ITT rampant discrimination/ableism. People acting like the world is functional or that most rules make sense and are grounded in reality.
If somebody asks why a rule is the way it is, something really beautiful happens if people entertain and allow that questioning.
Was the rule made that way to simply punish someone in the past? Could the rule be improved? Does the rule apply to the present day? Could the rule be done away with?
If the enforcement of rules is taken seriously, the questioning, validity, and improvement of those rules should be, as well.
Otherwise, we live in an authoritarian society that actively encourages enforcing/following draconian rules no one understands - rules that would likely be enforced improperly or in an unbalanced sense, because nobody can properly explain it when somebody questions the rule (in good faith).
Having trouble with authority and/or being neurodivergent doesn’t mean you are anti-social, dangerous, or bad for the workplace.
Bad rules, however, can be anti-social or create a culture of anti-social behavior, they can be dangerous or harmful (especially if they can not be explained and are not widely understood), and they can be bad for the workplace. It may just not be readily apparent when everybody keeps their heads down and says yes all the time to bullshit.
You’re right. You can also learn a lot about the culture and society around you because of that questioning, even if you end up still following the rules.
On the other hand, what’s there to gain from following the rules without question and forcing others to do the same? The only thing I can imagine right now that could be gained is the feeling that you are helping society “stay in the right track”.
This means that there are about 3 options:
- Learn something new;
- Continue to follow the rules without question while trying to force others to not learn something new, and feel good about it.
- Do nothing and continue to follow the rules (you’re not bothered enough to learn something new, but also don’t want to be a pain in the ass);
Notice that when questioning the rules, you might come to the conclusion that there’s no harm in following the rules, or that following the rules is what’s the best for you or those around you. Questioning ≠ opposing. Question = checking validity and understanding why.
For the reasons Michael has outlined above, questioning the rules feels like the most productive approach.
I feel like this meme being originally from an autism community, posted outside of it without that context, has lead to some egregiously bad takes in the comments. Unfortunately ironic. People coming in here having no idea what the autistic experience of people giving vague instructions and then just assuming you will figure stuff out is like. And then the reverse; trying your best to explain a process in hopes that there will be no ambiguity, only to be accused of being condescending.
And of course we have a plethora of “well in this edge case, its actually necessary to not question instructions!” takes, as if we are talking about last minute bomb defusals, instead of everyday office procedure or insensitive social situations. People on the spectrum are a great showcase of how unwilling the average person is to question the status quo.
Exactly. This thread is a good reverse example for those wanting to learn to be more sensitive. There hasn’t been much sensitivity displayed here.
And that is how we break toxic and abusive “ways it’s always been / done” that people blindly follow. I tip my hat to you, good fellow. Keep up the good work.
Gotta ask the right person though.
I worked in the nuclear industry and having this sort of mentality is probably one of the fastest ways to get fired from that line of work. It’s absolutely chock-full of very specifically worded dense procedures which are written the way they are to address anything from obvious concerns to very arcane ones buried deep in lists of references, and inside the plants there are very specific boundaries, signs and expectations that must be followed strictly even without someone around to explain why this particular area got roped off suddenly when it wasn’t before or why work instructions are written in one particular order. Nothing wrong with doing your research, that was encouraged because they don’t want you screwing up (though at some point you do need to actually get stuff done and not just read manuals all day), but willfully disregarding procedure or instructions in favor of your preferred way of doing things without going through the processes to get exemptions will go incredibly poorly for you.
That would definitely be one of the places this doesn’t apply, and there aren’t very many of those.
I think this post is about rules of society. But even if I’m mistaken, it doesn’t feel very hard to give a simple, even if a bit shallow, explanation of why rules must be followed in the nuclear industry.
“Follow this rule.”
“Why?”
“Because, if you don’t, the process isn’t as efficient and/or things can become dangerous. If you really want a more in-depth answer to it, you’d have to study a lot about the history of this rule. I can kind of explain it, but if I were to explain it right now, we’d be here for hours, which is not time we have right now.”
“👍”How do you get “willfully disregarding procedure or instruction” out of “I ask why, and if I don’t get an answer, I don’t do it”? Did this nuclear facility want people who didn’t care to understand the procedures they were told to comply with???
Mother fucker, I guarantee you the only people who are obsessive enough to enforce this shit are on the spectrum themselves. Autistic people aren’t selfishly stupid. They want clear reasoning so they don’t make mistakes from assumptions.
The title says, “If you can’t explain why the rule matters, then I won’t follow it.” In nuclear you’re expected to follow the procedures and instructions and so on as written unless you went through whatever necessary process to get an exemption or relaxation from that standard. If you know what the rules are and intentionally don’t do that (the “then I won’t follow it”) that’s considered willful disregard and that can get not just the person doing it but also a site tolerating that behavior punished by the regulator to be an example to others because they want nuclear people to strictly adhere to processes regardless of whether they individually think they’re important or not. Everyone has their own view of a facet of some very complex operation and things that appear insignificant to one dude and his coworkers who just see one step as some BS that doesn’t really matter may be necessary to meet a key assumption that is the bedrock of another person’s analysis.
Procedures are often not written in a terribly efficient way to complete the task. That may be intentional if a more obviously efficient method imposes a risk somewhere that the creators/revisors of the procedure didn’t want to take. It could also just be whatever method the writers were familiar with even if a better one exists out there somewhere. So a frequent tension is “Why are we doing it with [Method A] when my used-to plant used [Method B]?” If this other way is immediately better for safety then maybe work should be halted until an exemption or fast track revision is done to have the words match the safer method. If it’s just an efficiency thing though it may take a while to process even a uniformly better method into a new procedure revision such that it has to be done under the existing guidance for the time being… you may well be told that the existing method is flat out worse than the way in the upcoming new rev, but you are expected to fully follow the text of the existing revision regardless.
Or for a different sort of thing with a hypothetical example where there is a guy caught up at a radiological boundary on his way out of the plant. He sets off an alarm on a machine known to be sensitive to the point of occasionally alarming off of background radiation even if you are totally clean. The rule is to wait for radiation protection to show up and clear him before he could go to the cleaner side of the radiological boundary. Most everyone experiences this and generally the way it goes 99% of the time is RP shows up, asks you where you’ve been, they have you go to a monitor another time and sees if you pass or not and if you pass generally they let you go right on through or if not then they start having to be a lot more involved. This guy is impatient after some extended time waiting on RP because he wants to go to the bathroom just on the other side of the boundary and since he’s dealt with a similar situation before he feels it’s OK to just skip the wait for RP, rescan himself again and pass through to the bathroom when he comes up in the clear. By common sense there’s not really a problem, it’s what RP was going to have him do anyway… but it’s not just a matter of common sense. He has just demonstrated that at least in one situation he will not obey the rules that govern radiological boundaries, so how can they be sure he will follow the others? At a site where observing radiological boundaries may make a difference between a normal day and injury or death, that’s actually a huge problem that he can no longer be trusted to always safely stay within the lines he needs to at the times he needs to, an assumption underpinning what areas people are allowed to access. So for that and to enforce the standard and ensure people seriously follow the rules about radiation boundaries, the guy gets fired even though everyone knows that the guy wasn’t actually contaminated upon leaving the boundary.
And what if they give you the reason and you don’t agree with it? Plenty of those guys around during COVID
The pandemic was something we didn’t deal with properly as a society, precisely because people were smeared and shamed for having questions and concerns (however valid).
We could’ve done better. We are less prepared as a society than we otherwise would’ve been if COVID didn’t become a partisan issue, with major experts (from my POV) doing everything they could to not alleviate and address concerns, instead encouraging a culture of fear and a culture of shaming and smearing people who question authority, with no shades of gray.
If experts encouraged and facilitated dialogue and education, if hospitals/businesses/etc. were held to account for not having proper stocks of PPE or other sensible mitigations to deal with a pandemic, if ventilation became a bigger concern for businesses to address… I could go on. Things could’ve been better.
They still can be better, especially if we welcome questions and concerns and address them fairly, instead of picking the most outrageous examples of questions and concerns, and acting as if anybody who questions the experts or authority (in a general sense) are just as outrageous or dangerous.
Who are also anti choice when it comes to abortion.
You might have ADHD my friend. Just like me!
If you can’t abide by social or workplace norms, then don’t expect people to want to be around you, or want to work with you.
Oh no
anyway…
Oh no, someone voicing an opinion besides “people should be endlessly catered to and those people should never make an effort to cater to others” how shocking right?
Ah pathological demand avoidance. It’s not my inability to cope with ambiguity that’s the problem, it’s everyone else’s inability to meet my arbitrary standards.
That’s the good thing about life experience, it answers many of these questions for you.
This meme screams of someone like my 16 year old son with Asperger’s so I’ll answer it with the same response I would give him.
Because there are things called social norms and whether you like or agree with them or not they exist and if you don’t learn to adopt them you will isolate yourself.
The attitude as represented in the meme is destructive when you understand that humans are social creatures and people are not going to want to hang around an insufferable asshole for long periods of time. As such, you need to learn to mask, adapt, or whatever you can do because if you want to succeed let alone survive in life the attitude needs to change or it needs to hide.
Now for all the people who don’t like this let me ask you this question. Would you rather someone who loves you and cares for you to tell you this harsh reality and help you work through it to be the best you or would you rather learn when the world shuts you out and you end up exceedingly unloved and alone?
And before someone says “what if I want that?/I want that/I would love that/don’t threaten me with a good time”. Everyone requires some level of human interaction. You need to understand that even those who are your blood will start ghosting you if you are nothing but an insufferable asshole who is miserable to be around.
“If you don’t learn to adopt them you will isolate yourself” might be true if there was 1 neurodivergent person. We are a community and personally I’m not interested in being more than acquaintances if I have to mask around you all the time. That’s not a mutually beneficial relationship.
Autistics are constantly told this lie and it completely ignores the fact that there’s plenty of other autistics that will understand and accommodate each other’s needs.
This is an ableist way to see the world and my lived experience directly contradicts it.
because if you want to succeed let alone survive in life the attitude needs to change or it needs to hide.
Framing things this way is a big mistake and I don’t see why it isn’t more obvious to people that it’s a mistake. You want someone you care about to believe that there is a binary choice between a sustainable existence and resolving their emotional needs? You couldn’t make a more persuasive argument for suicidal thinking and self destructive behavior if you tried. And it isn’t even true because they are mutually dependent priorities. It took me too many years and therapy to figure this out, you should really consider approaching the issue from a different angle than this one.
Thank you. I’m glad some people realise that telling autistic people to adapt or die is an awful inhumane thing to do.
Because for people like me, that is what you are asking us to do.
social norms have reasons as well. you cant just say “because social norms exist” and expect someone to accept that answer as a reason. its basically the same as saying “because everyone says so”. so why dont you explain why the particular social norm is one in the first place. if you dont know maybe you need to find out before you try to enforce it on others.
also as an autistic person you shouldn’t be encouraging people to mask. that shit is incredibly damaging to people. i masked for most of my life and what people dont see is that i was basically just surviving that whole time. i developed an incredible amount of anxiety, to the point where i couldnt really function in society for more than a few hours at a time before i had to isolate for a day or two to recover. i wore the mask so often for so long i didnt even know who i really was anymore. i didnt start to live until a few years ago when i started making a concerted effort to take off the mask and be myself. and you know what, people fucking accepted me way more than they ever did when i was being fucking fake all the time for the sake of appearances. you might mean well telling your son and all the autists who will see your comment to mask to get by, but all youre doing is fucking hurting them and you need to stop. masking isnt for us, its for you.
Questioning social norms doesn’t necessarily makes you an asshole, it depends on how it is approached.
By not defying them we will remain stagnant, imagine the downhill slope we would end up on if no one ever questioned why a man shouldn’t love another man or a woman shouldn’t love another woman.
People shut you down because many are intolerant to change and have their values under scrutiny is seen as hostile, but that doesn’t imply compliance is productive. Of course, you don’t want to this all the time, but teaching your kid to repress their displease of social norms doesn’t sound good either.
Perfectly reasonable but let’s also recognize that some social norms exist only because of tradition, and are unnecessary & uncomfortable, these social norms need to be questioned & challenged & done away with. When enough people question them and challenge them, and eventually get rid of some unnecessary oppressive social norms, we can continue to evolve as a species.
They’re still social norms because people are fine with them.
Just because a group of people online are against things, doesn’t mean that everyone else isn’t fine with it.
The issue isn’t people choosing to behave a certain way, it’s the expectation that everyone need to behave that way. If people want to do the same as everyone else, fine. If the standards ultimately don’t matter, then who cares?
In my experience, the people who hate me for not following them wouldn’t like me even if I tried to play along. I am often more respected when I confidently stand as myself than when I try to follow the rules as meekly as possible. If I’m gonna be freak either way, I’m better off keeping my head held high.
You’re free to act however you want to. Honestly, that’s fine with me.
But the crux of this is, if you’re acting how you want, there’s a good chance that people don’t want to be around how you’re acting, and those people shouldn’t be chastised for not bending over backwards to cater to people who’re behaving in different ways.
If you want on that ride, fine. But don’t cry about it when no one else wants to accept that kind of thing.
“you are insufferable for asking why”
“you need to mask, to adapt”
😬
Right lol poor kid. “Don’t question anything, just mask and shut up so nobody thinks you’re insufferable.” Lowkey sounds like what the parent went through and views as the ‘normal’ way of dealing with being ND.
you are never unloved
You are always loved by God
any love of man is incomparable to the love of God
I personally see the “love of God” people feel as actually being self love that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to give themselves. That love really is the most essential to living a full life.
the complete absence of upvotes on this lmfao
And as far as I know this community’s instance doesn’t do down votes, so any down votes are from your home instance. Never seen such a ratio on Lemmy before, wow.
it still has zero upvotes except their own
if “god” “loves” me then why does its book say it hates me (im queer)
when have there ever been signs of a real god
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi8HT6Ux8FM (invidious: https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=zi8HT6Ux8FM )
(long) transcript of that song:
I have an apology to make. I’m afraid I’ve made a big mistake. I turned my face away from you, Lord.
I was too blind to see the light. I was too weak to feel Your might. I closed my eyes; I couldn’t see the truth, Lord.
But then like Saul on the Damascus road, you sent a messenger to me, and so …
Now I’ve have had the truth revealed to me. Please forgive me all those things I said. I’ll no longer betray you, Lord. I will pray to you instead.
And I will say Thank you, thank you, thank you God. Thank you, thank you, thank you God.
Thank you God for fixing the cataracts of Sam’s mum.
I had no idea but it’s suddenly so clear now. I feel such a cynic. How could I have been so dumb?
Thank you for displaying how praying works: a particular prayer in a particular church. Thank you Sam for the chance to acknowledge this omnipotent opthamologist.
Thank you God for fixing the cataracts of Sam’s mum. I didn’t realize that it was so simple, but you’ve shown a great example of just how it can be done.
You only need to pray in a particular spot to a particular version of a particular god, and if you pull that off without a hitch, he will fix one eye of one middle-class white bitch.
I know in the past my outlook has been limited. I couldn’t see examples of where life had been definitive. But I can admit it when the evidence is clear, as clear as Sam’s mum’s new cornea.
That’s extremely clear! Extremely clear!
Thank you God for fixing the cataracts of Sam’s mum. I have to admit that in the past I have been skeptical but Sam described this miracle and I am overcome!
How fitting that the sighting of a sight-based intervention should open my eyes to this exciting new dimension. It’s like someone put an eye chart up in front of me and the top five letters say: I C G O D.
Thank you, Sam, for showing how my point of view has been so flawed. I assumed there was no God at all but now I see that’s cynical. It’s simply that his interests aren’t particularly broad.
He’s largely undiverted by the starving masses, or the inequality between the various classes. He gives you strictly limited passes, redeemable for surgery or two-for-one glasses.
I feel so shocking for historically mocking you. Your interests are clearly confined to the ocular. I bet given the chance, you’d eschew the divine and start a little business selling contacts online.
Fuck me Sam, what are the odds that of history’s endless parade of gods that the God you just happened to be taught to believe in is the actual one and he digs on healing, but not the AIDS-ridden African nations, nor the victims of the plague or the flood-addled Asians, but healthy, privately-insured Australians with common and curable corneal degeneration
This story of Sam’s has but a single explanation: a surgical God who digs on magic explanations. No it couldn’t be mistaken attribution of causation, born of a coincidental temporal correlation, exacerbated by a general lack of education vis-a-vis physics in Sam’s parish congregation. And it couldn’t be that all these pious people are liars. It couldn’t be an artifact of confirmation bias, a product of groupthink, a mass delusion, an Emperor’s New Clothes-style fear of exclusion.
No, it’s more likely to be an all-powerful magician than the misdiagnosis of the initial condition, or one of many cases of spontaneous remission, or a record-keeping glitch by the local physician.
No, the only explanation for Sam’s mum’s seeing: they prayed to an all-knowing superbeing, to the omnipresent master of the universe, and he liked the sound of their muttered verse.
So for a bit of a change from his usual stunt of being a sexist, racist, murderous cunt, he popped down to Dandenong and just like that, used his powers to heal the cataracts of Sam’s mum of Sam’s mum!
Thank you God for fixing the cataracts of Sam’s mum! I didn’t realize that it was such a simple thing. I feel such a dingaling, what ignorant scum!
Now I understand how prayer can work: a particular prayer in a particular church in a particular style with a particular stuff and a particular book for particular problems that aren’t particularly tough, and for particular people, preferably white, for particular senses, preferably sight, a particular prayer in a particular spot, to a particular version of a particular god.
And if you get that right, He just might take a break from giving babies malaria and pop down to your local area to fix the cataracts of your mum!
and there have been multiple miracles proving God
the Bible never says God hates queer people
Which one? I’m vetting them to see who has the better dental plan. There’s just so many to choose from, it’s tough to decide.
whatever you do don’t fucking deal with the fae, they’ll get you to sell your own teeth for a pittence
Jokes on them, I’m all out of pittances.
There are a lot of gods, so which one? Also, i never saw a god showing love to me, did i got left behind? Damn it
The one triune God
and you being born, being alive, having food, having a machine to comment this are all examples of hs Love for you
and he expressed the ultimate love to us on the Cross
Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879 or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?
you being born
WAIT SO MY MOM HAD AN AFFAIR WITH GOD?!
being alive
No need to slap it again in my face TwT
having food
He never paid a dime duh
having a machine to comment this
I am sure that i have this phone because some chinese kid manufactured this, unless…THE KID IS GOD??
This is a lot to process…-
no, God ensured the circumstances for your birth
-
He provided the food, without him, there would be no wheat for the bread you enjoy
-
he expressed the ultimate love to us on the Cross
By masochistically sacrificing Himself, to Himself, to pay a price He chose to charge of His own free will, in order to cleanse us of the “taint” of actions He considers sins.
For the sake of argument let’s assume what you believe happened happened and that your god is real. The problem with omnipotence is that you can’t blaim anyone else for the system you set up. The crucifixion didn’t need to happen to “free us from sin”, God wanted to incarnate into a mortal form and be tortured to death. Why? I cannot say, but He could have chosen some other way. He could choose to not threaten us with eternal torture simply for not loving Him. That isn’t love.
It is not God who rejects us, it is us that reject God
and the concept of hell is basically a place without God
you didnt want God your entire life, so yeah, you wont be with God, you have free will
but ohhh you want the privileges that come with creation and God himself but not put in any spiritual effort yourself?
God is a fair judge, and he cant just let people off UNLESS someone else takes the punishment
Jesus took the punishment
You’re right. Brahma, the one true god, did all this for us.
I didn’t know he got rhe romans to kill that imposter on the cross but you learn something new every day.Hinduism is false as it commits multiple fallacies in itself, it is a mess of thousands of contradicting books with no unity.
many modern hindus claim its a “philosophy/way of life not a religion”.
Hinduism is also slowly dying, and the only reason it has a “billion people” is that the Indian government assumes that everyone is a Hindu at birth, and they made hinduism the “default” religion in their databases
the 1 upvote to 29 downvotes is so funny to me
I kinda feel bad about it because I think they were genuinely trying to be supportive. They’re far more supportive than the person telling ND people to shut up and mask.
Yeah righteous indignation can feel nice, cathartic some might say. It will seldom inspire gratitude or bon homie in your peers, but go 'head and do you
The nice thing about peers is that you can pick them. Don’t mistake you not qualifying as a friend for us not getting to have good friends.
You can either be a dick, or you can suck. If you want to be a dick you better be doing something dope to compensate.
i’m not sure why “social cues” and “authority” would have much to do with each other, it’s not like anarchists are socially inept, in fact being socially adept is kinda a core part of functional anarchy.
I dislike arbitrary things as well, but thanks to the magic of understanding how to be social i can just talk to people about it and explain why i think arbitraryness sucks ass, and they then treat me nicely and feel bad about my struggles since i’m so easy to deal with.
And it’s not like i’m some 10 charisma bard, simply being chill and not actively unpleasant gets you 80% of the way. Even if you never make eye contact you’ll still be seen as pretty normal if you speak normally and follow basic conversational etiquette.Realistically, this is how I actually handle these situations. I don’t like being rude to people, even when I refuse to follow norms. Besides, I get away with a lot more rule breaking when I am nice and likable.
A common issue autistic people have is with “implied authority”, which has the same main issue as social cues. Doing things because “that’s how its always been”. A manager who has a job due to nepotism and a common courtesy that is just a white lie are going to cause the same kind of rage in an autist. If it can’t be explained in a way that is logical and fair, they will not have any patience for it.
This meme is not about anarchists.
I feel like you’re talking about a completely different thing, though. You can be no-nonsense but still nice to interact with, it’s something i’ve gotten hugely better at in just the past like 7 years.
Like in the example of someone who got their job due to nepotism i’d just bring that up to people i trust and report it to wherever such things are reported, your union representative if nothing else. I wouldn’t say “you’re a nepo hire and i don’t like that” to their face because that would be terrifying to deal with, but i wouldn’t be silent about it either.
If your response would instead be to rage about it to their face, then; like others have said, i think that goes beyond just autism and into oppositional disorder or whatever.
Why can’t I sit in the floor in the middle of a grocery store? Why can’t I just hang out in a public restroom drinking a Pepsi? Why shouldn’t I practice my singing in line at the theme park? Explain it to me clearly.
Floor is dirty. You can sit on the floor if you want to get dirty.
People are farting and making piss mist in the bathroom, if you want to eat food in there, you can, but it’s weird and gross.
You can practice your singing in line at a theme park, you may annoy people to the point that you get kicked out of line, or assaulted. Seems like good reasons not to do it IMHO, but maybe you are a better singer than I am, good luck with that.
but… you can do all these things, if you want to.
