Thank you Russell. You are an inspiration. Should you me ask why, I would reply that I am inspired by your honesty. Your clarity as you sort through your past with the magnifying glass of autistic truth. Your willingness to share your perspective and thus your willingness to teach. Your courage to explore and even maybe map our inner worlds of experience, chemistry, spirit, and more.
I LOVED this. All of it! I'm truly intrigued by this part:
"I really dislike social lying, and people “saving face”. I would rather people were more open and honest. I take people at their word, only to find out that there was some hidden messaging in what they communicated with me. As well as being confused by other people’s social lying, I regularly have people misunderstanding my communication as they assume there must be some hidden message that doesn’t exist. They aren’t used to people being open and honest, without some ulterior motive."
I totally understand the many sides of this debate, and every time I try to "pick one to fight for" I feel compassion for those I'm leaving behind...some people suffer from humiliation that haunts them when it's public, so we're supposed to protect "that class" of people, with this rule, but this rule does, so clearly, what you state...
I got lost about which sides exist for what debate, and the potential false binaries when someone claims there is only two sides to something.
Or are we discussing the difference between, "If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all" vs "If you have nothing nice to say, make shit up and throw that against the wall"?
I was referring to "saving face." Like (fake example) if someone says they are quoting Mark Twain, but they're really quoting Upton Sinclair, I've been taught to NOT correct them unless it's going to create a really negative outcome. Of if someone keeps pronouncing Karate "Ka-rah-TEE" instead of "ka-rah-tay"....some people have really low self esteem about their education/diction/etc., so I was taught in primary school to just let them "save face" and know that they didn't do something exactly right...this is the "debate" I'm asking about....
Ahh. Thanks for the clarity That wasn't the type of "saving face" I was thinking of. :-)
More like when someone tells a story about something you were also at, and they deliberately lie about what happened in order to make themselves look good. In this case I don't understand why someone tells the story at all if they don't look good -- that is more of a "If you don't have something truthfully to say, don't make shit up and throw that against the wall".
Silence is so much easier to handle than deliberate lies.
And if you don't have a truthful story to contribute, and still want to participate in social handshaking, then do what I do -- be silly. Waaaaaazzup!
What you seem to be describing fits into the "If you don't have something nice to say, say nothing at all". Most of the time I've experienced the type of stories you are describing, they are not things where accuracy has a huge impact and there is no reason to "correct". The purpose was to share some lived experience, or to make some social connections, and not to get the best grades on some oral examination.
If someone is making up a story that didn't happen, and worse if that implicates other people in the lie, then that is in my mind a totally different situation.
I have people in my life that are far more fixated on how someone looks than the truth, and it makes it hard to tell when they are just making stuff up (which is often the norm) or when they are telling me something useful I can know for later. If I can consistently tune the person out, that is fine, but when I’m asked to help and I don’t get honest information (the very stuff required to help), then I’m stuck.
----------
I have an extreme version of the "wrong quote" type thing, where I was involved in an Adult Autism social group where I was volunteering to help manage the group. I was being asked to language police (Not so much the use of the name "Mark Twain", but controversial English words like the R word -- even when someone was using it to reference themselves). Autistic people get corrected all the time, and extreme forms of language policing is ableist as far as I'm concerned. It was one of the things that caused the group to collapse.
I was in situations where there were 4 people having a conversation, 1 of which was triggered by the use of a word (referencing themselves -- not someone else, so IMHO not even an offensive use of the word), and 3 of which were triggered by the policing of that word.
The solution was always to relax social rules and not try to "correct" people all the time , but certain types of political activism ended up being in conflict with trying to create a safe space for Autistic people.
totally makes sense, and as a (former) educator, your experience in Adult Autism social group mirrors most of my struggles with "equanimity" and "fairness" in group settings...it seems impossible to fully please everyone, so i'm not sure what the solution is, but what you went through is VERY relatable. Thanks
Thank you Russell. You are an inspiration. Should you me ask why, I would reply that I am inspired by your honesty. Your clarity as you sort through your past with the magnifying glass of autistic truth. Your willingness to share your perspective and thus your willingness to teach. Your courage to explore and even maybe map our inner worlds of experience, chemistry, spirit, and more.
I LOVED this. All of it! I'm truly intrigued by this part:
"I really dislike social lying, and people “saving face”. I would rather people were more open and honest. I take people at their word, only to find out that there was some hidden messaging in what they communicated with me. As well as being confused by other people’s social lying, I regularly have people misunderstanding my communication as they assume there must be some hidden message that doesn’t exist. They aren’t used to people being open and honest, without some ulterior motive."
I totally understand the many sides of this debate, and every time I try to "pick one to fight for" I feel compassion for those I'm leaving behind...some people suffer from humiliation that haunts them when it's public, so we're supposed to protect "that class" of people, with this rule, but this rule does, so clearly, what you state...
Do you wrestle with this?
I got lost about which sides exist for what debate, and the potential false binaries when someone claims there is only two sides to something.
Or are we discussing the difference between, "If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all" vs "If you have nothing nice to say, make shit up and throw that against the wall"?
I was referring to "saving face." Like (fake example) if someone says they are quoting Mark Twain, but they're really quoting Upton Sinclair, I've been taught to NOT correct them unless it's going to create a really negative outcome. Of if someone keeps pronouncing Karate "Ka-rah-TEE" instead of "ka-rah-tay"....some people have really low self esteem about their education/diction/etc., so I was taught in primary school to just let them "save face" and know that they didn't do something exactly right...this is the "debate" I'm asking about....
Ahh. Thanks for the clarity That wasn't the type of "saving face" I was thinking of. :-)
More like when someone tells a story about something you were also at, and they deliberately lie about what happened in order to make themselves look good. In this case I don't understand why someone tells the story at all if they don't look good -- that is more of a "If you don't have something truthfully to say, don't make shit up and throw that against the wall".
Silence is so much easier to handle than deliberate lies.
And if you don't have a truthful story to contribute, and still want to participate in social handshaking, then do what I do -- be silly. Waaaaaazzup!
What you seem to be describing fits into the "If you don't have something nice to say, say nothing at all". Most of the time I've experienced the type of stories you are describing, they are not things where accuracy has a huge impact and there is no reason to "correct". The purpose was to share some lived experience, or to make some social connections, and not to get the best grades on some oral examination.
If someone is making up a story that didn't happen, and worse if that implicates other people in the lie, then that is in my mind a totally different situation.
I have people in my life that are far more fixated on how someone looks than the truth, and it makes it hard to tell when they are just making stuff up (which is often the norm) or when they are telling me something useful I can know for later. If I can consistently tune the person out, that is fine, but when I’m asked to help and I don’t get honest information (the very stuff required to help), then I’m stuck.
----------
I have an extreme version of the "wrong quote" type thing, where I was involved in an Adult Autism social group where I was volunteering to help manage the group. I was being asked to language police (Not so much the use of the name "Mark Twain", but controversial English words like the R word -- even when someone was using it to reference themselves). Autistic people get corrected all the time, and extreme forms of language policing is ableist as far as I'm concerned. It was one of the things that caused the group to collapse.
https://r.flora.ca/p/navigating-conflict-in-autistic-spaces
I was in situations where there were 4 people having a conversation, 1 of which was triggered by the use of a word (referencing themselves -- not someone else, so IMHO not even an offensive use of the word), and 3 of which were triggered by the policing of that word.
The solution was always to relax social rules and not try to "correct" people all the time , but certain types of political activism ended up being in conflict with trying to create a safe space for Autistic people.
totally makes sense, and as a (former) educator, your experience in Adult Autism social group mirrors most of my struggles with "equanimity" and "fairness" in group settings...it seems impossible to fully please everyone, so i'm not sure what the solution is, but what you went through is VERY relatable. Thanks