Tuesday, 9 April 2024 ------------------------ Hello. All is well. Today I only read the secondary book. Mention of pragmatic language impairment sparked my interest. Researching it briefly on the internet, I gather its main theme is difficulty with integrating the social aspect in communication. I find myself conflicted about whether this applies to me. In most situations, I struggle with social communication, but not in all. I think I mainly struggle due to being slow. I can't process a lot of information at once, hindering me from acting appropriately in real-time, yet I'm deeply aware of my shortcomings. I imagine that's why my social anxiety can be intense. In many cases, an inability to uphold prosocial behavior is as painful as physical pain to me. Many misunderstand why I give importance to how I behave in a social context. It's not that I want to be liked. It's that it pains me when I fall short of my standards of what is prosocial behavior. My standards are not absolute. They can be highly misguided if I have limited experience, but as I gain new experience, my standards update accordingly. When I deviate from my standards, it's mainly due to fear of my safety or competency limits in practice (e.g. meltdown). For example, once I felt financially secure, I quit what I didn't feel was right. I had a fear of how I'd survive in the real world, it didn't value what I did, which lead me to stray away from my standards. I knew what I was doing wasn't right, yet no one held me accountable except myself in the end. Today, I find we respect antisocial, parasitic behavior for self-gain. Poor manners are excused by wealth. I can understand the idea of encouraging value creation by selfish monetary incentive. But in practice, I find its execution counterintuitive, shifting from creation to exploitation. I've just realized that most of my memories involve other people accompanied by an affective feeling. I don't have many memories without social interaction. Perhaps that's why I seem to have more memories from my childhood, the time before my social withdrawal. The book mentioned Daniel Tammet, diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, who states he has an emotional response to each number up to 10,000. In effect, he's exceptional at remembering number sequences, performing arithmetic, and mathematics in general. It'd be hysterically ironic if what I think may be the case with me is true. That my brain is wired for learning social patterns, but because of how it processes information, in practice, it struggles with social function. My brain is wired to find patterns in social interactions, and coupled with my dopamine sensitivity, the associated affect's arousal is increased. I believe that may be why social interactions in particular felt more intense after taking stimulants. It explains why I had success curating communities and financial investments by noticing social patterns others perhaps didn't. Why everyone saw me as normal in one to one communication, where I can focus my attention to understanding the other person's mental state. Together with others, I can behave like a monkey, curiously discuss something on an intellectual level, or focus intently on the other person's feelings. If I'm focused, I can sense what the person is thinking, and at many times accurately predict what they'll say before they say it, or what they're trying to say but can't properly express. In recent years, I've mostly communicated with my family. I don't know how they feel about it, but I find that I can provide good advice for prosocial communication which has seemed odd to me because in practice I'm inept. In general, I also find myself dysfunctional because my standards of an orderly person aren't valued by others. Some say I have too high standards, but I say society has too low standards. To be mannered is not to be good, it's simply to be what is expected in a social collective. I do try to avoid idealistic thinking and find what is practical. A pet peeve I have is the notion that we shouldn't care what others think about us, that we should just be ourselves. I find this misguided. I think this idea stems from living in social dysfunction, and that it'll only perpetuate the issue. I find it difficult to believe our society is better off discarding social order. I don't think the answer is society should tolerate us for who we are. I think the answer lies in telling better stories. A lot is unsaid for now. I have to take some time to think this through. I think I'm onto something that explains why my relationship to social life is so absurd and paradoxical. Why I think our social function is our greatest asset, yet my acting self can't properly employ it. It's almost as if god is playing a joke on me, heh.