Nonperson wrote:
I don't think most people are consciously aware of "acting out of self-interest". It's something one realizes later, through detached observation. For instance, helping the poor in your city/country is self-interested on some level: it's in your interest to live in a society with a tradition of helping the poor, in case you or your child is poor someday. It also reduces the risk that the poor people will turn on you and create social turmoil. But that reasoning is not what goes through a person's head when they help the poor - they act on instinct/emotion. They see someone suffering, empathize with that person, and help them. They are wired to do so. The "self-interested" reasons for doing it I gave are an attempt to recreate the reason that wiring is there in the first place, not the actual conscious reasoning behind the decision.
The problem we have is that we don't necessarily have the same instinctive reactions everyone around us does (although we probably have some, they might be different, muted, jumbled...) and this leads us to reflect more on the ultimate meaning behind the behavior. That isn't something NT's are likely to even think about, unless they're trying to justify their actions after the fact or are psychologists. They feel the same way most people around them do, so they trust the feeling.
EDIT: for instance, an NT who is putting someone else down and embarrassing them publicly probably isn't consciously thinking "if I do this it will prove I'm superior to this loser and increase my own status", but rather, only thinking "that person is a loser", feeling contempt/pride, and acting on it without questioning it at all.
Wise words. This helps a lot. How come I oppositely most people have to find out how to act/live...I suppose it's AS? It's like I have to "construct" a "scripted" personality, while people normally don't consider such things.
That's what I mean when I say NTs seem to care less than I often do. They just do what they feel like (generalizing much here), without considering whether the actions taken are basically evil/unfair (putting someone else down and embarrassing them publicly is an evil act in my eyes even though I know it is "just" a part of the human pack mentality). Some people don't mind taking this very far. Really despising those with lower social status. I realise it's to a large extend the human pack mentality I consider evil.
16 May 2013, 7:08 am
