Autism and Egalitarianism

I am a very high-functioning autistic. What that means is that I go through life oblivious to what you find obvious.

You see, dear reader, to me it is as if the people around me are dancing to some silent music and I, I have no choice but to try to dance with them.

So I try very much to be my best self without regard for how others think of me. This is not courage, but necessity. Were I to be concerned with others opinions I would be paralyzed by fear and doubt.
For only with the greatest of difficulty  can I come to know those opinions unless I explicitly ask them - and even then, would I hear the truth?

"Fitting in" for me is thus a fools errand. Better not to try, and be my best strange self. I have some coping mechanisms to help me function in society.

First, I use  intellect when others would use  instinct. Happily, I'm intelligent enough for this to work, but deciphering social relations intellectually does not help me participate in real-time interactions. For that, I have other strategies. I am kind and generous, I try to be polite and when I do give offense I seek to make it clear that there is no malice.

Essentially, I try to be a nice, likable person, so that people will be patient with me, interpret my words and actions generously, and generally put up with my excentriccities. And I am honest. An effective lie is only effective if I can juggle who knows who, who "knows" what, and what people want to believe. Thus keeping up even a small lie is for me very burdensome. Or to quote Mark Twain: "If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything".

How does this inform my politics?

Well for one, I'm an egalitarian. Now, I could offer various moral or practical arguments for this position. But I won't. Because fundamentally, my egalitarianism is an instinct born of my autism.

How am I supposed to move through the dance-floor if there is not single tune music and dance, but different musics and different dances that change depending on, say, relative social status?

I cannot.

The present world is an unequal world.  It tries to force me to navigate social hierarchies and power relations, relationships between superior and inferior, to divine and then flatter the sensibilities of the powerful.

I rebel against this world. It is cognitively difficulty for me. I long for a world where it is enough to enough for me to treat people as people, with kindness and generousness, and none find that confusing or remarkable.

That world I could bear.