River: Report on the riparian environment

[mdlbear]

It's been a while since I posted anything with a significant amount of River content; little things like life, the universe, and everything have been conspiring against me. I'm sorry to disappoint you again, but it seemed as though this was a good time for a sort of re-introduction and status report before we continue our journey.

The River posts started out as a journey of personal exploration, concentrating on mental states, emotions in particular, interpersonal communication, and relationships. Along the way they seem to have acquired a second theme of advice, primarily for geeks like me and people in relationships with geeks. (I'll get into definitions in a little while.) How this geeky old bear found himself in the role of slightly bemused relationship counselor is a longish story that has yet to be told in full, but you'll find bits of it in the archives if you're curious.

There seem to be three main types of River posts. There are, of course, general posts that have a brief mention of a River-related topic -- those usually just get the tag. There are the ones that report on, and usually analyze, a specific incident or event from a riparian point of view -- often these have the phrase "on the River" in their title. And finally there are the more carefully-considered posts, of the sort cflute calls "The Mandelbear waxes philosophical", which usually have titles that start with the "River:" keyword.

At any given time I may have a half-dozen or so posts in various stages of writing, and another dozen in the form of a title and a few notes. They often stay in this state for months, until I either get tired of beating on them, or they get triggered by some event, usually on my friends list, that makes them suddenly relevant.

Definitions:

Although there are plenty of terms I use in a somewhat non-standard sense here on the River, the only two I want to highlight here are geek and human. I believe I first started using the pair of them in a technical sense in a post titled Humans are from Earth, geeks are from Saturn.

Geek

This is intended as a humorously self-deprecating, fairly general term that covers anyone who, like me, has trouble relating to and getting along with "normal" people. It covers a fairly wide range, including aspies, people with adult ADD, loners, and in some aspects people who are simply terribly shy. Geeks often have an easier time relating to computers than to people; some of my earlier posts have mentioned "hackers" in this connection.

Human

This is meant as a less disparaging term for "normal" people than things like "neurotypical", which is common in the Aspie community.

I'll note immediately that I'm well aware that many people -- probably including most of my readers, fall somewhere in between the two categories, or have aspects of one or the other in different situations.

Sub-tags:

Here are the tags commonly used for River subtopics. This set changes over time, and posts will occasionally have tags that are used more widely.

c9n

Calibration -- getting or soliciting feedback or corrections (outside of LJ -- inside LJ I'd use "query"). You may have met the practice of using a number to stand for the number of omitted letters in "i18n", the common abbreviation for "internationalization".

comm

Communication

def

Definitions. Often also have "Defining my terms:" in the title.

human

The whole "being human" thing (usually in the context of my abject failure at it).

meta

A post about posting. This post, for example.

np

N-person relationships (where n>2). The definition of np-complete and np-hard are left as an exercise for the reader.

psa

Public Service Announcement. Something I want people to know about me.

psych

Psychology, including mental states, psychopharmacology, and so on.

query

Questions of the readership, often for calibration purposes.

rel

Relationship

Books?

The River seems to have spawned some related writing projects. The first, thought of a couple of months ago and introduced in a post titled The River: it's not just a tag anymore, was the comparatively straightforward idea of turning the first year's worth of posts and some selected comments into a book, A Year on the River. It will require some serious editing, of course.

The second, and more recent (as in just this week), is the idea of writing a pair of somewhat more organized self-help books, tentatively titled Relating to Humans -- A Manual for Geeks and Relating to Geeks -- A Manual Mostly for Humans. I envision them being printed back-to-back, like one of the old Ace Doubles. Anybody else remember those? It would make sense because, as I've noted above, many people fall somewhere in the middle. And, of course, because geeks have most of the same problems relating to other geeks that humans do.

(The initial phrase, currently "Relating to", is up for grabs; additional possibilities include "Living with" and "The Care and Feeding of".)

Naturally, both of these projects will start out as wiki-like websites, so that I can get some help -- I'll need it.

Comments

[mia-mcdavid.livejournal.com]

Just a gentle protest that I consider myself, my husband, and my sons to all be humans, though we are surely all geeks. "Neurotypical" is long and medical, "normal" doesn't work well either...what about "socials" for the other kind?

[mdlbear]

"Socials" might almost work, but it doesn't resonate for me (not to mention the fact that it doesn't work grammatically, which I find a significant stumbling block). "Human" does resonate: I often feel as though I've come from another planet, trying hard but mostly unsuccessfully to learn what all these humans are doing.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

I seem to have a foot in either camp. I function more like a "human", but I have almost no trouble dealing with geeks. I suspect that a lot of this comes from the fact that my ability to function as a human is largely a learned collection of skills; I'm good at paying attention to things, and over time I consciously chose to pay attention to the subtleties of interpersonal relationships. (I've even been nicknamed "Speaker To Geeks", when I had to deal with a gaggle of hardcore programmers, because I could translate between their "language" and the rest of the world, in both directions.)

Or maybe it's just that having two X chromosomes mitigates my essentially technical mind-set.

(Take this comment as you will...)

[mdlbear]

What little ability I have to understand and live with humans is also almost entirely learned, and for the most part fairly recently.

I attribute my recent changes in perception mainly to hormonal changes, so I entirely agree about the X chromosomes.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

I never, ever thought of myself as a "people person" - I mostly thought, and think, of myself as a geek. But people keep telling me that I have "people skills". I strongly suspect that it's a combination of my Priestess training, and the fact that I've simply lived a long time (and thus had more time to learn).

Regarding the X chromosomes... on just about every pop-psych quiz of "what sex is your brain?", I come out right smack in the middle.

[mdlbear]

Geekishness and people skills aren't entirely incompatible -- I'm a case in point -- but it's a rare combination because they probably have to be learned late in life and require a lot of painful rewiring.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

As a pre-teen, back in the Cretaceous Era, I and the three people who would talk to me at all (all boys) came to the conclusion that we were the next evolutionary step after "human"...

[kyrielle]

Hmmm. I thought about this for a long time, because "human" vs "geek" bothered me on several levels, but it was hard to figure out why. I think it boils down to this: if I am "human" and others are not - that to me is a put-down. We are all human, it's a spectrum of experiences.

Neurotypical is medicalized, and it is sometimes used disparagingly by those who use it - but sometimes not. And it is the best term I have heard so far. An NT is wired in a "typical" way to pick up on the social cues more easily. Someone who is not NT can learn to do that - can even pass for NT in some company - but they're putting for an effort that an NT isn't, to work around the wiring in their brain.

I find the use of "human" vs "geek" makes me feel as if I'm being told we are essentially different species, and I don't think that's true. Neither do I like (which I've also heard) the use of "normal" since it implies that non-NT is "abnormal" or freakish, rather than just different. (I think perhaps it may be an NT/human (erk) thing to react this way, because it's based not just on the choice of how to use the word, but on the connotations from existing usage?)

I also have a problem with "geek" in this context because geek already has an existing set of meanings and connotations involving computers, technical stuff, gaming, focussed interests, etc. And I am a geek, IMO. But I'm also neurotypical. I am not a geek as you are choosing to use geek, but I am a geek as the word is used in society at large....

[mdlbear]

One could argue that they're different subspecies -- almost as different in temperament and behavior as dogs and wolves, for example. Maybe more so.

Outsider? Alien? It often feels that way to me. And my personal shorthand for social behavior that I can only understand or emulate by conscious effort is "this whole 'being human' thing".

Yes, it's a broad, approximate spectrum with a lot of overlap -- probably multiple spectra, which complicates things a lot. A lot of what I say about geeks applies to NTs who are merely shy, or socially awkward, or wired as loners without being Aspie.

Yeah, I'd like a better pair of terms, too.