Autism and Social Distance

Note: This article was written on March 23, 2020.

Social rules don’t really make sense when you stop and think about them for five minutes. What people take to be “rude” or “polite,” what kind of manners you’re supposed to have at the table, what you’re allowed to say… there is rarely any rhyme or reason to it.

For example, it was traditionally polite for a man to hold a door open for a woman. Now, some people might take offense to this tradition, claiming that it comes from an assumption that women are weaker than men.

In the South, calling women “ma’am” is just showing respect to the ladies. But in other places, “ma’am” is reserved for the elderly, and calling a young woman “ma’am” is a hideous insult.

There are also certain actions that are said to be “off-topic” or “inappropriate” for certain get-togethers. It might be considered impolite to talk about something with one person, but just fine to talk about the same subject with a different person in a different time and place.

For the longest time, these kinds of things really confused me. See, I have autism, and autistic people like consistency. In this respect, they are very much like every person. But their desire for consistency is greater than normal because of their condition. If something does not fit into the systematic, logically consistent framework of the autist, then it becomes a big question mark. Social interactions fall into this category.

Of course, we are given reasons for these customs and standards by our parents and teachers. But an examination of foreign cultures and historical cultures (for the past is a different country) reveals that these customs and standards were often very different in these places and times from the modern view. They are arbitrary and relative with regards to time and place. They were not drawn up in a laboratory or in a think tank and then propagated to all mankind as a universal standard. Rather, they gradually emerged over time, as the consequences of the decisions of millions of people.

Does this mean that we can ignore these customs and standards at our own pleasure? Of course not. Humans need these sorts of things in order to be civilized. Following a culture’s rules is an outward sign that you understand and respect that culture and the people it consists of. To give an analogy, the rules of basketball could have been different, and there’s no reason why it couldn’t be different. But if you play basketball, you have to follow those rules to prove you’re a good sport. Nobody likes the outcast that won’t play ball.

Speaking of games, scientists have discovered that children’s free play has a number of advantages for their upbringing, especially when it comes to preparing for adulthood. By engaging in free play, children learn to anticipate others and react accordingly. A certain idea of the rules forms such that, even though each child may have a different idea of what the rules are, they are still able to play the same game. Given what I’ve covered about the nature of customs and standards in society, I believe that there’s a connection here.

So how does this tie into autism? Before I answer that question, I must make this point: autism is a mental disability, an illness, a defect. This may be considered offensive by some parents and people with autism. But as a person with autism who has reflected on my experiences and as someone who has looked into human sociality in depth, I cannot see it in any other way. To be sure, people with disabilities might have fascinating insights they gain from struggling with these disabilities, but they are disabilities nonetheless, and, as someone with autism myself, I’d say that it’d have been better for me to have had my full faculties from the start.

That out of the way, an autistic person’s disability, generally speaking, inhibits their ability to communicate and socialize with others, especially his peers. Throughout my childhood, I had a hard time getting into free play games with others, preferring instead to simply talk to them one-on-one about my own interest, or walk around. The rules of conversations irked me because I didn’t understand them. When I saw two people talking, I felt I couldn’t interfere. So I didn’t. I stayed on the sidelines a good deal of the time. Rather than learning the rules, I stood aside, intimidated.

I believe that these feelings shared by a lot of people these days.

See, customs and traditions can change. Most people can get used to and rationalize this change given enough time, sure. But what if things are changing all the time? And in really odd ways? I think that’s the situation we’re in right now. We’re living in a world where progress has reached a breakneck pace. Technological innovations are being pumped out all the time. The technical knowledge college students learn is rapidly made outdated. New social rules and laws are put into place all the time. We’re told that this is progress, that things are getting better. And maybe they are. But I don’t blame people for getting confused by it.

To give one recent example, our leaders have reacted to the Wuhan Coronavirus with wild measures. When one thinks about it, limiting freedom of assembly, shutting down private businesses, implementing a policy in which people aren’t allowed to go outside? These are radical measures for a virus that’s only killed 5,000 people worldwide. By contrast, tuberculosis killed 1.5 million people in 2018. Whatever one thinks of these measures, justified or not, they are unprecedented in modern history.

And that’s terrifying. These new norms were implemented so suddenly that it could make ones’ head spin. Now we have to do “social distancing”? What? Huh? What even is this? And how long will this panic last? Nobody really knows, not even the people in charge. We’re all panicking because there’s nothing like this.

Me? I find myself taking a step back and recognizing this for what it is: another sudden, radical change that will confuse everyone just as it confuses me. That’s the sort of thing autism does.