Back in mid-October, I added the state flag counter to go with the international one. Over the course of the past month or so, I've had visitors from 49 states (including one very annoying visitor from State College, PA) and the District of Columbia. I have had visitors from every US state EXCEPT North Dakota. So, to try to rectify this sad situation, I've resorted to entitling this post in the way that you can see.
Come on! There must be at least one North Dakotan interested in philosophical Taoism. I'm not greedy. It doesn't have to be the entire city of Bismarck, Fargo or Minot. Just one measly individual. You don't even have to stay long -- Just pop in and then go on your merry way.
Come on! There must be at least one North Dakotan interested in philosophical Taoism. I'm not greedy. It doesn't have to be the entire city of Bismarck, Fargo or Minot. Just one measly individual. You don't even have to stay long -- Just pop in and then go on your merry way.
So does your asperger's let you get annoyed at people but not let you feel empathy? Sounds fake to me. Kind of like a "Look At Me Everybody!" type of made up thing to explain away your foibles.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like a catch 22 to me. If you know something's happening and let it continue to happen, you really have no reason to claim you have some affliction.
And I think you really do feel empathy, but maybe you just don't express it. At least, people with "asperger's" usually recognize that they should be responding to something but are too anxious or insecure to respond to it (as opposed to autism, where the people don't even recognize situations in which a response is necessary).
I guess people will take any excuse they can not to improve themselves. Yes, read your dusty old philosophy texts and try to distance yourself from the ancestor worship included in it, by all means, but try to improve a personality flaw? Never! I have a VERY REAL CONDITION!
Have you ever even gone to a psychiatrist or are you self-diagnosed, like 100.0% (to four significant figures, but obviously it is a hair lower than that, maybe by 10 to the power of negative ten) of the people out there who claim to have that "very real condition" called asperger's?
ReplyDeleteFuck, dude, going through wikipedia pulling out symptoms doesn't qualify you as a doctor. Those people go to medical school for a reason.
People with AS are typically viewed by others as weird, strange, odd or eccentric. AS folks have great difficulty making friends and always seem awkward in social situations.
ReplyDeleteSo are/do nerds. At least they celebrate being different, rather than calling it an affliction.
Or try to put themselves on the same plane as people with autism. Oh "high minded autism", that must mean you're REALLY SMART aren't you, like RAIN MAN, who had a very real autism! Or maybe you have no idea what autism is really like and it's romantic to identify yourself with it.
ReplyDeleteI realize you're trying to bait me to get into an argument with you, but it's not going to work. Believe what you want.
ReplyDeleteHow truly aloof. Maybe you really are a unique and beautiful flower. I'm sorry I ever doubted that you have a (fake) condition.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure your psychologist is well qualified, since it only takes 4 years and a 2.5 gpa to graduate with a degree (in the arts) in psychology. And then another six months "at" the university of phoenix for a PhD!
And then, to make you take a 50-something question in a pop psychology booklet? How scientific!
You consider yourself a skeptic, but happily swallow that bullshit as some kind of life-changing cure all. It's no wonder you think a centuries old philosophy is still pertinent. Maybe some day you'll be a guru, teaching all the lost children about the wonders of the fourth way! Or whatever other pap you feel is just furtive enough to seem like wisdom.
Yup. Why I believe in a police state.
ReplyDeleteWow. How ironic. Seems to me like anonymous needs to take an Empathy 101 class as well!
ReplyDeleteIt's very unfortunate though, if what you say is true, that you are unable to feel empathy, because without empathy there is no wisdom. Empathy is not just an emotion, its an understanding, based on sensitivity and mindfulness of your surroundings, and the ability to make a REAL connection with another, on a level much deeper than is ever possible through purely intellectual abstraction. Empathy is the fusion of the heart and mind, to share in the experience of another through understanding. It is what makes us distinctly human, without it, your awareness of the world will be severely atrophied, the difference between seeing the world in color or in black and white, or 2 dimensional versus 3 dimensional. Empathy is a sense, and the lack of, is similar to someone who lacks any other sense, like someone blind or deaf.
Empathy can be developed. People can learn how to be more empathic. However, if your lack of empathy is the result of brain damage, that will certainly be more difficult. Kind of like a person who is born blind trying to see.
However, for those who still have the potential, which I won't necessarily rule yourself out, empathy can be developed if you choose. The key is in your attention, mindfulness, and sensitivity training. If your not good with people, start with plants and animals. Observe them closely. A good way to improve your sensitivity is to cultivate the arts, take up painting or drawing, or a musical instrument, skills that require careful observation and attention.
I think that what may be annoying anonymous, is that you don't seem to be interested in improving your situation. You say that you lack the ability to feel empathy, and you seem content to just leave it at that. Do you not have any interest in developing your ability to feel empathy? Do you see no value in it? Seeing as though you claim the inability to feel empathy, its possible you don't even really know what it means, and that perhaps you need to revise your definition of it. Its far more than just being an emotion, and their is absolutely nothing fake about it. If a person is lying about "feeling someones pain" to perhaps make the person feel better, they are not really feeling empathy at all. Empathy is always based on honesty, without honesty there is no empathy.
Cym,
ReplyDeleteI don't know what to tell ya. I've tried very hard to develop empathy -- I used to be a social worker with abused kids -- but it's simply a no-go. I happen to be a very sympathetic person, but not an empathetic one.
Part of it has to do with the fact that I seem incapable of correctly reading body language and social cues which is a common trait of Asperger's. What may seem obvious to the average person usually flies right by me and it has nothing to do with a lack of attention and mindfulness.
P.S. This sure is a weird discussion about a post concerning North Dakota!
ReplyDelete@ Cym: I think this is where Jungian/MBTI personality theory can come in handy. From his description I trust RT is a Thinker rather than a Feeler, and indeed Thinkers may well say that it is our intelligence or logical sense, rather than our capacity for empathy, that makes us distinctly human. (For the record I don’t think anything makes us distinctly human other than having branched off the chimpanzee family some several million years ago.)
ReplyDeleteI lack empathy as well. In your paragraph about developing empathy (the second to last one), you are taking an extremely F approach—in fact, an extremely Fi (introverted feeling) approach—to developing empathy. Someone in whose personality Fi is an extremely weak function (such as mine) will not be able to develop this “quintessentially human” trait, and not coincidentally such personalities are generally not very artistic either. Artists tend to be INFPs, ISFPs, etc.
Am I interested in developing empathy? Not really. Does that mean I see no value in it? Not at all. I am glad there are people of different personality types who have created great works of art, great novels, etc. However, my own personality type has its own strengths, and I am happy about those. I don’t think my lack of empathy makes me non-human, and frankly it seems a little arrogant to suggest it does.
I think my friend Dasein36 has touched on an important point. Each of us has certain innate abilities and intrinsic attributes as well as certain limitations.
ReplyDeleteFor example, my dad is tone deaf. He can listen intently to a song and be very mindful of it, yet he cannot sing it back to you with the same meter and anything resembling the same tune. In his ears, it sounds like he's replicating it note for note, but, to almost everyone else, it sounds altogether different.
For those of us who lack the capability of empathy, we may try to be empathetic in our own way, but it doesn't come across that way to anyone else.
There have been times in my life when I have tried to express the utmost sympathy for someone else and they accuse me of being aloof, cold and arrogant. This was not my intention in the least and my reaction doesn't play that way in my head.
Interesting that you say that Dasein36, because I've taken that personality test many times, and test very strongly as an INTJ. I am an INTJ who is also very empathic, so go figure. I would be very interested to know if Rambling Taoist knows what his personality type is. Personally I don't think he's an INTJ, as I'm usually very good at discerning that type, and would be very surprised if he was, but I would agree that he's probably a thinker, and obviously introverted as well, but probably more likely INTP, or ISTP. Why don't you take the test and let us all know. Just curious. Maybe you could even make a post about it, and take a reader poll to see what everyone's personality types are here, and see if maybe certain types predominate here.
ReplyDeleteI think the disagreement we have, or difference of opinion, stems from a difference in our understanding of empathy. I see empathy as an aspect of intelligence, the ability to accurately read people and situations, to relate to them, to understand them, to have the ability of putting yourself in their place. And that is why I made references to attention and mindfulness, as being essential to developing empathy, because being able to accurately read people is dependent on your observational skills. I don't see that as being contrary to once aptitude for logical reasoning. I see that as an enhancement. Regardless of differences in personality type, everybody has feelings, no matter how much of a logical thinker you may be. No one is exclusively a Thinker or a Feeler. And as an INTJ I don't consider empathy to be the exclusive domain of a so-called "Feeler".
ReplyDeleteCym,
ReplyDeleteRe the second of the two latest comments, as a detail-oriented person, I have really good observational skills but that does not equate to being able to read people accurately. Just because someone can see what is happening this does not mean you will necessarily understand it or be able to make sense of it. Often, the way most people react to situations seems completely irrational to me and, even when they explain the why of their reactions, it STILL doesn't compute in me noggin.
Still, your reply doesn't negate the necessity of having good observational skills in being able to read people, and more specifically, empathize with them. Of course, you need more than observation skills to read people, but it begins with that. First you observe, then you interpret what you observe. To empathize with someone, you first need to carefully observe an listen to them (mindfulness and attention), and then you compare and connect it to what you know, intellectually and experientially.
ReplyDeleteAlso, in one of your earlier posts, about your wife getting scratched by your pet (or something along those lines), of which you commented at being completely oblivious to her reaction. You mean to tell me that if someone get's scratched or bit by an animal and they yell out in pain, that would appear to be an irrational response to you? You know pain right? You should be able to relate to that. You empathize with someone by linking their experience with your own, finding a common ground.
Don't be ridiculous, Cym. He has asperger's. He doesn't recognize irrational shows of emotion like screaming out in pain due to getting hurt. It's a very real condition.
ReplyDeleteIt's silly, over-diagnosed, self-diagnosed bullshit. It's an excuse for avoiding anxiety and not improving oneself. It's not science-based medicine, but behavioral diagnosis. Psychology is very often subjective and imperfect (we still have people in the field who believe long-disproved myths just because they were put forth as canon by Freud).
What gets me is he trumpets this fake condition as if he is proud of it, "look at me, I'm different, I'm weird, I don't fit into normal society!" but making this observation discredits it. "She was screaming out in pain because she was hurt but I didn't understand her reaction!" He says he's "moderately autistic", evidence that he has never dealt with actual autism, which isolates people in far more real ways than feeling embarrassed to show an emotional response.
It's sickening.
I know that you believe what you are stating makes perfect sense to you. I'm simply stating that it doesn't always make sense to me.
ReplyDeleteRe the situation with our dog and my wife, Jasmine jumps on her all the time and, except for this one instance, Della's never reacted that way before.
As an overly literal person, I sort of catalog people's responses and, when one doesn't match up to what I would expect, it puzzles me.
Interesting, Cym. I still question your valuing empathy as the hallmark of humanity however, but obviously you are correct that other types (i.e. non-Feeling types) can develop it. I just don't see the need to.
ReplyDeleteI would be interested in RT's type as well. He took the test that I posted on my blog twice, and got two different results, neither of which I expected. I agree with you, Cym, in my expectations of what RT's Jungian type would be. (As disclosure, I am an INTP.)
Anon,
ReplyDeleteWhat is very palpable here is that you are a very angry person. Why are you so angry? Who has dun you wrong?
As a social worker, I worked with a good number of autistic children and adults. Their limitations spanned the gamut. Some lived solely in their own worlds in a group home setting or an institution, while others held jobs and lived independently.
There is no one pure definition of what autism entails or how it impacts different lives.
Do you have any personal experience dealing with an individual who is autistic? A son or daughter? A sibling? A friend? Someone else? And, if so, has it caused you grief or caused you to be angry with the world, in general?
Dasein36. I value both empathy and intellect, and believe that both are important to cultivate. The reason why I focus on empathy being what makes us uniquely human, was in relation to the field of artificial intelligence. Computers and robots may be developed to think, to be an intellectual genius of some kind, but I don't believe they can ever be programmed to feel empathy. Whereas Human beings are thinkers AND feelers and capable of empathy. Although (non-human) animals may feel, and perhaps think to some degree, I don't believe they are able to feel empathy. But I could be wrong. In my opinion empathy is more than a feeling, but is the fusion of thinking and feeling, and is primarily a human trait. It's not all that makes us human, but it's what sets us apart both from other species AND from machines.
ReplyDeleteYeah I'd really like to know what RT's type is too. Hint, hint. It is helpful to take it more than once though, perhaps try out different tests, to pinpoint your correct type. The results are only as accurate as the responses you give.
Cym,
ReplyDeleteI took the hint! :) My results are posted on the blog.
My goodness, I think everyone needs a time out...everyone, go meditate for an hour.
ReplyDeleteCym--that's a fair point, and one I will have to think about. As perhaps I implied in an earlier comment, I've really never considered that anything other than our evolutionary history makes us "human", and that it would be as coherent to talk about what makes chimpanzees typically chimpanzee, as to talk about what makes humans typically human.
ReplyDeleteBaroness Radon--I get incredibly bored and frustrated after meditating for even twenty minutes.