity

Humans see everything as either a threat or an opportunity. These are the only classifications they have. A threat could be a corporal threat, like a violent person, or it could be a threat to their attention, like a boring person or a waste of time.   You're not in control of whether something looks like a threat or an opportunity. You can certainly apply control to turn one into the other, but your first impressions of anything are unconscious. I'm a waste of time. There's nothing to be gained from socializing with me because I'm profoundly socially impaired. I have no status and no way to earn status, so I'm a threat to attention. People who choose to pay attention to me find the endeavor prohibitively expensive of their energy. Attending to me is necessarily a struggle against the Darwinian impulse to conserve energy.  We can call this a rejection response.   I've said that humans naturally have a psychological allergy to me, but that's not a good...

The Human Protocol

Humanity is a spectrum. Some people move through human society without ever belonging in it. I'm such a person. Every thought, every emotion, every sensation, everything your internal organs do, your balance, your muscle tone, your proprioception, every experience you have, from the big ones to the little ones, corresponds to something that happens in your brain: a neural event. Most neural events are beyond our direct control. Every neural event has a trigger. Someone says your name and you turn. You like a song, so you turn it up. What triggers neural events is determined by things like your genes, your upbringing, your culture, and your values. Many neural events are reserved for human-to-human interactions. If you encountered a mosquito that spoke English, you'd recategorize it, and you might change the way you went about trying to keep it from biting you. It would qualify for a kind of consideration that we don't usually offer mosquitoes. It would be more than just an ...