One thing that tipped me into thinking I might be autistic is that I have always felt like an alien. I talked about it with an online friend who is autistic, and I said those exact words. “I felt like an alien when I was a kid.”
At the time, I thought it was just because my parents were immigrants who were loath to involve themselves in American culture. Of course, they had to work in American institutions, but they spent all their free time with Taiwanese poeople. Whether it was at church or playing sports or doing karaoke, they did it with Taiwanese people. I knew nothing of American culture all the way through elementary school.
I remember being on the playground during recess, looking around me, and feeling like an alien. I did not know what to do, what to say, or what to think. Kids were doing regular kids stuff like playing on the playground equipment, playing games with each other, or just running around. I tried to mimic what they were doing, but I was in way over my head.
It didn’t help that I was seriously depressed and thought life wasn’t worth living. Or rather, I thought my life was worthless and I shouldn’t be alive. That did not help my feeling of being an alien, and I pretty much gave up on life. At seven.
One thing that bemuses me is the argument between neurotypical people and neuroatypical people over social niceties like the whole ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ ‘Fine, and you?’ exchange that you have to do at work and in many social situations. Neurotypicals say it’s just a ritual that has no literal meaning to it. It’s a phatic exchange, rather than anything with meaning.
I was always confused by this and by how it seemed to go against the admonishment not to lie. In fact, there are many things that seem to go against the decree not to lie. First of all, there’s the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus–two of the biggest lies told to children. Blatant lies. Oh, sure, there were rationalizations for why this was an acceptable lie, but I could not understand why those lies were acceptable, but others weren’t.
Telling your spouse that their clothes doesn’t make them look fat? Acceptable. Saying you love someone you don’t? Not acceptable. Saying you’re washing your hair to not go on a date? Acceptable or not, depending on your point of view.
As a kid, I had no idea which lies were ok and which were not. I learned by intensely studying the kids around me, but that still wasn’t enough. I had no clue how to do the intricate dance that society demands we do on the daily.
That brings me back to the subject of this post–are social niceties lies? I say yes-and I say no.
Let me explain.
But first, I have to reiterate that I do not have a problem with lying under very specific circumstances. I don’t try to dress it up by saying it’s not lying–it is. I just don’t have a problem with it.
Side note: I had a discussion with Ian about a decade ago about my morality. I said that I wasn’t a moral person. He disagreed with me and said that he thought I was intensely moral–it just wasn’t necessarily in line with what society said was moral. I thought about it and concluded that he was right. I am moral in my own way. I have a set of rules, guidelines, and dicta that I follow. They may not match American morals (especially now!), but they are, indeed, morals.
I have studied people long enough and hard enough that I know how to do the niceties that society demands of me. I can do the, “How are you?” “Fine, and you?” with the best of them. The problem is when someone asks a follow-up question I wasn’t expecting (and this happens with astonishing regularity because people like to dump their shit on me), I stumble.
You see, I have a script in my head. I found out this is not unusual for autistic people. They cannot trust that the way they would naturally and instinctively respond is acceptable. Someone in the RKG Discord asked an innocent question about why we had to do this whole social dance in the grocery store (that’s my phrasing of it, but that’s what the person meant), and someone else jumped hard on the first person. Calling it a stupid question and ranting on and on.
It was clear to me that the first person was neuroatypical and the second, painfully neurotypical. The latter could not understand why anyone would have to ask that question. The second person took it very personally and, I will say it, completely wrongly.
The first person wasn’t stupid(!) or trying to be provocative. For many people who are neuroatypical, it’s pretty common not to understand why we have to do this social dance. I think the first person is fairly young, which is another factor. By the time you reach my age, you have a lot of that neuroatypical stuff (mentally) beaten out of you. I know better than to ask questions like that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think them.
Yes, I understand that it’s social lubrication and that it’s phatic and that blah, blah, blah. As dismissive as I seem to be about it, I acutally do get it. Or rather, I get it as much as I can. I don’t think I can truly get it because it’s silly to me, but I can accept that it’s something the vast majority of people want to do.
And that’s the crux of the matter. When you’re a weirdo in society, you often have to put the needs of the many over the needs of the few (yourself). You do it even though you don’t really understand why. And when you hit your fifties, you just accept that it is, as the kids say, what it is. I’m too old and tired to fight that particular fight, but, yes, I do think I’m lying when I say I’m fine or great when asked. And I also know it’s just a phatic interaction in which the answer doesn’t really matter.
The latter doesn’t make the former any less true in my brain, by the way. That’s why I say that two seemingly opposite things can be true at the same time. Yes, it’s meaningless and just a balm that lubricates social interactions. But, in my brain, it’s also a lie. A lie that I’m fine with. That’s how I personally make my peace with it. Yes, I’m lying. Yes, I’m fine with it.
For some reason, many neurotypical people don’t like that. It’s not a lie! They will argue it until they are blue in the face. It’s just a ritual! It’s just a meaningless interaction! But it’s most emphatically NOT A LIE! I put that down to what I said earlier–how strident Western cultures are about lying Not Being Acceptable.
It’s amusing, really, how far people will twist themselves into pretzels to call a lie anything but a lie. I mean, I get that they may not honestly see it as a lie, but that doesn’t matter to my brain. If I have to say that I’m good or fine when I’m not–that’s a lie. And as I said, I’m fine with that. If I need to lie to make things smoother, that’s ok. There’s no need to tell the cashier at the grocery my woes (though, as I’ve said, they’ve told me theirs often). At least I get that; I truly do.
It’s still a lie. But I’m fine with that. And I think that’s the conclusion that has made life easier for me. Lying is not the universal moral negative that Americans (and other Westerners) like to bleat it to be.
I have more to say, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.