I used to get in trouble because I was too honest, if I was told "it's naughty to do this", second I saw someone be naughty I'd tell the adult :roll: (Unlike NT's who actually get angry if they hear the ruth)
Even these days I occasionally find myself saying something in honesty that accidentlly puts someone else on the spot if I don't think about the "true value" of a piece of information, and I'm still very open, if someone asks me a question unless I really want to cover it up I'll tell them the honest answer, no telling what they need to know, and nothing more. (Unlike NT's, who'll stay guarded and only let on what you have to know, or a modified version of the story)
I don't dick around with anything that'd endanger someone (Unlike some NT's, I got shot in the back of the ear when an NT kid fooled around with an air rifle, very near miss on my temples, I'd NEVER point a loaded firearm at someone (Unless there was damn good reason))
Nope, I don't see it...
Most of this sounds like ADHD behavior more than anything else. While it is true that a large number of aspires have ADD, it is also true that a large number of aspires have noses. Sure you can say that a large number of aspires may exhibit these behaviors. You can also say that a lot of aspies sneeze. If you turn around and say that the sneezes are caused by the AS, well, you're just being daft.
IMHO, other parts of that article are very well done so people shouldn't let that small section of nincompoopery discourage them from reading it.
It's been a couple of months since I read that article, but I believe it left out one of the most obvious factors connecting aspies crime. We get fired from our jobs all the freaking time just for being ourselves and still have to eat somehow.
Being treated like an idiot an by idiots for $7 an hour makes staying home and selling weed a very attractive proposition. I've not done this for years, but it was truly an act of desperation. As my OCD became worse the paranoia became unbearable and I had to give it up ten years ago. Now I'm back to looking for an idiot to hire me.
I am a high-functioning autistic who taught part-time inside two different prisons. I feel that unforntunately there are a fair number of autism spectrum persons in our prison system. I do not feel this is because there is something innate in autitistics predisposing us to criminal activity.
What I truly believe is that our society tolerates high levels of underemployment and unemployment among those it does not understand or will not financially support. The overwhelming percentage of prison population are poor. Many because they were born into a low income family and our society denies its rigid class nature and most limited social mobility.
Most autistics it seems are poorly understood and badly mistreated by both school professionals and other students. One is going to have little empathy with society when one has been shown no acceptance and understanding. The same circumstance applies in seeking employment - there is little understanding and accomodation and much prejudice against the 'other.' So for some criminal activity might very well be the 'best' employment opportunity.
Many of us autistics who have had massive amounts of various therapies over the decades also become prohibitively expensive for employer-provided private health insurance and will find employment blocked solely for that reason too. Then our society must ask itself what other options it is allowing autistic adults.
Hrmm, actually recent research they've conducted lately is showing higher incidences of psychotic illness and schizophrenia in early/long term/young users:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/pa...109360.stm
*Is 21 and never smoked a cigarette, let alone pot, and is always in a happy mood*
Anyway, on topic are these studies in AS "predisposition" based on interviews, or actual evidence? - Aspie's answer a lot more truthfully, so where an NT might lie thru their teeth to save face an Aspie will tell them outright how they feel?
Many NT's would consider themself the epitomy of model behaviour, til faced with a situation where they can be nasty and get away with it, or find themselves angered. Whereas an Aspie can foresee that he MAY get angry, and thus openly agree it's a possibility, instead of denying it and doing it anyway like an NT does.
I think that there can be some issues.
I try to adhere to a variant of the golden rule with an addenum: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you or as they have done unto you within reason."
That said, not all people with AS have an idea of boundaries. I've noticed that several Aspies I've met do not grasp the concept of "not your food." Never had my food stolen, but seen it happen to others.
On the other hand, NTs steal all sorts of things, with a lot less justification than hunger or a compulsion to eat. I've never heard of anybody with AS taking anything that clearly belonged to another person.
So anybody who tries to portray us as sociopaths with no sense of right and wrong looses here.
The other issue is illogical crimes.
There are plenty of things that are crimes only because some idiot demagogue realized it would look good to his constituents.
These fall into two categories: victimless crimes and social crimes
When it involves such restrictions as drug use, prostitution, and gambling, except in the last case, I've never met an aspie who engaged in self-destructive behaviors, and though I've heard of direct physical harm out of depression for bipolars, I'm not sure how often this would happen with AS. Besides which, with our natural inclination to obey written rules, we'd have to have a reason to disobey them. I occassionally smuggle small fireworks into Massachusetts (snakes, nitrosnappers, my mother brings sparklers), because they're fun and harmless. So breaking an illogical law with conscious reason, eh, NTs do it all the time, and usually with far larger and more dangerous pyrotechnics.
Then there are social crimes, laws either deisgned to prevent idiocy (jaywalking laws because some people can't look carefully before crossing), and things like neighborhood restrictions, with no basis in any rhyme or reason whatsoever.
Again, we have to make a conscious decision every time we jaywalk, most NTs don't think twice before speeding. As for the neighborhood restrictions, we could get in trouble by painting our houses violet, putting a fence around our yard, and sticking in toy windmills, pink flamingoes, and lawn gnomes in the midst of the unfenced manicured white houses, but the only mistake we'd have made is by moving to Idiotland in the first place. The anal-retentive freaks who make these sorts of nitpicky regulations to keep their property values up for other anal-retentive freaks and then prosecute their neighbor for blue doorframes or whatnot seem far more sociopathic than any eccentric who breaks the rules.
Anywhen, I digress, and am now half asleep, without fulfilling my goal by coming onto the forum today in the first place. So I try to clarify my first post in this forum, and if I can't do that, go sleepy-sleep.
Or more likely, I get distracted and post somewhere else instead.
This was my fatigued, ranty, misanthropic tuppence though.
I think apsies are assumed to be more criminal because we are not born with that same inbred packmentality that causes an inherent trust and subserviance to authority.
Not only that, but from my time at KAEC (a public school for behavior problems), I have a strong mistrust of authority figures due being repeatedly assaulted for my "misbehavior." Most of the time, this was me having to go to the bathroom and being completely ignored; pure desperation lead me out of my seat and towards the door, and if I wasn't quick enough I'd be on the ground screaming that I had to pee. To get sent to that facility, I also needed the regular public school teacher to ignore me, and the other administrators to lie about me assaulting somebody with a plastic fork or spoon (I did no such thing).
I've also witnessed authority figures lying about things that I said, things that I did and generally being evil, stupid creatures, for whom no amount of intoxication will ever inspire even a modicum of respect.
Given the moral stigma on disobediance of any kind, added to such a web of lies and the disrespect it inspires in logically thinking beings, it is no wonder psychopathy arose as a stereotype, even in the face of a much greater moral awareness.
So there's my rant for today, hopefully somebody will take something coherent from it.
You raise a point. Unfortunately, there may be something more to it than that.
When rules are nonsensical, I've found that I come to hate the institutions that create them with a passion.
I can recall two incidences where abused teens diagnosed with AS went on a shooting rampage.
I'd like to think that they were medicated.
I went utterly insane, unpredictable, and violent when some genius doctor decided to put me on Zoloft to pre-empt depression, then raised the dosage because everything was still fine and he didn't want to risk that changing. I've met other with AS and similar experiences.
That said, I don't recall seeing evidence one way or the other.
It's worried me for some time that Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczinsky may have had Asperger's, and though fortunately nobody's yet brought it up in the media, I swear I've heard Kaczinski mentioned in the context at least once.
Both very very idealistic, somewhat deranged, incredibly stubborn, and quite anti-social. Other neurotypes might also fit, but even if they had schizophrenia or bipolar it'd still be a threat to neurodiversity if that were taken at the cause.
I do know that we tend to have a very low tolerance for idiots, many of us, which can lead into fantasies about eliminating those we so classify.
Indeed, I have met few people with AS IRL who have not not professed such fantasies.
To counter any inherent danger in these fantasies I note that pparently a majority of college-aged Canadian and American men (according to my psych textbook) have rape fantasies. Few men commit rape despite these images. It would be no more fair to take legal action against those who might statistically have massacre thoughtcrimes than it would be to punish all men because two thirds apparently fantasize about rape.
And even then, I'm sure that neurotypicals also have murder fantasies on a bad day. How many times have I heard somebody in Amherst declare that we need to "kill Bush" or more rarely, "execute all Texans/Republicans" or heard of some Republican talking head who proposes "rounding all the liberals and showing them a real gulag" or "assasinating [politician x]"
So anywhen, I should end this speculative and probably disturbing ramble.
Your point, which is about perception, is a good one. It really is all an issue of perception, and as Owell observed, "if you break the small laws you can get away with the large ones."
There's nothing in McVeigh's biography that suggests autism to me. His friends and the respect he had from superiors while in the army are mentioned, no mention of any conflict with supervisors or unpopularity with peers. Did he have any neurological or developmental conditions or peculiarities?
Not that I'm aware.
I can see ways in which somebody with AS could succeed in the army, remember, we're all different, but it's unlikely that a socially successful Aspier would be misanthropic.
I take it that he's just a sociopath then.
As for Teddy boy, the reasoning behind why he sent those bombs is nuts. Apparently he was copying a novel that he had read when young. Autists aren't known for that kind of suggestible and irrational behaviour. I think his diagnosis of paraniod schizophrenia was correct. AS has been suggested in this case, but I think it's a second-best explanation.
I know that I've found even insane ideas in books rather nifty.
Though I wouldn't go on a murdering rampage based on a book.
And trust me, I've had days when murder has seemed very logical.
Perhaps its that I always bring up the sobering examples of McVeigh and Kaczinski to dispell those thoughts which lent me the association.
Thanks Arle for telling us about Nicholls.
I think this is the way most Aspies get into criminal offending.
Either that or we might have a grudge we might want to take out on society.
I don't like the Box 6 commentary at all:
Box 6 Features of Asperger syndrome that affect an individual’s reliability as a witness
* The risk of misinterpretation of what he has seen or heard.
* Difficulty with the dimension of time. Although the person may recall the sequence of events correctly, his perception of the relative periods of intervening time may be so inaccurate as to make it unclear as to whether he is recounting something that happened the previous day, week or year.
* Difficulty in distinguishing his own actions from those of others, which may extend to a confusion of reality with observed fiction.
* Difficulty with the normal structure of official interviews, whether in the police station or the witness box, where the unfamiliar surroundings and circumstances will increase his disabilities.
* The interview can be distorted by the misinterpretation of rules and relationships, with undue compliance complicated by a rigid tendency to adhere to (and believe in) a story once it is in his head.
Partly because I'm thinking of doing training as a lawyer, and this bit basiclly maks out Aspergers are somehow "too unstable" to be trusted to present evidence, either firsthand or secondhand.
When my experience is that Aspies make very GOOD witnesses, because they present the facts without bias (How many tiomes have you gotten in trouble when a teacher has asked "who did that?" - and you then told them instead of obfucating the truth like an NT in order to cover your friends tracks)
A boy named Adam does that in a novel called Eye Contact.
The first three do and have applied to me in the past.
In addition, the stress and the judgement calls would not make me the best witness.
This can be true in some cases. I have serious impulse control related to my aspergers that means I have a hard time expressing anger in a socially appropriate manner.
Most times I can usually distinguish between what I did and what somebody else did.
But when it's two other people I can't necessarily.
And if the group did it, then I'm in trouble. Because I feel like I did a little bit of it and on bad days I am a 100% responsible for what the group did just because I was part of it.
I don't know if many have that serious group identification I sometimes do.