SomeoneMe2, your post was beautifully written and very sad.
I’m going to try to answer the question you started with.
Most people (maybe you too?) tend to take the path of least resistance. To understand this, just watch a stream of water flowing down an incline and see how it finds the most efficient way to get to the bottom. Mitzvah observance (both bein adam laMakom & bein adam l’chaveiro) requires focus, precision, effort, calculation and WORK. A lot of the time it makes you feel that you’re climbing up a steep incline, panting and puffing, not sliding leisurely, lazily, down the path of least resistance.
There’s a tendency in our generation to get all spiritual and mystical and look for Segulos to get us where we want to be, instead of working on ourselves. People love telling stories and conjuring up all kinds of magical theories of why and how things are the way they are. It makes them feel good.
To say that an autistic person has a special Neshama sounds perfectly lovely. To accept this person the way he is, to relate to him as an equal, to be sensitive to his needs, may require some effort. (This is no different, by the way, than the effort required to be pleasant and considerate to one’s neighbor, child, spouse, parent etc) Why bother?, may be the thought process for many. That word- “effort” – is a no-no.
I don’t think most people are intentionally cruel. I think what you’re seeing is that they (unfortunately) just can’t be bothered to work on their own Middos and their own Avodah bein adam l’chaveiro.
I hope many people will read your post and pass it around to even more readers. If you bring about a heightened sensitivity in even one person, you will have accomplished a wonderful thing.