Benefits

[mashman]

It really doesn't matter what the reason is, or how they think. If their childhood, (however long) didn't teach them what behaviour returns positive dividends then they're never going to be a contributor to the economy. Until relatively recently such people simply died, later if their family supported them, earlier if they didn't.

Bullshit. People can change any time they like. It happens every day.

And some people look at me as if I'm some sort of monster.

But I'm right.

Tis probably a look of bewilderment.

No you're not

[Ocean1]

Bullshit. People can change any time they like. It happens every day.

Yeah? Can you remember the last time you saw it happen?

'Cause I've never seen it happen in adults. Never.

Edit: Actually I have. As the result of a permanent head injury. P'raps there's a solution, there.

[mashman]

Yeah? Can you remember the last time you saw it happen?

'Cause I've never seen it happen in adults. Never.

Edit: Actually I have. As the result of a permanent head injury. P'raps there's a solution, there.

Me for starters, in my own sweet way . People released from jail that don't re-offend (at least 1 friend) and become productive members of society. People who kick the bottle (not known any of those), kick habitual drug use (known a couple of those), kick gambling (guilty), kick the stock market (just not hard enough, heh), turn to god (know none of those) etc...

re:edit... That may explain some of the decisions coming out of that funny shaped building doon Wellie way

[FJRider]

Me for starters, in my own sweet way . People released from jail that don't re-offend (at least 1 friend) and become productive members of society. People who kick the bottle (not known any of those), kick habitual drug use (known a couple of those), kick gambling (guilty), kick the stock market (just not hard enough, heh), turn to god (know none of those) etc...

Jail for most that go there ... treat it as no more than an ... "occupational hazzard"

[Ocean1]

Me for starters, in my own sweet way . People released from jail that don't re-offend (at least 1 friend) and become productive members of society. People who kick the bottle (not known any of those), kick habitual drug use (known a couple of those), kick gambling (guilty), kick the stock market (just not hard enough, heh), turn to god (know none of those) etc...

re:edit... That may explain some of the decisions coming out of that funny shaped building doon Wellie way

So between the two of us we only just need the fingers on the other hand.

Hardly the numbers to come close to justifying social policy. Quite the reverse.

[avgas]

I had a think about this. I am wrong.
Everyone should get a benefit. I need an extra $400 so I can put tyres on the bike.


YOU GET A BENEFIT!

YOU GET A BENEFIT!

EVERYBODY GETS A BENEFIT!!!!!!!!!!

[mashman]

So between the two of us we only just need the fingers on the other hand.

Hardly the numbers to come close to justifying social policy. Quite the reverse.

ha ha haaaaaa, if only others knew of people that had turned their lives around

True. Social policy is a bust, pointless to even attempt such a thing... what was I thinking

[scissorhands]

Ummm, Rather than generally thinking of the unemployed as brain damaged or mental, which is sometimes true, many are just different, rather than with disorder.

The world criticises their difference, tells them they're retards and to fuck off, rather than making room for them to work....

Its a confounding situation, a major speed bump in our evolutionary journey. Especially as neurological population ratios are changing rapidly

ADHD and aspergers syndrome unemployed would account for half the unemployed or more. Many are capable of working but dont, because the work place is either hostile and threatening (aspergians) or boring, pedestrian and uninteresting (ADHD).

Both these disorders produce some highly intelligent individuals, who as a resource are underutilised by societies that have yet to learn to integrate their wildly different sensibilities, in a productive and harmonious way.

You guys expect everyone to think like yourselves. WRONG

Currently ADHD and aspergian kids are usually medicated or depressed to the point they suffer from side effects, shame and mental illness. Then after schooling the workplace is the same one-size-fits-all place like school, where in comparison to 'normal' peeps, their needs are different and require a different approach to integrating them.

It doesnt happen and they drop out, become medication dependant Big Pharma customers, or dope smoking hippies, meth heads etc with a chip on their shoulder. The longer they are left to languish without direction the more difficult to integrate them into the workforce.

I was a good worker, but bullying and misfitting into the prevalent neurotypical culture was often hell. Here I was a chimp, being admonished by the gorillas, for not being like them.... I put on a brave face and soldiered on against the wind. But if anyone knows anything about wind stress, or waterboarding.......its torture in the long run.....

I was extra smart and worked 72hour weeks, saved hard and bought my freedom from society, to live out my life without being beat up by my 'family and friends' for being different. How would you like it?

You guys expect everyone to look and think like yourselves. WRONG

We have odd looking faces, maybe big ears, childlike youthful expressions, and because of bullying and lack of acceptance and understanding, we develop real disorders and comorbid illness like addictions and obsessions, digestive problems, depression, anxiety and stress related conditions. Girls get prego young and drop out-solo mums

Many do well in spite of the difficulties, when home life (parenting) and other factors (money and schooling etc) are conducive

Dan Carter, Bill Gates, Bob Jones, Warren Buffet, Richard Branson

But being a freak with bad parenting, bad diet and low intelligence brought about by a dumbed down junk food society, there is usually only one way to go, if there is no one is there to point you in the right direction. Add to the mix a different race, and poverty, and things just get harder.... dont they?

'get a job you loser' needs to be replaced with: how can we integrate or provide an environment that allows these different folk to fit in and be productive

Many are sensitive and intelligent, and/or rotators with crazy obsessive energy, that can become self destructive, like a bored border collie expected to behave like labrador, or a tall person made to live in a house for midgets

My idea for NZ is for Kibbutz style villages away from the mainstream. Or like in Scandinavia they have separate urban communities, where they can feel accepted and loved, instead of like here in 'godszone'. If separation is unworkable or unacceptable, the only other solution is acceptance into current culture. That means the end of bullying, which, may realistically be in the too hard basket....

Many advanced countries have learnt to successfully direct the problematic neurodiverse into employment.

Hopefully NZ can learn to do the same, or begin natal testing and abort neurodiverse babies, like currently 91% of downs syndrome pregnancies......

or keep writing the cheques dudes

The above not only applies to problematic neurodiverse, but everyones lot could improve if the workplace culture was a more harmonious environment.

I was lucky to start working life at Fisher and Paykel. They are an excellent company with very good HR skills and management. I was protected from my neurotypical peers by conscientious wise old men with a loving hand

Try and do the same for another struggling confused young fella in a confusing and hostile world.

I may have gone on to become a manufacturer with a large company and hundreds of staff, if I had been given the right conditions to thrive, instead of struggle....

[Ocean1]

Ummm, Rather than generally thinking of the unemployed as brain damaged or mental, which is sometimes true, many are just different, rather than with disorder.

The world criticises their difference, tells them they're retards and to fuck off, rather than making room for them to work....

That's profoundly true. But the ones I'd like to fuck off are the calculating, lazy bastards that see charity as a career choice.

If I hadn't been born before the alphabet was fully developed I'd have had ADHD. I still score right at the pointy end of adult ADHD diagnostic tools. And you're right, living with different is difficult to the point of daily desperation.

So what to do?
Me? This morning I can either slit my wrists or go to work...

[shrub]

That's profoundly true. But the ones I'd like to fuck off are the calculating, lazy bastards that see charity as a career choice.

If I hadn't been born before the alphabet was fully developed I'd have had ADHD. I still score right at the pointy end of adult ADHD diagnostic tools. And you're right, living with different is difficult to the point of daily desperation.

So what to do?
Me? This morning I can either slit my wrists or go to work...

I have been diagnosed with adult ADHD and it was like someone switched on a light. Suddenly I understood why I behaved the way I did and why what was easy for most people was a huge challenge for me. When I was in my early 20s I can remember an old school friend pulling me aside and telling me that unless I changed things my future was drug addiction, prison or an early death - and probably all three. Given a lot of my mates were doing lag at the time, I knew a fair few junkies and did shit like ride pissed with no helmet, my friend wasn't being overly dramatic.

Things changed after a major crash. Around 100 mph into a (shame) outside toilet in Waihi Beach with no helmet meant over 2 months in hospital and made me stop and look long and hard at my life. Fortunately I had friends and family that got behind me and helped me pick my life up and grow up, but without them I would have slipped back into the status quo.

Since then I have had good and bad, and around 18 months ago a psychologist friend suggested I might have adult ADHD, so I went through a diagnosis process that took nearly 3 months and cost me over $600.00 including a $350.00 assessment by a psychiatrist. Fortunately I had the money because sure enough, I displayed all the classic symptoms and was put on ritalin. It was like switching on a light. I could start a task and finish it without being distracted - as an example I can now read an academic paper then summarise and critique it in a couple of hours. Before that I used to have to break papers up into sections and by sheer willpower make myself read each section, something that used to take up to a whole day to do. I can start projects around the house and finish them whereas before I used to be surrounded by half finished projects, and I now notice stuff like mess - I used to be unbelievably untidy but now I am almost a neat freak.

I count myself lucky and I do not take anything for granted. I own a nice house, a couple of bikes, a high end hi fi system etc. I have a university education, earn good money and my future is whatever I decide it is. I am in a good relationship, have 2 kids that are turning into top adults and good friends, but things could have been so very, very different. The only difference between me and someone who has been on benefits most of his life, or the guy who is in and out of prison is our backgrounds and the things we were taught because it is those things that ultimately decide what choices we make.

[Ocean1]

I'm too old to change. This:

by sheer willpower make myself

is all I've got.

It's been enough to make me successful, by my own standards.

There's a price, though.

And I'll never meet the guy I might have been.

[mashman]

I'm too old to change. This:

And I'll never meet the guy I might have been.

[shrub]

And I'll never meet the guy I might have been.

Yep, I hear you brother. All my adult life I used to beat myself up because I couldn't stick at anything for more than a nanosecond and I used to envy people who could start something and just work their way through it because I thought they were like me, only stronger and more resolute. Using my obsession with bike analogies, it's like thinking I am a crap rider because I can't keep up with my mates and then discovering my choke is out and my tyres are half flat.

I'm just lucky that I have nearly half my life ahead of me. In the year or so since I was diagnosed I have finished a book I started nearly 10 years ago (waiting to hear back from the publisher) and nearly completed a Masters degree.

[Banditbandit]

And I'll never meet the guy I might have been.

Interesting .. when I left the bad boys and finally got clean ... after a while ... I found that the person I was back then would not like the person I have become today ...

But I'd rather be the person that I am today than the person I was back then ... (and I'm still alive .. which might not be true if I hadn't changed )

[shrub]

Interesting .. when I left the bad boys and finally got clean ... after a while ... I found that the person I was back then would not like the person I have become today ...

But I'd rather be the person that I am today than the person I was back then ... (and I'm still alive .. which might not be true if I hadn't changed )

yep, I reckon if any of my old mates saw me know they would probably think I was a complete sell out, but at least I still ride a Triumph not a ricer. And like you I'm alive and have stayed out of prison, so if being a sell-out is the price, it's a price I'm glad I paid.