Sadism - How far does our lack of empathy go?

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I think it's very easy to fall into the 'It must be something I'm doing wrong' trap

If you look up to see a person glaring directly at you, I fail to see how anything you have done yourself has caused the glare ie if you weren't even looking at them yet on making eye contact they are glaring, they are the ones being aggressive/intimidatory in my opinion. A simple way to test this is to look away and then look back at them again - if they are still staring/glaring you will know for sure that they are being aggesssive. Most people who wish you no harm will look away if you do the look away/look back thing as you are effectively saying 'Are you staring at me?' and they wish to respond 'No'.

In my opinion a lot of people use glaring as a way of trying to reinforce what they see as their social superiority to you - so if you look away you are effectively saying "Yes I agree you are above me in the social hierarchy and I cower at your glare" (lol). By giving them the glare right back with both barrels you are replying "You can f-k right off! I do not consider myself inferior to you; on the contrary it is the other way round!" This I find is the only effective way to put glarers in their place - they are too stupid to understand a more subtle approach and there's the danger they will think they've won the contest if you ignore them.

I can get so angry at the way people habitually attempt to dominate and intimidate others who have done precisely NOTHING wrong to them that in my ideal fantasy I'd pull a gun out and just execute these people on the spot - then humanity will be saved a lifetime of their exceedingly nasty behaviour and we'd all be a lot happier without them! Obviously I'm not going to do this in reality but one can dream!

Imagine a world with no glarers!

That is quite a good answer. They want me to feel intimidated, so they decide to glare, and if I glare back, it gives the impression that I have noticed them and will retaliate without violence or even having to say anything. I've found out that ignoring bullies or other intimidaters is acceptable to some degree, but to always ignore every nasty person sometimes can give off an impression that you're weak. Obviously ignore them in your mind, meaning don't let it get to you, don't get all het up about it for the rest of the day, but at the very time just give them back the same glare they are giving you, and if they don't like it then they know that they shouldn't of glared in the first place, and if they do like it then it can't just be me they're singling out, if they're like that they'd want to do it to anybody. Is that what you mean? Because I will try it and see if it works.

I know I don't look intimidating. In fact I look quite the opposite - very nervous and emotionally weak, which is probably why I get picked upon by other women. What I just need is more courage, if anything. More courage to actually look at a stranger in the eye and non-verbally say ''don't stare at me, I'm just as good as anybody else'', and I can probably get away with this once I get into practice, being that I know I don't act in an unusual way or do anything else that attracts negative attention.

Whenever someone glares at me, it makes me feel threatened. I refuse to look away from them. I'll usually mouth the words "Hi" and is always makes them look away.

What traits do you possess that make you think you're an Aspie? The way you've described yourself, your need to harm and torture animals, your views on people - folks that work in grocery stores aren't 'servants', they're people - seems to suggest you're on the Anti-Social Spectrum, not the Autistic.

I fail to see how lack of empathy has anything to do with sadism. On the contrary, sadism implies that a person feels a positive emotion in response to perception of another persons negative emotion (e.g. A persons suffering makes you happy, therefore you realize that a persons mental state is suffering). This thread should ask about sympathy rather than empathy.

I was diagnosed as an aspie. I can't read intention, which is why I currently don't drive. I feel like everyone is going to cut me off and it's a trigger for my thoughts. I have obsessive interests, I used to be obsessed with collecting things as a kid, I'm a bit of a hoarder, I get anxiety in social situations, I'm a bottom up thinker, I have ADD and OCD, it takes longer for my brain to process information, etc.

When I mention these things to my doctor, he thinks that I have severe depression. Because of the frontal lobe disconnect, my brain doesn't filter out those sadistic thoughts that I have.

Last edited by Shadewraith on 23 Apr 2012, 6:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Quoted for truth.

Empathy is not just the ability to read cues and determine someone's mental state. Empathy and sympathy are closely linked. Empathy is the ability to recognize and share the feelings of others- to put yourself in their shoes. It could even be argued that empathy is a prerequisite for sympathy, though this isn't necessarily true.

I still don't understand what empathy is, and how NTs are claimed to have empathy when they can be a***holes too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy

"Empathy is the capacity to recognize and share feelings that are being experienced by another sentient or semi-sentient being. Someone may need to have a certain amount of empathy before they are able to feel compassion. The English word was coined in 1909 by E.B. Titchener as an attempt to translate the German word "Einfühlungsvermögen", a new phenomenon explored at the end of 19th century mainly by Theodor Lipps. It was later re-translated into the German language (Germanized) as "Empathie", and is still in use there."

"Empathy is an ability with many different definitions. They cover a broad spectrum, ranging from caring for other people and having a desire to help them, to experiencing emotions that match another person's emotions, to knowing what the other person is thinking or feeling, to blurring the line between self and other. Below are definitions of empathy:

Daniel Batson: "A motivation oriented towards the other."

D. M. Berger: "The capacity to know emotionally what another is experiencing from within the frame of reference of that other person, the capacity to sample the feelings of another or to put one's self in another's shoes."

Jean Decety: "A sense of similarity in feelings experienced by the self and the other, without confusion between the two individuals."

Frans de Waal: "The capacity to (a) be affected by and share the emotional state of another, (b) assess the reasons for the other’s state, and (c) identify with the other, adopting his or her perspective. This definition extends beyond what exists in many animals, but the term “empathy” … applies even if only criterion (a) is met."

Nancy Eisenberg: "An affective response that stems from the apprehension or comprehension of another's emotional state or condition, and that is similar to what the other person is feeling or would be expected to feel."

R. R. Greenson: To empathize means to share, to experience the feelings of another person.[citation needed]

Alvin Goldman: "The ability to put oneself into the mental shoes of another person to understand her emotions and feelings."

Martin Hoffman: any process where the attended perception of the object’s state generates a state in the subject that is more applicable to the object’s state or situation than to the subject’s own prior state or situation.

William Ickes: A complex form of psychological inference in which observation, memory, knowledge, and reasoning are combined to yield insights into the thoughts and feelings of others.

Heinz Kohut: Empathy is the capacity to think and feel oneself into the inner life of another person

Harry Prosen: "an emotional understanding which allows one as a therapist to resonate with one's patients in depth emotionally, so that it influences the therapeutic approach and alliance with the patient"

Carl Rogers: To perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person, but without ever losing the "as if" condition. Thus, it means to sense the hurt or the pleasure of another as he senses it and to perceive the causes thereof as he perceives them, but without ever losing the recognition that it is as if I were hurt or pleased and so forth.

Marshall Rosenberg: "Empathic connection is an understanding of the heart in which we see the beauty in the other person, the divine energy in the other person, the life that's alive in them."

Roy Schafer: Empathy involves the inner experience of sharing in and comprehending the momentary psychological state of another person.

Wynn Schwartz: We recognize others as empathic when we feel that they have accurately acted on or somehow acknowledged in stated or unstated fashion our values or motivations, our knowledge, and our skills or competence, but especially as they appear to recognize the significance of our actions in a manner that we can tolerate their being recognized.

Edith Stein: Empathy is the experience of foreign consciousness in general.

Simon Baron-Cohen (2003): Empathy is about spontaneously and naturally tuning into the other person's thoughts and feelings, whatever these might be [...]There are two major elements to empathy. The first is the cognitive component: Understanding the others feelings and the ability to take their perspective [...] the second element to empathy is the affective component. This is an observer's appropriate emotional response to another person's emotional state.

Khen Lampert (2005): "[Empathy] is what happens to us when we leave our own bodies...and find ourselves either momentarily or for a longer period of time in the mind of the other. We observe reality through her eyes, feel her emotions, share in her pain."

Neculai Ioan Fantanaru offered a simpler definition that is worth quoting: Empathy means to be preoccupied by the thoughts and feelings of other people, putting yourself in their place, trying to think like them.

Since empathy involves understanding the emotional states of other people, the way it is characterized is derivative of the way emotions themselves are characterized. If, for example, emotions are taken to be centrally characterized by bodily feelings, then grasping the bodily feelings of another will be central to empathy. On the other hand, if emotions are more centrally characterized by a combination of beliefs and desires, then grasping these beliefs and desires will be more essential to empathy. The ability to imagine oneself as another person is a sophisticated imaginative process. However, the basic capacity to recognize emotions is probably innate and may be achieved unconsciously. Yet it can be trained[citation needed] and achieved with various degrees of intensity or accuracy.

The human capacity to recognize the bodily feelings of another is related to one's imitative capacities and seems to be grounded in the innate capacity to associate the bodily movements and facial expressions one sees in another with the proprioceptive feelings of producing those corresponding movements or expressions oneself. Humans seem to make the same immediate connection between the tone of voice and other vocal expressions and inner feeling."

I think some people actually feel the same emotion as the other person and this means they understand how they are feeling a lot better and for others they just imagine what the emotion feels like and act accordingly.

Having empathy doesn't always mean you're a nice person though as it all depends on how you decide to act on the knowledge about anothers emotions ie you might udnerstand that they feel very sad and lacking in confidence and decide to take advantage of them by offering friendship but with the ulterior motive of getting them to sleep with you. So in that example the empathy has been used for selfish reasons.

I think people just vary a lot in terms of how much they actually feel the other person's emotions themselves and the extent to which they are prepared to acknowledge and act accordingly to their emotions. You can know someone is feeling a certain way but not bother to do anything about it or you could say 'Well when I feel like that person does I like it when someone does this for me, so I will do the same to try and help the other person'. I suppose in that case you will have successfully empathised if what you do does make the other person feel better.

interesting thread.

For those who are interested, I went and saw my doctor today.

Basically, all of these sadistic thoughts and feels are a combination of things. He thinks I'm severely depressed and I've most likely detached myself from almost all of my emotions and conscience. That also explains why I hold people up to the same level as I do insects. He really wanted to hospitalize me, but I refused for two reasons. The first is that I've had a bad experience being hospitalized and I feel it's a good way to make me snap. The second reason is that I'd be under the care of some new doctor and he would probably load me up with antipsychotics, which would be bad. Not sure how many of you are aware of the new study that shows that high doses of antipsychotics causes brain shrinkage. My doctor feels that I'm too intelligent for him to do that. He also feels that once I get my sleep regulated and I start working again, I'll feel better. The guy must really like me because, with all the evidence he has of me having sadistic thoughts, if I were to go out and hurt or kill someone, he could lose his license for not hospitalizing me.

Do I have antisocial personality traits? Hell yes. Am I a sociopath? Not quite.

It's interesting that the Dr wanted to hospitalize you - was that to protect others from what you might potentially end up doing or because he thought you yourself were at risk with having depression?

I have come to the conclusion that I have a very mild version of what you do

ie I would never want to actively go out and harm others myself but other people do anger me a lot and I do de-humanise them in my head as a result. So if I read about a person killing lot of others I either feel neutral about it or part of me actively thinks 'Well done!' ie this person has got back at a society I find mainly evil and I'm partly admiring them but at the same time I wouldn't want to do it myself - far too much hassle! So it's a bit like sociopathy by proxy - let them do all the hard work and I'll just think 'Thats a few less of the evil f-kers most people are' on the planet - well done!

I realise this would be viewed as disturbed thinking by many but if I'm not actively harming others or breaking the law how bad am I actually being?

It does also vary with the category of person being harmed ie of it's a person with learning disability or autism I'll tend to be sorry about it but if it's an average NT type of person I'll think 'Good!' The Holocaust was off the scale evil and unacceptable so it's the perpetrators I'd want killed in that instance.

But the killings prepetrated by Anders Brevik - I don't feel much about that/partly admire him
I know what he did is wrong but I also identify with the idea that why should we have to live in a society controlled by idiotic ideologies that make society worse not better! Sooner or later someone is bound to act and if they are disturbed, the sky's the limit as to what they'll end up doing!

It's all dependent on the value I specifically give to the people being killed, not society's mainstream view

You know, I find your frank honesty to be very refreshing and VERY rare. Most humans are a fog of deceit.

An instinct for violence/murder is natural.......millions of yrs of evolution but we still kill each other , basically we're apes in fancy suits amd ties.

Bruce Lee used to shoot squirrels with bb gun as a matter of fact.

I am not sadistic. I know this. Sure, if I'm angry or envious at/of someone I wish them dead, but I don't want them to suffer. I just want them gone. Out of existence.
((-FAIL.DON'T.READ.THIS- It's...because of this ridiculous sort of...belief (?) I have that I'm not going to describe. Because it is too ridiculous and makes zero sense.
But due to it, I only like certain people (imaginary, I admit) to suffer and don't like how others beside them suffer. It is completely ridiculous because most go through pain in their lives, some go through some extreme things even, and I'd like to restrict it to just a few in a way that doesn't even remotely make sense?))

Nevermind that.
Bottomline - I'm not sadistic. Amoral and selfish - yes, but not sadistic. I can only be purposefully mean to someone if I'm angry and then I'm not in control and nothing I say makes any sense anyhow.