A little girl sees her mum cooking sausages and asks “mum, why do you cut the ends off of the sausages before you fry them?” Her mum replies “well, that’s how I learned it from my mother.”

So the girl calls her grandma and asks “grandma, why do you and mum always cut the ends off of sausages before you fry them?” The grandma replies “well, that’s how I learned it from my mother.”

So the girl calls her great grandmother and asks “great grandma, why do you, mum and grandma always cut the ends off of sausages before you fry them?” The great grandma replies “have they not bought a bigger pan yet?”

“because that’s just how things are done”

Yeah, that’s the essence of conservatism.

Mom, please get off the internet. It’s not good for you.

For clarification, Just joking. That sentence was one of the most repeated anwsers to everything when i dared to ask how something works from my mother.

And also “this is how we’ve always done it” - cool, you’ve always done it wrong.

I literally did that when I started my current gig, because they were doing so many things manually that were trivially automated and didn’t require a three page checklist and multiple hours of time. Within 3 months I took a 4-5hr/instance task into a 30 minute one that also gives you 80% of the shit you need to check off on the QA sheet.

I think one of the reasons some of the little kids in my life like me is I try to give them honest explanations. They don’t always fully understand, but I think they appreciate getting answers. And probably appreciate the occasional “I don’t know, actually. Let’s look it up”

My parents did this as well, and I have massive respect for them because of it. Similarly, the only time my dad would yell at me was when something was urgent and dangerous and he needed me to do the thing right then and there’s no time to explain. I knew I could always ask for an explanation after the fact.

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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.

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.

“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.

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.

As someone with that, I say, fuck off to that “authority”.

Social norms are to be broken. We didn’t get Stonewall riots by following police and law and order. We didn’t get women’s rights by meekly letting men trample us. We didn’t get general suffrage by not rioting. We didn’t get the right to strike by doing nothing.

I think the attitude you’re being held back by, is more destructive. You’re willfully following rules instead of questioning them, then deciding whether they are justified to follow or not.

I think what you’re telling is not a “harsh reality” but a fabrication that neurotypical people tell themselves to justify “following orders”. Fuck that shit.

If I did what you said me to, I’d be in a much worse mental headspace now. I feel sorry for your son. You blindly following social norms IS the problem. Try to address that instead. Try to actually understand why your son finds it difficult. Most of us find it difficult because the authority is not justified: there’s no explanation, not even an imperfect one. We’re instead told to just suck it up instead of hearing, “hey, yeah, you got a point.” or even just engaging the discussion. Let it be the other way around. You go try to think if there’s something that you both could agree as justified for a rule. If such a thing isn’t there, then no need for the rule. Good authority doesn’t flow from “because I say so”, but from clear and justifiable rules.

I’m not going to mask myself because others refuse to take others into account. I have plenty of good interaction when I am not forced into masking, and less when I have to mask.

Let me ask you a question. Have you ever gone through what your son is going through with you now? Should a good parent not want to try to understand their child instead, rather than to force their own norms onto their descendant?

When you tell your autistic child to mask you’re encouraging them to make their mental health worse: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13623613251353358

you are never unloved

You are always loved by God

any love of man is incomparable to the love of God

I’ll take unloved and alone over your fake love.

What is an example of a safety rule who’s conditions no longer exist which would not have the conditions almost immediately return if the rule was removed?

Like every example I can think of is a regulation to stop companies from hurting people which they would simply resume doing given the choice, thus making us still need the rule?

It’s like people think I’m just trying to be an asshole. I really don’t like starting conflict without having a good reason, and questioning the questionable is one of the best reasons out there.

I swear, some of my recent posts have brought out some nasty responses that I didn’t expect. On one hand, I don’t want to hold myself back from posting stuff just because I fear unjustified backlash. At the same time, I need to better prepare myself for it.

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:

1. Learn something new;
2. Continue to follow the rules without question while trying to force others to not learn something new, and feel good about it.
3. 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.

It’s not an inability to cope with ambiguity, it’s a “I want to know if this is just another arbitrary rule set for a dumb reason but I’m asking because it might be another rule that looks dumb but actually makes sense when you understand the complexities”. It’s also a rejection of the idea that ambiguity should be coped with instead of seeking understanding. “Must accept ambiguity” sounds pretty arbitrary itself, not to mention stupid in this world where those who set rules often don’t have the interests of those they want following them in mind when setting those rules.

Yeah, convincing me to find another job.

Supremely unconvincing.

An object at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force.

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And because they hurt people. And will not apologise or even acknowledge it and prevent it from happening again. See different religions, police forces, politicians, CEOs, … fuck authorities, if they don’t have a proper process to deal with their own errors.

I do that a lot

More people need to read his books if for no other reason than to have their eyes opened to that.

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.

As someone neurodivergent but not autistic I definitely see both perspectives here.

Sometimes the rules are stupid or unclear and the autistic person who’s willing to ask the questions changes it from “everyone is winging it in accordance with their own interpretation without understanding why” to bringing everyone onto the same page.

But on the other hand, I and most non autistic people, can instinctively interpret the questioning of the rules as disrespect for the clear reason for them or as a polite way of calling the rule bullshit. I’ve had enough experience with autistic folks to ask for clarity and try to explain, but most neurotypicals don’t (doesn’t make it ok). This is something neurotypicals need to be taught to be sympathetic towards. It will make them better not just at interacting with autistic people but with being coherent towards each other and preventing the situation where everyone just assumes their way to incoherence.

Also sometimes it’s a situation of “can you please just accept the rules so we can get to what we’re here to do?”, which is a situation where I’m sympathetic to both sides.

Yeah! That feels like the right approach!

I agree but I can also accept that I’m not necessarily capable of understanding a reason why. Something not making sense to me personally doesn’t inherently mean it doesn’t make sense objectively.

Rulemakers not being able to explain something in a way you do understand is not a you a problem though. That just implies the rulemakers also don’t understand.