Why do NTs accuse us of Having a Lack of Empathy?

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All humans are basically tribal. It's how we evolved. Or as I prefer to think of it, like most other great apes we form packs. Alpha male and alpha female is how most "groups" operate. Two alpha males in the same group and the weaker one gets forced out. Two equally strong alpha males and the group tends to split. Aspie's do the same thing, our groups just tend to be smaller. It's a behavior humans instinctively follow. When confronted by others, cluster with your own tribe. It brings comfort, it brings safety, it brings billions of dollars of annual income to the alphas....

Collectively, of course. Those who lead get the most. It doesn't matter if we're talking about people or mountain gorillas, the structure is fundamentally the same.

Yes, NewportBeachDude Aspie's group together, particularly when they perceive "other" confronting them. We do it for exactly the same reason NT's do. Six million years plus of survival on the savanna.

As far as empathy AND compassion, I think I have a normal amount, what I DON'T have is any concern for those not of my tribe. Again, it's not an uncommon human trait. I have formed relationships with some NT's, and when something happens to one of them I feel empathy and compassion. What I feel for mankind in general, is not empathy. Why should I? I don't know them, and I don't care about them. What I do feel is compassion, but that often takes the form of anger. I felt compassion for the babies who died of heatstroke in the shelter in New Orleans following Katrina, and that compassion took the form of anger and shame, the shame I felt of my own government and the anger that it was so dysfunctional. I felt compassion for the 5 month old baby I read about yesterday, who took 8 days to die left strapped in his car seat in a snowsuit in an 80 degree room. 8 days without food or water. Left there by his sociopathic parents who may now face the death penalty. I hope they ride the gurney, because my compassion for that child makes me so angry. What I don't feel is any form of empathy for the so called parents... or the ones who raised THEM. I think the planet would be cleaner without that sort of pollution. I felt virtually nothing when someone passed along that a co-worker's infant granddaughter had died from SIDS, instead the first thing that crossed my mind was the baby was in a one bedroom apartment with the grandparent and the parents all 4 of whom smoked... They were all crammed into a small apartment because their house had burned to the ground a month before... with no homeowners insurance... I feel no empathy for stupidity. Ever.

Mum2ASDboy, I totally understand what you're saying.

AspieDave, I'm with you on that last sentence. This is kinda off topic, but my wife and I went to see that movie, "Into The Wild" last year. It's about Christopher McCandless, a wealthy college student who graduates and chucks society to go off into the Alaskan wilderness by himself without a compass, proper food supply, medicine, backup plan, cell phone or any other survival techniques. He willingly put himself in that position and he died as a result. I never feel empathy for that level of foolishness.

Anyway...

Last edited by NewportBeachDude on 24 Feb 2008, 6:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Black Wholes topic

Though I do like gestalt when it comes to geometric patterns and such!

But I do miss the big picture as all the details are very interesting. The parts (in the case of non verbal cues) don't always add up to a coherent whole. It is more like a hole, where the bottom has dropped out.

At any rate, as Sifr and greentea (in another topic) have stated, compassion and empathy are two entirely different concepts. I have no idea how to empathize but I can compash very well.

NTs project their inadequacies onto us. No surprise here.

In my case, it's because I AM a cold-hearted b***h.

Actually, people rarely make this accusation of me because I hide my lack of empathy very well. Or I disappear when someone is upset so they don't know I feel nothing. But if they were to read my mind, it would be blank.

One of the reasons I was very, very happy to discover I am in all likelihood AS is because I thought I was a sociopath because of this. I was actually relieved to discover that this, combined with a lot of other traits I have, add up to something not so dangerous!

I do have loads of compassion for animals and the earth, and for certain groups of people who are oppressed or have been in the past, but on a one to one level, when someone is upset, I would have no idea what to do to make them feel better. Unless it's a problem I can figure out a solution to. But that's not empathy.



Actually, Mum2ASDboy, when I am upset I withdraw and don't want anyone around. I do not want company at all - I want to, I guess, lick my wounds in private. And I've learned to laugh at myself when I get hurt first before anyone else. When I'm hurt, I just want a remedy, I don't want sympathy. I don't offer cuddles, but at this late stage of my adulthood, I've learned to tolerate them when they are offered to me and pretend it's okay so the other person doesn't get upset. That's just my point of view as one Aspie, but it might give you some insight into your son. He isn't rejecting you at all, ever. He's just that way. Maybe he prefers more privacy and space than others. I know I did as a child. Our way of thinking, I'm afraid, is sometimes very much a mystery to NTs.

-J.

I've become convinced that most people don't understand the difference between empathy, sympathy, and compassion; and thus people mistakenly equate "empathetic" with "compassionate." Thus the statement that we have trouble with empathy is probably true, but people misinterpret that to mean we have no compassion. Just because we have trouble seeing things from other people's point of view does not we are unable to still feel sorry for them and want to help them.

I know a lot of NTs that have trouble seeing things from other people's point of view. Most NTs are presumptuous about other people. They're always assuming they know exactly what's best for someone else based on their own experience. Yet they're usually wrong.

I've learned to appreciate the fact that people are all different and I can't always understand other people's feelings and thoughts. I hate being presumptuous.

That's very true, marshall. Among NTs there's a whole range of empathetic ability. Those who have a strong empathy, get ahead the most in society by figuring other's motives intuitively (which means quickly and infallibly) and playing their own cards well as a result. Lots of NTs have very poor empathetic ability, they will screw up in reading another person even to the point of alienating those trying to help them in a homeless situation for example. Good empathy can make you billions - detect a need and fill it, and you're king, says the capitalist world.

I lack what I can primary empathy. But I think you can choose in life how much you wish to care about people. Isnt it better to put the work in, and learn empathy, than to have mirror cells and all the empathy wiring, and then do nothing with it?

I'm still feeling more empathy for the entire population of London, than for the people in my family, even 27 months after the demise of the old London, that I'm still in love with, that took place in the December of 2005.



...and for a very obvious reason, too! I guess that family members get what they deserve, sometimes.

I have both empathy and compassion. I have more of both than a lot of people I've met, actually. I just don't know how to express it a lot of the time.

I don't have much empathy, because the way others react to things is not the way I react to things. Imagining myself in their shoes generates a completely different result. But I have trained myself to look for emotional cues in others and demonstrate the 'right' kind of sympathy most of the time.

I choose to show that sympathy because I have compassion. If that makes any sense.

Speaking for myself, I can empathise pretty strongly.... but often miss the signs of emotion. If someone TELLS me what a terrible time they've been having, I feel truly sorry for them. If they just look really miserable and say nothing, 9 times out of 10 I miss it completely and think they're fine. I can see why that comes across as unfeeling.
On the lack of compassionate behaviour from many supposedly "empathatic" NTs: their ability to genuinely empathise (that is, to care and understand, not just read emotional signals) is extremely varied. And at another extreme, psychopaths don't empathise at all, but are often adept at "reading" people.
I swear so much social conditioning is teaching people when they can safely ignore other's emotions. Usually those of people outside Our Tribe, or lower down in the pecking order. It was probably adaptive back in caveman days.

Because we do not express ourselves typically. Because the media and experts said so.

I don't lack empathy, I just don't understand much in the same way NT's often don't understand me. I think it's more like speaking two different languages than not having empathy.

The thing is a think you need to recognise that yours isn't the only language to see or accept this.