Four and a half years later....

'Even though the various agencies involved in your claim should share information, you still have a specific responsibility to notify each agency of changes to your status which may have a material impact on your claim, even if you do not expect those changes to actually affect your claim.''

In the end, the substance is quite similar to the advice given by the lawyer: ''it doesn't make sense to you, but you still have to do it''. It's actually a legal requirement. (Took me 4 weeks to get that part.)

Dear Schopenhauer, just reading your posts and appreciating your passion for things to be done correctly by all and for details to be correct. I am wondering, while currently only a few months into the 2 year wait for official assessment for Asperger's Syndrome myself, if you might like me be 'on the Spectrum'???
If you are interested in investigating this, it is easy to find the NHS self test. It is called the AQ50.
A friend had said to me several times that he thought I may have Asperger's as he has, and for a long time I ducked it. But since doing the questionnaire and being accepted on the waiting list, I have come to own it as it explains such a myriad of individually small differences between myself and others that I had been aware of since childhood.

Very best wishes,
Denby

Dear Denby,

What a coincidence: just this week I was wondering about all you wrote, myself! In fact, just yesterday I booked an appointment with my GP because I suspect I might be 'autistic'. The things you mention are the ones normally 'explained' by these people who supposedly think they have figured out other people. But here's some questions:

1. are the differences between me and the majority of other people really that small? It seems to me they are gigantic.

2. who is 'normal' ? For example, I seem to do none of the things most other people do: getting married, going to the pub with friends, etc etc... You probably have read what I wrote about about being completely isolated. But you'd be surprised how many of the most famous and best minds, advised to be alone rather than with other people. Schopenhauer explained that, 'although when we are born we are surrounded by our parents and siblings, and being alone is not an ideal or natural state, it is by far the lesser than two evils: for you will immediately be able to dispense with the innumerable problems that are presented to you when you deal with other people. For most of them are intolerable, foolish, selfish, and better avoided.'

And so on...Interesting, uh? In a world where everybody and their dog seem to believe that if I do the same old things like the majority of the population does, such as becoming an accountant, getting married, going to the pub, playing videogames, and numbing my brains in various ways, then I 'fit in', and if not, I am weird.

Well, I am. And am proud of that . And you should be, too.

And yes, I too have one or two main things I am deeply interested in, which I have done for years and have become very good at, such as music.

So what I am really trying to say, is: are we that are excessively detailed, or other people who are sloppy? Are we who are 'too focused on one or two things', or other people who are jacks of all trades, and masters of none?

Here I go with my 'long winded' arguments. (I pull out this excuse just to make other people believe that I fit in. In reality, I am quite sure that nothing I say or write is useless or unnecessary. Well sometimes it can be, but is being more generic, better than being more detailed? I wonder....).

But yes, you might be right about autism. I had already taken some generic tests and the results are all similar: 'past borderline indicators', 'light autism', etc. Some of the signs I don't have, for example I am very good at discerning how people feel, for example I can immediately notice if they are bored, discouraged, sarcastic, etc.

About jokes, that's an interesting one....I always hated jokes, and yeah, never really got them. But I literally learned to have a sense of humour, believe it or not. Several times has happened in a class for example, that I said something and everyone laughed.

Numbers and dates: I hate numbers. And I never remember dates, unless I intentionally memorize them, which takes a lot of work. I just think dates are mostly trivial. Unless they aren't, of course.

Anyways...to me, being detailed, if the details are relevant and important, is a virtue Or, as is commonly said: the devil is in the details! Thank you Denby, and I too wish you all the best.

S

PS. but other things I do definitely match the patterns.... I'd rather do anything on my own rather than with other people, in general other people seems to me an annoyance that I should circumvent. But again, is that a 'bad' thing? I think most people just waste my time. Some do not, and when I find the latter type, I am absolutely grateful and amazed. Some people seem to speak a different 'language' ,: no matter how you explain something to them, while trying to be careful not to be rude or impatient, they just don't get what you are saying. They want you to be as sloppy as they are. These encounters are to me astonishing. But then, you explain the same thing to someone else, and this person immediately get what you are saying. Such a case was the lawyer I was talking to yesterday.

My theory, is the same as the one given by Schopenhauer which I love because it also seems funny: 'people with nothing in common never seem to agree on anything, no matter how trivial. Conversely, people who are alike, which means the majority, which is mediocre, seem to have known each other for years, as soon as they meet for the first time.'.

Is my obsession with Schopenhauer and other thinkers, a sign of autism? Or does my excessive interest for them stems from the striking insights they can offer, which I find nowhere else?

I tried CBT and it seemed to me riddled with fallacies and simplistic answers (but some of the stuff is useful.). Sorry for being long winded again, this is the last time I do it here, I promise.

I wish everyone here all the best, and I hope you succeed in the battles against the DWP. (I really have no better term for these.).

On a funny note, I now think I succeeded in my own battle because I might be autistic.....ha ha.

PPS. and Denby, I think these questions on the AQ50 seem overly simplistic and even dumb....for example the question 'I notice small sounds when others do not.'.

What sounds, and where? What is it meant by 'small'? It's like asking how long a piece of string is. If I am in a crowded shop is one thing, if I am in a Buddhist temple or a church or at the graveyard is another.

Does 'small' signifies 'trivial' or 'unimportant' ?

Or 'I become strongly absorbed in one thing and lose sight of others'. Well, for a start, we can only really focus on a thing at a time. This can be easily demonstrated: take two people and have them talk about something completely different from each other, to one person. Obviously the person listening will have a problem understanding much of anything.

'People tell me I am rude even when I think I am not'. My understanding is that this is related to patience: now if you are having a comfortable life (even for a time) you will have more patience. If you are dealing with other problems, you'll have less patience. And when you find someone who seems to 'speak another language', as I wrote before, then is anyone's guess what happens next? I'll either leave, or I show my displeasure. For if this weren't true, it would mean that there's no fools around. Is that really the case? I am really skeptical about that. I was explaining a problem I was having somewhere, which to me seemed really obvious. The person listening just would not get it, and I tried to rephrase, simplify, etc, but nothing worked, so in the end I gave up and said that he was too stupid to deal with. Ugh.

Was I wrong? I don't mean from the point of view of conformity, but from an objective point of view.

And here too, I am writing too much. Yeah, I know. But is, again, conformity, better than insight and observation? Of course, not everybody will be interested in my 'blather'. But someone might.

So it seems to me that these tests and questions are really saying: do you conform, rather than 'are you doing things 'right'?

In other words, they are, at best, subjective. They might not be if I focus on small details that are trivial. But just because a detail is small, doesn't necessarily follow that it must be trivial.

Ok, I'll shut up now. Thank you again, Denby. Your thoughts were certainly not irrelevant.

after a bit more research, I seem to understand this: being autistic deals more with trivial and small detail, like car plate numbers etc, whereas I don't think like that at all. I am long winded and thorough, but if you open up any philosophy treatise you'll notice exactly the same, they are long winded. But just because something is long winded, doesn't mean it offers trivial detail. I try to understand how stuff that is important to me, works. The importance is objective, we are talking about having enough to live on, here, vs being poor, and there's also the additional element of injustice.

No kidding I am going to understand how it all works.