Hierarchies

One of the advantages of being an Aspie is that human-created hierarchies seem very artificial to me. I know that people have to be bosses and not-bosses because that is a convenient way to get things done, but I don't think that the person in the boss role is a better human being than the person in the not-boss role. It's not so much disbelief in hierarchies, it's just that I don't acknowledge a change in status by the position a person holds.

Some of this is an artifact of having grown up in the university world--my father was a professor. He was probably (extremely likely) an Aspie and he didn't play the political game too well at the university. He would never have survived in today's highly political university world.

At any rate, having grown up in that world and having seen how silly the political games are, I never became enamored of Ph.D.=good person. Or any kind of education making a person good.

I have also experienced the care and warmth of people who were not highly educated, not to mention their good sense about people and life. And I have preferred to be in the company of kind, warm, caring people rather than highly educated but cold, and selfish people.

Of course it would be a problem to stereotype. I am a professor myself and I have found a place to be where there are highly educated, warm people who have a desire to help students. It's a place that puts emphasis on teaching rather than research and that suits me just fine.

But I also choose to spend my off-time with people who don't have that education, just because I think that while education opens doors (and as an educator myself, I want to open doors), education can also shape people's minds (the French use the word "formation" for education) and I enjoy being in the company of people who have not been shaped--who, instead, have figured things out for themselves.

I like original thinking and I like being around people who have thoughts that are different from mine. A person like that might be one of my colleagues in my department or it might be the guy who repairs things and moves furniture at my college (he is a good thinker and fun to talk with). Such a person might have a lot of education or may have quit school after the eighth grade. To my mind, I think it is important to listen to everyone and to be aware that everyone has something to offer. That is the gift of Asperger Syndrome--that while social unawareness can be a problem, status and hierarchy don't get in the way of developing friendships across a wide spectrum of people.