372. Interconnectedness, Asperger's and Social Contact

Interconnectedness, Asperger's and Social Contact
In entry 371 I attempted to explain, why some people feel interconnectedness, even though for me personally, it is something difficult to grasp, since I have never felt it.    I do not feel interconnected with people due to a common native language, nor due to having the same passport, nor due to inhabiting the same territory.    Even less do I feel interconnected with the human species or any elusive higher power.   

I only feel connected to individuals, when I know them personally and with whom I have something of personal importance in common.   The more there is in common, the more I feel connected.   I can only feel connected and bonded with a man, when there is mental, ethical and intellectual compatibility.   Without feeling bonded, there is no reason to have a relationship.   

When I choose to interact with people, I do it, because they as individuals interest me, because talking to them is catching my attention and listening to them is informative.    But I am not by some elusive feeling of interconnectedness attracted to haphazard persons, just because they are humans.   If people are dull and boring, then I better spend my time reading a good book rather than with them.  There is no reason, why I should for example suffer boredom with those women, whose only interest is fashion, cooking and children.    Children bore me too, the younger the more.   The older people are, the more mature they are as a consequence of their life experience, the more they interest me.

There are many people, who are considered as recluses, mavericks, loners and often prejudiced as allegedly unable to have a social life.    In reality, they are educated, intelligent, rational and void of the diffuse need for interconnectedness and just as picky as I am, opting for quality in their choice of with whom to spend their time.   Being different from the majority, they would have much more of a social life, if there were more like minded people, with whom interaction interests them.  They can do without lots of superficial friends and acquaintances, if they have one close, bonded and connected mindmate to be with.    

I certainly do not meet the clinical criteria of Asperger's syndrome.    But I do share the personality traits of being rational and skeptical to the bone, and of being void of interconnectedness.   Therefore I feel some affinity with aspies.    Several times I felt attracted to a man's profile, whom I then discovered to be an aspie, either officially diagnosed or by his own evaluation.    

I am fully aware, how much a relationship with an aspie can be difficult.   But I would rather consider a rational and non-breeding aspie as a partner, while I certainly reject all breeders and all irrational believers, no matter, what they belief in.  

183. Cultural Differences and Mate Selection

Cultural Differences and Mate Selection

What I said about my appreciating a man's shyness and reticence as an indication of his lack of routine in approaching women may well be more valid in Germany than in some other countries and cultures.  

One of the cultural differences, that I noticed between the USA and Germany, is the German reticence and the American lack of inhibition to talk to strangers anywhere without any obvious reason like asking for directions.  

When I grew up, it was considered as plebeian, uncultivated and rude, if a man would approach an unknown woman in the street, and a woman with self-respect would reject such behavior.   People got in contact mainly at school, university, courses, at social events or leisure activities. 

Some days ago, I watched a documentary about a pick up artist guru giving lessons to a wanna-be-jerk about how to approach unknown women in the street.   It was obvious, that this was just about improving the success in something, that has culturally in principle been already acceptable there.    I got the expression, that in the USA it is considered as normal behavior, that a man approaches a previously unknown woman, asks her for a date and she accepts.   If she does not, it is because she does not like the guy, not by considering it an insult to be approached like this.  

This leads to a very interesting question.  On http://www.divorcemag.com/statistics/statsWorld.shtml, there is a list of the 'Percentage of New Marriages which End in Divorce, in Selected Countries (2002)'.   
For the United States, the percentage of 45.8 is much higher than that of 39.4 for Germany.

Could this considerable difference be a consequence of the different method of mate-selection?   Could it be, that Americans get into contact based upon liking each other's look, by agreeing on dating as strangers in the street, while Germans get to know each other more as a result of the occasion of already sharing something, be it a hobby, a sport or a career?  
Does the attraction by mere looks lead to more infatuation, that cannot last, while people, who meet by having something in common, get less infatuated and more attracted by some similarity in their personality?

154. Pages Added

Pages Added

I have added two pages that are shown now as tabs above.    One contains the Mindmate Basic Checklist, that has already been published as a blog entry.  
The second page is new.    It is the Mindmate or Jerk Questionnaire.   It is a compilation of what I had written when comparing suitable and unsuitable men and behaviors.  I put it in the form of questions.  They are meant for introspection and for checking out, whom I would consider a jerk, and whom not.  

92. Dynamics in Self-Help Groups

Dynamics in Self-Help Groups
As a part of learning more about what is hard-wired into the brain, and also as a way of coping with personal experiences, I have been a passive reader and also a participating member of self-help forums, blogs and mailing lists concerning couple's problems, narcissism, psychopathy, ADD/ADHD, autism and others.  

I start to see a pattern of the dynamics and structures of such groups.    There are hierarchies, there is no altruism and there are unwritten rules requiring to pass a kind of initiation ritual.

The reason for joining such a group is usually a crisis.   The suffering newbie feels low, with damaged self-esteem, miserable and helpless, a sponge for attention and sympathy.   That person is in need of respectful and considerate support, which means advice in accordance with the specific individualistic needs, and also encouragement and positive feedback for whatever they do in wise coping.    Instead of support the person in need gets patronized.  
Those senior members, who have somehow overcome their own crisis, project their personal strategy upon the newbie, with assumptions, ignorant conclusions and the hubris of automatically assuming to know something better than the other.  

The suffering newbie is grateful for anything and does very often not perceive the difference between support and patronizing.   Acceptance of being patronized is part of the initiation ritual.   Lack of submission and compliance, resistance leads to either being excluded or being driven out with aggression.

The newly initiated newbies form the lowest stratum of the hierarchy.   Once they have the crisis under control, especially those who get aware of being patronized, they fade away.   Those, who stay in the group, move upwards in the hierarchy of gaining benefits.  
In the middle stratum, they are still acquiring the knowledge needed for their own future patronizing role.   But they can already give sympathy and compassion to the next generation of newbies.  
Being beyond the crisis, but still stuck in an unpleasant situation, they have found, with whom they can favorably compare themselves.   Instead of feeling envious of their more happy neighbours, they feel good in comparison with the newbies suffering more as still in the crisis.  

In the top stratum, there is the elite of the group, who derive so much personal benefit from patronizing the newbies, that they invest a lot of time and effort in doing this.   Some of them appear quite narcissistic.   As long as their patronizing is welcome by the newbies, they can keep up their mask of the unselfish supporters quite well.   But as soon as someone resents their patronizing, the mask falls, and they get aggressive and show their full hubris. 
Since there are usually several of them, who have moved up the same hierarchy, they share the same patronizing ideas and are reinforcing each other in their delusion of being right.
 
Anybody, who has the confidence to doubt their competence in patronizing, even without doubting their competence in supplying valuable information, is a serious jeopardy to their source of narcissistic supply.   Confidence is a heavy provocation, that triggers aggression.   Anybody, who dares to resist patronizing, can in their opinion only be flawed and sick.  
When I dared to enter such a group recently and ask some question to gain information, without submitting to the initiation ritual, I provoked hostility too.
They believe, that everybody needs therapy.   Those, who admit their troubles, need it, but those, who just ask questions, are considered as too sick to even know their need of therapy. 
In reality, it is just the typically narcissistic urge to put other people down to feel better about themselves.  
In my latest contact with such a group, I did not get the answers to my questions, but I got aware of the dynamics.

7. Social Contacts

Social Contacts

When and as much as I want to be with other living beings, mainly my quest is to find a partner close to my age, who would also be my best friend. As far as I like to make friends, I prefer women near to my age. The younger people are, the less they interest me.

For me, emotional attachment grows together with intellectual and mental closeness, with being mind mates.

With a partner of my age, I can go to museums and exhibitions, watch movies and theater plays, read the same books, observe each other, others and the own introspection, and two mind mates can spend hours in rational communication, in rewarding exchange of thoughts and ideas about all this. A partner of my age, who brings along his maturity, his knowledge, his education, his life experience, can enhance the intellectual value of cultural activities by contributing his thoughts and comments.

Nothing of this is possible with children or pets. For me, pets are as unattractive and uninteresting as are children. Both would just bore me, and in the museums, they would probably even disturb. I cannot get attached to them, because they bore me, and all the work to care for children or pets just keeps me from doing, what really interests me. Between grown up partners, there can we a fair exchange of giving and receiving. Children and pets are a one sided drain, since they have nothing to give, that is of value to me.

I like animals in the nature, I buy free range eggs and feed the birds in winter. But if a man has a pet, it is a deal breaker, because the pet would disturb me.

This does not make me selfish. Once there is intellectual and emotional intimacy with a partner, then I do not hesitate to care for him, should he need it. But I cannot see any reason, why to invest money and care in a being, that cannot even talk, it just makes no sense. Sometimes I wonder, if people are so attracted to dogs, because there they can dominate and have power, which they cannot get with a partner.

I know, how people get attached to their pets, and I have no right to expect, that somebody would separate from his dog for me. But even if I would accept to have a dog around for a while, it is just not practically possible. I do not live in an area fit for dogs. People's well being and health should be considered as priority over animals. In densely populated area, not only the streets should be kept clean from dog feces, but the parks should be reserved and respected as places for the recreation of people and clean places for children to play, when people live in apartments without a garden.

I live in a small house in the garden behind a row of five story buildings along both sides of the street. Neighbours with dogs have to spend half an hour twice a day to walk them to the nearest park, that is abused as a dog's toilet by many other people. Short of letting the dog soil the strawberry plants in my tiny garden, there would be no alternative but to do the same abuse of the park.

I will never get involved with a man, that is more than maybe three years younger. First of all, having grown up in the same time creates some kind of similarity. Secondly, I am not Maude and little Harolds better stay away from me. With a man of my age, we are on the same level of mutually learning and growing wiser together.

I do not want to be the wise old guru to a younger man. If a man is ten years younger, that means that I have spent ten years more of learning and maturing, therefore I cannot consider him an equal.

I have no problems to make friends and acquaintances, but somehow I feel so different in a world of breeders and believers and irrationality. Sometimes I just do not know, if I even want to spent my time with people, with whom I have not enough in common. So I tend to be a maverick and a recluse, not so much, because I want to be alone but for lack of people like me.