Epiphany
I think I just figured something out about why I clash with people who rely more on etiquette than I do in their social lives.
The Marines have a lovely thing called the "continuum of force" which posits multiple levels of conflict escalation: compliance, passive resistance, active resistance, bodily harm and lethal force. Because I'm slightly less sensitive to verbal carrots and sticks (assuming I even process them as such), to the people trying to use them on me I probably seem to be in an unwarranted state of passive resistance. So they escalate to a little more "contact" with me, and because by default I'm thinking we're still at the compliance level, the escalation seems like a threat and I jump straight to active resistance. It's like when two animals are conflicting -- if one of them flashes a fang the other has to see it for it to have its intended effect, or else there'll probably be blood.
The Marines have a lovely thing called the "continuum of force" which posits multiple levels of conflict escalation: compliance, passive resistance, active resistance, bodily harm and lethal force. Because I'm slightly less sensitive to verbal carrots and sticks (assuming I even process them as such), to the people trying to use them on me I probably seem to be in an unwarranted state of passive resistance. So they escalate to a little more "contact" with me, and because by default I'm thinking we're still at the compliance level, the escalation seems like a threat and I jump straight to active resistance. It's like when two animals are conflicting -- if one of them flashes a fang the other has to see it for it to have its intended effect, or else there'll probably be blood.