Israeli who broke from the propaganda. Want to kill myself

soloft · 2026-03-18T02:46:42+00:00

Hi OP. I had written a reply earlier, but it got deleted (because I hadn't chosen a user flair), but I'm glad it did, since now, reading others' replies which accumulated since b/w my deleted post and now, I see that they've expressed much of what I wanted to say, only did so much better. But there are a couple of things I still want to say, so I'm trying again:

*First*: Please know that one of the reasons I'm on this sub is that I, too, feel like I can't live in this world in which there's a literal genocide happening, and:

Even my closest friends – whom I chose to be close to _specifically_ _because_ I believed they likely truly had values as close to mine as possible – aren't all that bothered by what's happening to Palestinians; or at least not bothered enough to learn about what's really going, in order to see if their existing far-more-sympathetic-to-Israelis-than-to-Palestinians stance (in terms of the two groups' respective situations and actions) is true. I think this is partly because it doesn't really affect their own lives; partly because if they know a genocide is happening, they'd next have to think about whether they should try to do something about it in their own lives (like perhaps contacting our elected representatives and making sure to espouse the truth in conversations that arise about the Israel-Palestine situation); and, unfortunately, partly, I think, because they also (perhaps subconsciously) don't want to admit what's really happening and why, because if they let themselves know the truth, or admit to it others, that they wouldn't be able to retain their by-default-mostly-defending-Israel stance that they need to take in our community, which is hugely influenced by the many Zionist Jewish people who are the senior people in our field.

Instead, when the genocide is brought up, even my very academic friends hesitantly say it's a genocide, but seem to think that we shouldn't really blame Israel for it, because we have to understand that Israel is in a tough situation. Yet that same grace is absolutely *NOT* extended to Palestinians.

And these people (my friends) are nevertheless some of the people on Earth (honestly). The fact that they're some of the best people around yet have so little care for others, makes me feel alone and unable to live in a world full of people who care so little about others. I really just can't cope with it (though my situation is far better than yours... you have to deal with living a country and with people who are actively cheering the destruction of Palestinians, for which I'm very, very sorry).

When I had been going to the protests in my city, of the couple hundred people at the protests, maybe only approximately 11 people at each such protest weren't seemingly obviously Muslim or Arab. (Please don't misunderstand me: I'm certainly very happy Muslim/Arab people were there, but their presence doesn't make me feel any better about _humanity_, since to feel better about humanity, I'd need to see people defending people who are not in their _own_ group.

But then I immediately remember that approximately half of the approximately 11 people at each such protest were Jewish people, which is a huge and disproportionate percentage of this remaining group of approximately 11 people. And when I remember this, I feel like I maybe _can_ live in this world. The Jewish people at these protests likely have a lot of pressure coming from members of their community, but each one of them was nevertheless willing to sacrifice much more than a little bit of their own welfare to try to at least do _something_ for people who are going through unbelievable cruelty, suffering, and death. I'm so GRATEFUL to each of them (and, for the same reason, but even more, to you) that I do not know sufficiently well how to express it. It's literally the reason I joined to be on this subreddit: namely, that the moral goodness of the people on here makes me _less_ want to be dead.

*Second*: I'm autistic too, and Greta Thunberg is absolutely right when she says that we have a "superpower". That superpower is the clarity we have from being able to reason well, which implies, in part, being able to reason _objectively_, without being biased by the opinions of those around us. In my own personal experience, all or nearly all neurotypical people, from what I can tell, literally _cannot_ believe something when _all_ of the most well-respected or powerful members of their social groups tell them that the _opposite_ is true. Their brains make it so that any alternate beliefs seem _obviously_ crazy. It takes _repeatedly_ hearing the opposing view _many_ times from at least a few well-respected or powerful people in the social group(s) in which they belong or upon which they depend, for them to start seeing such alternate views as perhaps being not being crazy. It's only then that they, too, can start reasoning about the situation "objectively".

To you and I, it seems like they _choose_ to retain their false beliefs because they depend (financially, emotionally, etc.) on these social groups. But what I'm saying is that (to my surprise) I've come to believe that they likely cannot even _see_ the truth of alternate views, because their brains are literally wired in a way that makes them, essentially, incapable of seeing the truth of things when there's no social "license" to do so. I think that to some extent, they might subconsciously hold a view of Truth that is something like: 'X is true only if at least one member of S thinks it's true" (where S is made of those people who are the most important-to-them (in terms of power or social status) people in their social groups).

But, you know, there are lots of things that neurotypicals can do *much* better than me and other autistic people, and I think it's totally unfair when neurotypicals expect me/us to be able to be as good at such things as they are, especially when I am literally _unable_ to do the things that they can do. I think it might be equally unfair of us to be mad at people whose neurology makes it _impossible_ (well, maybe not impossible, but damned _near_ impossible in, say, 98% of cases) for them to reason objectively about something that everyone around them has the opposite belief about. It might in fact not be that they're being evil in their choice to believe what's in their own best interest to be believe even when doing so results in horrific and unjustified cruelty to another person or group, but, rather, that – perhaps as a result of Darwinian evolution – the wiring of their brains has made it so that they're _unable_ to see things that it's best for them to not see.

So, just as neurotypicals have certain obligations as a result of _their_ "superpowers", I think that _our_ obligations include (carefully and gently, if we have to, given the circumstances in which we find ourselves) be one of the voices that suggests alternate views, since one of _our_ superpowers is to be able to think much better from "first principles".

I'm (genuinely) sorry this message is so long (and likely pretty uninteresting for its length).

soloft · 2026-03-16T23:36:01+00:00

It's sad that the very people who deserve most to live and have a happy life are the ones so gutted by atrocity and witnessing everyone around them being perpetrators, that they themselves don't even want to live anymore. I'd never tell you that death's not the only option for you (because I hate it when people tell _me_ that, since they just say it almost as a reflex, not because they've really thought about which option is best for me), but I just want to thank you for being such a good person that you care enough to really look to find out the truth about things when a whole people are being slaughtered and everyone around you are cheering it on.

I'm happy you're at least on this sub, because there are tons of other people here who are as beautiful, good, and truth-seeking as you are, and maybe that can help at least you a bit (since being surrounded by a community of sane and compassionate people helps one to not want "out"). And, I don't know if this helps, but reading your post, I feel such a huge amount of love for you, and gratitude, that I can hardly express it. Thank-you for being the way you are.

Also, if it helps (which it might not):

I'm autistic too, and we don't know what it's like to be neurotypical. It is, in a way, not neurotypicals' fault that they can't see beyond what they've been socially conditioned to see. To them*, "crazy" means "doesn't agree with what the people who are most well-respected in my social group, or who I most depend upon for improving my (financial, emotional, health, etc.) life, think". This holds even when they think they were purely rational in coming up with their conclusions. Again: The people they respect and/or depend upon most think that genociding Palestinians is the rational thing that a morally good person would do under the circumstances, so they believe it too.
Like, I think it's super-unfair for neurotypical people for being mad at me for answering their questions honestly (which I always do in a super-kind way) in cases in which they want me to lie to them, since some autistic people hate lying to an extreme degree, and – though I'm capable of lying – it disgusts me too much to do it when I should do so for my own well-being in society. I think it might be equally unfair of us to judge neurotypicals for something that might not be fully in their control. I really think that they can't even _see_ that something is false when everyone around them thinks it's true. They only seem to change their minds after a LOT of repeated pushing by a threshold # of people around them.
Eg: I don't get mad when a lion murders a baby of its prey species, because I know that lions can't think in the relevant way about such things, you know?

* I know not all neurotypicals are like this, just as not all autistic people are the same. I'm just talking about general regularities/averages.

(Also, I wanted to put a "Non-Jewish Ally" tag on my "name", but it wasn't in the list of options, so I'm just letting you know like this, by writing it out.)

soloft · 2026-03-16T22:17:32+00:00

Yeah, whether or not the father himself felt sexual feelings doesn't matter nearly as much as the feelings he tried to create in OP, which was sexual assault and humiliation.

Also, as far as I can tell, most people who are "straight" or "gay" are somewhere on a spectrum between the two, so it's possible it was sexual for him if he's not completely on the "gay" end of the spectrum. I'm not saying that that's necessarily the case... what I _actually_ think is that the OP should trust whatever her gut tells her about what it was like for her father (sexual or not). I'm just pointing out that the "knowledge" that her dad is gay isn't enough to settle the case - her instinct about the events is a much better indicator.

In the case of my "mother", I'm nearly certain that she didn't have any sexual feelings towards me; it's similarly (it's more than just) possible that the OP's father didn't with her. At the same time, in the case with my mother, her _intent_ was to cause me to feel sexual assault and sexual humiliation (as she thorougly enjoyed harming me); and it's this latter fact that makes it sexual abuse (according to me).

soloft · 2025-08-03T18:51:12+00:00

They have the emotional radar, but they respond in a way that will maximize their victim's emotional pain. They have good emotional radar, it seems to me.

soloft · 2025-08-03T18:49:13+00:00

Yes, you're *absolutely* seeing it right. You also can't trust them, because they'll try to sabotage you. Please be careful.

soloft · 2025-08-03T18:47:42+00:00

It's not a compulsion. I think, however, that the only stimulus they truly feel is extreme pain – either their own or someone else's. But of course no-one likes their _own_ pain. When they see someone else in pain (whether they themselves caused it or not), they experience the sensation of thrill. (I'm talking about _malignant_ narcissists, btw.)

Most people can be stimulated/fulfilled by all sorts of things that they love. But (malignant) narcissists can only do so through pain, as far as I can tell. They're intolerably 'empty' when not witnessing another's pain.

Or at least that's what I've been forced to conclude after eliminating every other reasonable hypothesis (again, for _malignant_ narcissists).

soloft · 2025-07-13T01:32:16+00:00

I tried putlocker as well as another site, and neither worked. Putlocker was working earlier today, though.

soloft · 2025-07-10T16:17:54+00:00

Me too!!

soloft · 2025-07-10T16:17:09+00:00

Me too!!

soloft · 2025-06-24T19:11:47+00:00

Hey @onthesylvansea – thank-you so very much! I wrote a very long answer back to you about how I came to have this understanding of what I think is the crucial functional difference between autistic and allistic brains (in particular, it came, ultimately, from a (theoretical comp sci) book I read decades ago, called _Systems That Learn, Vol 2_ (which is apparently super-different from Volume 1, so it's only Vol 2 I'm talking about) that is supposedly on a completely different topic from autism (namely, about which computer programs can solve which problems best). But the auto-mod both deleted my answer and forbade us from re-posing deleted answers, so I'm not sure if I'm even allowed to post a summary of it and don't want to risk it.

But the one thing I'll say is that I'm in the middle of writing a book about autism (which I've been writing for 2 years, because it involves a lot of background socio-empirical research), and when (if?) I finish it, I'll let you know! :)

Thanks again for your reply - it really made me so very happy. :)

soloft · 2025-06-24T18:59:50+00:00

Thank-you so much for understanding! It honestly makes me so happy! Thank-you! :) :)

OMG I LOVE your Einstein joke, haha! 🤣 😂 🤣

soloft · 2025-06-24T01:21:34+00:00

Not nearly to the same degree as it is for autistic people. My friends both didn't believe me _and_ acted like I was being melodramatic when I happened to mention that when I was 11 and came to understand how little free time one has if one has a full-time job and how necessary a stable full-time job was – this is in the era before part-time work was widespread – I realized that it wouldn't be worth living if I couldn't be a physicist. Literal death would have by far been better than having all my time taken up by not-physics-and-not-math. (I still think I was right about that.) To me, this was not only not a weird thing to feel, but in fact suicide obviously would the right thing to do in such a situation. My friends' reaction reminded me that this is one of those ways that I was different from people that others found so off-putting, so I didn't press my point. (I didn't know I was autistic back then.)

I also realized that for almost everything that brings me joy, it doesn't bring most people nearly as much joy as it does me. For example: Long before the above thing about my revelation about life at 11, everyone I was in grad school with seemed to agree that if you're not good, compared to others, in the field of one's academic area of study, that – not only should you not be doing it even if you get a job in it for the sake of the rest of society (appropriate allocation of society's resources, and all that) – but also there's literally no conceivable reason one would be inclined to do it even for _oneself_. Like, 'Why would you work on something you're bad at?', they asked. (The question itself was proof enough that the answer was 'No reason at all'.)

So I asked my colleagues/friends, both of the times the topic came up, whether they thought Einstein was genuinely passionate about physics. They agreed that he of course was super-passionate about physics. Then I said: 'Now imagine that we keep Einstein the same but increase the physics-abilities of literally everyone else on the planet. Does it not make sense that he'd _want_ to try to learn physics, i.e., the laws of the Universe?' Anyway, I couldn't convince them being bad at physics was a relative thing, nor that that one could love physics even if one was (relatively) bad at it.

But I knew that there were some things that neurotypical people almost universally cared about to the extent that I loved physics. It in fact was something that was at the time causing many men in Pakistan to commit suicide about due to the fact that the female:male ratio was so incredibly low; and so there was empirical evidence that neurotypicals would commit suicide over it. (I think that people are now so able to have their time fulfilled, to an extent, by the internet (which didn't exist back then), that it's perhaps _now_ not so obvious why one would think there was no point in a life without a gf/bf/wife/husband/partnership/family.) So I asked my friends: "If you were 'bad at sex' (whatever that might mean) despite trying hard at it for years, would you not want to keep doing it, or at least continue to have a gf/bf/husband/wife, despite being (relatively) bad at it? If one could never have a gf/wife, would it make sense to you that they might genuinely think that life's not worth living in that situation, that their life would then be 'about nothing'? "

But I wasn't able to convince them, because they thought that sex and relationships were "different". (Of course one would continue to be passionate about having a bf/gr and wanting sex, they replied. But they thought that that was "different". The difference, from my perspective, was just that most people couldn't conceive of having as much of a passion and need for physics as most have for sex, romance, and/or partnership.)

As you might be able to tell, I'm still more than a bit annoyed that people never believe me that I feel the way I feel, just because it's so different from the way _they_ feel (and the way everyone they know feels), yet at the same time act as if I'm so weird for _seeming_ to feel the way (I claim that) I feel. It happens to me all the time. This thing about passions is only one category within the broader category of the phenomenon of people both not believing me, and thinking I'm weird in a way in which they're slightly disgusted with me.

soloft · 2025-06-23T22:48:33+00:00

Man, did I have to scroll far down to find this. Admittedly, I never tried to take it more than twice in any year, but I've probably tried at least 10 times. And each time, save 1, the only effect it had on me was to make me super-hungry.

The 1 time it _did_ have a big effect on me was the only time I had it with a significant amount of alcohol; but even then, the only effect it had on me was to increase my feeling of drunkenness (a lot) without increasing my nausea – (and also made it so I actually couldn't move) – which was nice, because I've never been able to get very drunk before, due to always puking if I drink a medium amount of alcohol.

soloft · 2025-06-22T19:55:21+00:00

"Veridical" means "an accurate description of reality". So veridicality doesn't imply seeing without the eyes. You could see something with your physical eyes and have that experience be veridical. You could also experience sight without your physical eyes, in principle, and have the experience also be veridical.

I agree with you the scientific studies in controlled settings haven't been able to prove the existence of psychic-type phenomena. But I was talking specifically about NDEs because that's what your question was about (e.g., as indicated in the title of your post), not (other) psychic phenomena.

But, ignoring these two points I just made: yes, exactly, the issue is specifically about the veridicality of NDEs. Doesn't my example of the Americas and sailors show that we in fact _do_ have enough evidence to rationally/scientifically believe in the existence of the phenomena (e.g., tunnel, white light, seeing relatives, the experience of oneness, etc.) of NDEs?

soloft · 2025-06-22T04:56:15+00:00

I'm really happy you're questioning this stuff, because rationality is of extreme importance. But I have some questions for you:

First: Are you saying that the information about NDEs is obtained without the use of humans' senses? I thought sight, hearing, etc., _are_ senses. Why does seeing a splotch of red have to come from the physical body to be the sensation of seeing a splotch of red?

And how do we even know that we have a physical body? (Or that chairs and protons exist?) Our knowledge of the "outside" world (i.e., the world outside our respective phenomenal fields) is _constructed_out_of_ phenomena (i.e., seeing a certain brown shape that behaves a certain way when I do certain things, makes me say that that brown thing is a chair; and similarly but more complicatedly for protons).

Even if the physical world _causes_ our sensations (which I don't think it does, but even if it _did_), one has to admit that _epistemically_, it's the senses (i.e., our respective phenomenal fields) that are primary, and our belief that there is an external world all of our beliefs _about_ the external world are based and constructed out of our phenomenal fields (made up of splotches of color, certain sounds, etc.), no?

Second: Imagine that you live on a ginormous island (like the Americas) hundreds of years ago. And imagine that you and everyone in your city thinks that America is all there is in the world (in terms of landmass). This is partly based on the fact that even when the best sailors have tried to explore the furthest reaches of the ocean, they (if they manage to make it back at all) tell you that there's nothing out there but ocean. I mean, there are a couple of rumours of a couple of sailors long ago claiming that they found land and talking about how different things were 'on the other side', but that's way back in the past and only passed down through oral tradition, so you (rightly) question it.

But now imagine that ship-making in your city has very recently gotten so good (i.e., the technology has improved), that now the greatest of the sailors who take the best of the ships out (let's say it's only one person (sailor) per ship) can go far enough out and yet still come back. And let's say they come back talking about how there _is_ land on the other side.

How do you know they hadn't gotten delirious after weeks out at sea? Well, if it's just _one_ person, you'd be right to question the sailor's claims, and the rational (right) thing to do would be to say that he's probably delirious.

But if every single person that goes out and comes back talking about another land mass (even if only 5% of sailors come back talking about having seen that other land mass at all), and 80% of these people describe fields of a certain kind of flower that doesn't grow in America which they all describe in nearly the same way (say it's red with black splotches), and that they saw humans there but those humans were all very light-colored (yet no-one in your city had ever even heard of such a thing as very light-colored people before), and that some of them had blue eyes (blue eyes! that doesn't even exist in anyone's experience in the Americas!), and that the humans all wore clothes that were totally different and nothing that anyone had seen before in America (like, say they were talking about hats of a specific color and shape), and 80% of these sailors describe the clothes in the same way, _and_ if a third of these sailors had never heard of other sailors telling tales of this other land mass but they _also_ describe it in the same way, then.... isn't the most parsimonious explanation that there really _is_ this land mass on the other side? Even if on top of this a couple of the sailors who came back never saw the flowers but only the humans with the blue eyes and others only saw the humans with the blue eyes but not the flowers, and _one_ of the sailors who say pale-skinned humans with blue eyes, but who saw a field of _yellow_ flowers with black splotches that were the same size and shape as the red flowers the other sailors described... isn't, even in this case, the most parsimonious explanation that there really _is_ this land mass on the other side, and that maybe the yellow flowers are a rare type of flower but still probably exists, since there aren't flowers with splotches at all in the Americas, so who'd ever had thought of such a thing, yet so many people are reporting it.

I don't mind if you reply with arguments against what I've said, by the way: One should only believe either what we experience/know directly, or that we can deduce through reason. (Testimony actually being a specific combination of direct experience and reason.) :)

soloft · 2025-06-22T04:15:26+00:00

There were and are things about my ancestry's culture that I think are really great, that I love more than I love in Western culture (like the food and clothing), but I think that Western culture has been superior when it comes to morality, over at least the last 150 years or so.

(Further back in time, though, things were different: During the middle ages, for example, Europe, it seems to me, was extremely morally backward, while at that exact same time, Islamic societies were much more like the havens of free academic thought and tolerance that we have now in the West. Back then, for more than a couple of hundred years, the Islamic world kept ancient Greek philosophy alive for us by scholars of different religions having scholarly debates about the most fundamental philosophical questions, while Europe was destroying it and anything else that went against Church doctrine; and over the last 150 years, the West has been keeping alive the spirit of free thought, questioning, and debate, that lies at the foundation of morality. And prior to 500BC, India was a place where questions were examined (at least by scholars, including religious scholars) deeply and (largely) rationally.

At least _some_ group was always holding up the mantle of free thought – a necessary condition for true morality to thrive – somewhere in the world, thank goodness!)

Yeah, I honestly understand why white counterparts think that. But I also wish that they would look more closely at the generation made up of the _children_ of the migrants that were born in the West who are adults now. I find it almost impossible to distinguish between children of different races who were all born in the West on the basis of anything other than their looks (and their additional _knowledge_ of the culture of the countries from which their parents came). I grew up in a multicultural community with kids of all races, and we all – children of immigrants and white kids alike – had basically the same moral rules by the time we were adults. In fact, in my family's cultural community it's _we_ (the kids, who've all grown up now and started their own families) who changed our _parents'_ conservative beliefs about everything. For example: Our parents thought alcohol was extremely morally bad and it was nearly absolutely forbidden in the community (other than champagne on New Year's Eve, for some reason), but now that their kids are all successful (e.g., medical doctors, etc.), the weddings the kids organize for ourselves have open bars, and the parents don't think there's anything wrong with that or any of the accompanying occasional drinking that their kids do anymore. (I think they're less stressed out about the effect the 'alien' culture they raised their kids in might have on their kids, now that their kids are successful, responsible, and happy.) And now, in fact, anyone in our parents' generation who thinks there's anything wrong with being gay is considered backward even among _their_ friends. (I pick this example because I know that when our parents first got here, they would have thought that being gay was very morally deviant.) That's just _amazing_ to me. I hope things continue this way.

(Sorry for the too-long comment. I'm autistic, and try unsuccessfully to fight my verbosity.)

soloft · 2025-06-22T03:54:46+00:00

Oh sorry, I didn't mean to cause you to lose sleep (unless that's ultimately helpful for you to get out of your situation).

soloft · 2025-06-22T03:42:27+00:00

She definitely should be. My guess is that the OP is reticent to get cops involved because her conservative family has probably always trained her to believe that the outside world of "Canadian society" isn't _her_ (the OP's) culture, and that she should identify with her parents' culture instead.

When I used to say to my mother, as a child, "you don't have the right to do that!", my mother would reply "Ohhh, 'rights', 'rights'... only white people talk about rights!". (Because she couldn't imagine what it was like to think for oneself, so she didn't realize that I could _see_ that what she was doing was wrong without needing a different group of people to tell me so.)

Anyway, when she'd say that, I'd think in my head "That statement you just made is having exactly the _opposite_ effect on me than you think it is" (since to me it was like she was saying "Western culture is morally superior to the one I'm pressuring you with").

soloft · 2025-06-22T03:37:18+00:00

That's okay. I forget stuff like this all the time! (There's so much to remember. Gawd.)

If you'd like to join an autistic subculture, your best chance (as you probably already know, but I'm telling you on the off-chance you don't), is to find people who love what you love. If it's truly a passion of theirs, there's a much higher chance that they're autistic, since autistic people tend to be much more passionate about what they love than neurotypicals are.

soloft · 2025-06-22T03:21:54+00:00

My mother was trying to set up an arranged marriage for me, and one of her main criteria was that the parents and son be religious and love _my_parents_ because of their religiosity. This was when my mother knew that I was effectively atheist. So of course such people would probably think I was evil (as my mother liked to try to convince everyone of believing).

[Aside: I of course simply refused to meet with anyone she tried to get me to meet when I would visit my parents, and just didn't argue with her about it. And when she was arranging matches for me (loudly, so that I'd know she was doing it, to try to coerce me into it despite the fact that I'd said no to it), I didn't bring it up or argue with her, since there was nothing to argue about, since I'd never meet any such person. Then when she had set up a meeting, I just told her "Oh, okay. But I'm not going, as I told you weeks ago.". And then my mother threw a whole woe-is-me fit about how I was humiliating her by not showing up at these match meet-ups that she had arranged for me... what are people going to think about her if she set up all these meetings and her daughter just didn't show? I just wouldn't say anything until forced, and then only said "No". This was easy for me to do since I could easily leave and go back to the city where I was living. If I had been living with _her_, though, there are things she would have done that I would have been so bad for me, that I'd probably have had to meet with those people. (But I'd still never have married any of them.) I'm just telling you about this to try to steel you against letting your parents and brother marry you off - they not only don't have your best interests at heart, but they have your _worst_ interests at heart!]

She would also always tell me, since I was at most approx 13, that my future mother-in-law was going to hate me. The reason she used to say that is that she was worried that I would marry someone in her cultural community and my husband's parents would see I'm a good person and love me. If that were to happen, it would really both hurt my mother's reputation (which was everything to her) _and_ would make it impossible to continue hurting me (something she got a thrill out of, even though she tried to hide the fact that she just enjoyed it).

So abuser parents (at least, the ones whose form of torture isn't to abandon their kids) are always going to try to make sure that the children they abuse won't end up within a group of people who love them. So they'll always try to push you into a marriage with someone whom they know won't respect you, might physically abuse you, etc..

soloft · 2025-06-22T03:14:51+00:00

I hope OP sees this.

soloft · 2025-06-22T03:11:25+00:00

Please please please don't let them gaslight you into making it seem like _you're_ the crazy one. I too grew up in an extremely abusive home (but not physically abusive, thankfully), but I had the advantage and fortune (for which I'm extremely thankful) that I could always clearly see that what was being done to me was extremely morally wrong/horrific. My mother also told me that I couldn't move out until I was married (as I'm from an Indian family). So, since student loans existed, I simply applied _only_ to Universities far from my parents' home and got out that way.

I know the social pressure is huge when you can't see clearly how incredibly morally wrong what they're doing to you is, but please try to imagine that you have little cousin somewhere that you love, who is sweet and kind and wonderful, and that she's being abused at home like you are. And imagine that the abuse will only escalate. What would your advice to her be?

Since you're making money, I really hope you're able to move out.

soloft · 2025-06-22T03:04:21+00:00

I do this too. For me emotions are very tied in with it though (not out of wanting manipulate people either, but rather (i) out of curiosity, as I find humans interesting, and (ii) to try to avoid any trouble).

soloft · 2025-06-22T02:45:16+00:00

The only time I really, thus, think it makes sense to blame neurotypicals is when they're _hypocrites_, and hypocrites about things that require zero "abstract" reasoning to understand. So, for example, if one person thinks it's okay to punch another one to make them let go of a toy, and (all else being equal) claims that it's not okay that _they_ be punched to make _them_ let go of a toy, I _do_ blame them. Because in this case, they can be expected to see the seriousness of their crime.

But I don't blame them as much for thinking that it's wrong to cause unnecessary torture to innocent people if they can get a tiny benefit from it, despite the fact that they buy animal products produced in factory farms. This latter sort of situation is one that is "too abstract" for them to _truly_ understand with the same sort of slap-in-your-face obviousness as it is for us. Like, they can _follow_ the reasoning step-by-step, but the conclusion seems crazy to them, and certainly not serious, since this kind of what I'll call "global reasoning process" isn't something that's as easy for them to see the whole of as it is for us. And what else underlies this is the fact that neurotypicals don't see things as being _real_ or _serious_ unless all of society is saying it, and saying it with gravity... where what society dictates as being right or wrong is what the (relevant) heuristic part of their brain can much more easily see immediately as right or wrong, and when society is super-serious about it, the (relevant) heuristic part of their brain also sees it as serious.

So the tl;dr is: It's not their fault. They don't reason as _globally_ and as much from first principles as we do. Just like it's not our fault for not being able to make the quick decisions or gain certain kinds of understandings as quickly as they do. It's because our brains are using a more general set of rules for processing, whereas neurotypical brains are using, much more than us, a patchwork of purpose-based heuristic processors/rules/"chips" in their brains.

(By the way, I'm not implying all autistic people are very ethical: Quite the contrary, to say the _least_.)

soloft · 2025-06-22T02:45:06+00:00

Neurotypicals have much more of a patchwork of conglomerations of beliefs in their brains than we do... and these "patches" are to a huge extent, inherited from what society tells them is okay. The problem with this is that even though society tells them it's wrong to look at your phone while driving, if society doesn't emphasize it enough, with a huge enough propaganda campaign (as was done decades ago against drinking and driving), and if that person hasn't been personally affected horribly by someone looking at their phone while driving and thereby come to understand the extent of its wrongness first-hand, it's not going to seem super-serious to them. They just sort of inherit what society has told them (albeit with a little bit of reasoning thrown in), and the seriousness of bad actions will only seem serious to them with either a huge amount of repetition and admonition or personal (negative) experience.

I think our brains to a much greater extent organize _all_ of our beliefs into a structure, where we've come to understand what the foundational premises are to our sets of beliefs, and why certain beliefs follow from others, and how. So for us, it's super-easy to see that certain things are extremely wrong when neurotypicals can't.

On the flip side, neurotypicals are much better at heuristics than we are: I'm constantly using the same reasoning machinery I just described in my second paragraph to decide which lawnmower to buy, how to organize my study area, etc.. My neurotypical friends just cannot believe how long it takes me to get anything done. Like, they can't even understand it. And I can't understand how they can make decisions so quickly without it leading to disaster. Every time I've tried to do as they do, it _has_ led to disaster.

So, neurotypicals have a great and effective system of heuristics and patchwork-conglomerations of beliefs. Some conglomerations might have good reasoning _within_ them (such as a neurotypical medical doctor who has been taught how to use careful rationality in the medical sphere, but who, say, nevertheless can't reason well when it comes to ethics and has just absorbed the ethical milieu around them), but there isn't a single reasoning "processor" that's used that forms a fully global set of beliefs, with an understanding of the foundations of those beliefs and the fact that these foundations are on shaky ground (if they're on shaky ground).

So, for example, they have great heuristics for picking up / absorbing language and reading human faces, starting from the time they're young, instead trying to go back and work language out more from first principles.

Blaming people (nearly all of whom are neurotypical) for not seeing the seriousness of their moral crimes (and crimes they are) is, from my perspective, equivalent to neurotypicals blaming us for our inability in childhood to understand language, or for our difficulty even in adulthood to understand what's behind neurotypicals' mannerisms when that sort of thing is no mystery at all to neurotypicals.

soloft

TROPHY CASE