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Janissy
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17 Aug 2009, 9:28 am

Greentea wrote:
Thank you, Janissy. Your words did me good. Once in a while I have a crisis about this sister-issue. I think it's the latter possibility, because she kind of said so herself several times, and has shown it with actions too: a person is only worth what they can give her at any given moment in time. I wonder...should we all be like her, seeing as it brings her riches and love and a life just the way she wants to live it and enjoy it?


Wow! She just straight out said that? I guess it must be meaness to build power if she admitted to that. Their motto is "loyalty is for chumps" and she lives by that motto.

But is it a good motto to live by? I don't think so. I'm not a religious person at all but that old biblical saying about how it's easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven certainly applies here. Ever since money was invented, people have observed that ethics, loyalty and kindness get in the way of acquiring more of it. Some people say, "I would rather be a good person than step on others to get ahead". And some people say "only a chump would say that". Personally, I think it's better to side with ethics, loyalty and kindness even if you don't get terribly far up the ladder that way.



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17 Aug 2009, 9:41 am

Yes, she said family is all about doing services for each other and if you can't or won't do services, then there's no sentiments, you're out. My parents and I moved next to her house to help her because she had 3 babies. Then when the babies grew up and didn't need any more baby-sitting and she had enough money now for servants, and my mother became ill with a horrible illness and my father became disabled and couldn't help any more, she just cut all contact with them and blackmailed me to do the same. I refused and she cut all contact with me too. To justify her actions to the relatives, she invented stories about us so they wouldn't call her heartless. Among other things, she told the family that raising her kids had been a regular job I'd been hired by her to do for a monthly salary. I had an excellent international telecom job then, by the way, and worked 11 hours a day, and didn't need any extra money. i gave my love to the kids out of love, simply.

I don't think I'm religious enough to believe there may be a drawback to being like her, in the afterlife, though... Seems to me she's a 100% winner...


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willmark
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17 Aug 2009, 10:43 am

Greentea wrote:
Lack of ToM: I'll tell someone something and I'll think it's perfectly OK, and then I'll be all surprised at how they took it. This doesn't happen to NTs. NTs have a general, theoretical, more or less accurate (intuitive) idea of how a human will react to an action or words from them. It's not acquired wisdom from deep analysis, it's not decades of experience, it's an inborn ability that then the child naturally develops as he interacts and relates with other humans.

Two thoughts come to mind. Maybe this is an attribute of a right brain deficit, and since I don't know that I have one, I cannot relate, but I don't experience what you accuse NTs of having innately. I am curious if you have any difficulty predicting behavior of other Aspies. I have no trouble knowing how to predict many other introverts, but I have had to learn how extroverts, and some introverts like INTJ for instance, function because their way of thinking does not just occur to me. It's totally different. But I guess because I have access to right brain perceptions I get around it fairly well. My learning MBTI and being very good with pattern recognition has become a work around. I can usually glean from listening to other people converse, how they think because I pick up on pattern elements of patterns that have become familiar to me due to experience, but it is very much a conscious effort for me to assimilate it, and I am blessed to have a very good memory for keeping up with attributes by individual. But these things most certainly don't just occur to me subconsciously. I wonder if what you think NTs just innately intuit is mere recognition of people like themselves when they encounter it in others, and they know how to predict them because they are like them. That would be the experience of people whose type is common in the world, and folks whose type is uncommon would feel lost and disadvantaged. I easily recognize other people who are like me, merely by reading their words, or seeing their photograph, or feeling their vibe, and predicting their behavior is mostly a matter of knowing how I would act in that situation, or referencing memories of others in that situation.



Last edited by willmark on 17 Aug 2009, 11:02 am, edited 2 times in total.

Janissy
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17 Aug 2009, 10:54 am

I'm not religious and don't believe in heaven or hell. But I still think it's best to side with ethics, loyalty and kindness if for no other reason than it makes the world a better place. Yes, your sister used you and your parents for free babysitting yet feels no gratitude or loyalty for that. Even so, you made the world a better place because these children got to grow up immersed in the love of their aunt and grandparents. This effects them even if it may not look that way now. It provides a balance to their own mother's dubious influence. It gives them childhood memories of good care that they will need when they are raising children of their own. Being a user gets you up the ladder in a pretty obvious fashion. Fowllowing the path of ethics, loyalty and kindness doesn't get you up the ladder but it has a ripple effect like a stone thrown into a pond that makes the world a better place in ways that aren't immediately obvious and may even work their positive effect on people you don't know or who haven't even been born yet.



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17 Aug 2009, 11:04 am

Pook wrote:
willmark wrote:
A question for Aspies.

Can you explain the concept of ToM to me? The definitions I have read online are confusing to me because it sounds like not understanding that other people have separate minds, or that another person's mind is different. I don't understand how a person would not obviously know this when they keep tripping over or getting slapped in the face by those differences. There must be something I am not grasping.

What's ToM :?:

Theory of Mind.



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17 Aug 2009, 4:11 pm

Janissy wrote:
Greentea wrote:
Question to the NTs:

How does an NT explain meanness to themselves? I ask because, with my lack of Theory of Mind, I'm not able to understand why people are so mean to others, and this is the reason I can't make peace with memories of horrible things people have done to me and my loved ones. If I go to a therapist, they don't understand that my problem is not that I hang on to the pain, but that I can't apply any method to make peace with the memories because I lack the ToM necessary to grasp how these things can happen to start with. I can't make peace with something that I don't understand!


The global answer is because it isn't literally possible to feel another person's pain. You can only guess at it, and after guessing, decide if that is reason enough for you to stop (or not do in the first place) whatever the mean thing is.

Subcategorically to that, there are lots and lots of reasons. Which one applies to an old memory you have or a situation you more recently experienced depends entirely on the experience. Even then, describing the experience may or may not shed light because you can't really know for sure about another person's motivations. You can only make an educated guess.

Here is a very partial list that I've ranked from most benign to most toxic (in my opinion, this is all my opinion, there are no links to back it up):

it wasn't actually mean: I'm sure my daughter thinks it is pure vindictive malice that I've declared certain music and movies off limits. I'm not being mean. I just don't want certain words added to her vocabulary for as long as I can keep her from hearing them. Teens are especially prone to mistaking parental kindness for meaness.

it was mean but it wasn't meant to be: According to several threads this is an Aspie specialty. Of course Aspies have no monopoly on it. Everybody has committed accidental meaness at some point in their lives. I confidentally use the absolute "everybody" because it's such an easy blunder. I'm sure even the Dalai Lamai has done it, although maybe not since he was 15.

it was mean but it wasn't personal: This is the "bad day" or "straw that broke the camel's back" meanness. The person has a pile-up of bad things and lashes out at whatever unsuspecting person happens to cross their path at a particular moment. This is a parent specialty although of course parents have no monopoly on it. It's just that children will inevitably cross their parents' path on that fateful bad day and will inevitably be lashed out at.

meaness that comes from a chronic problem that the person has: This is a meaness that happens frequenly, not just on that bad day, even if the person doesn't in their heart really want to be mean. But they are. This is especially hurtful to children because children have no way of understanding that it is Daddy/Mommy's alcoholism/depression/untreated mental illness/etc. that is causing the meanness and not some fault of their own or anything they did. Therapists see this so often that they can get stuck on it in the adults they treat and be blinded to anything else that is going on.

meaness to build power]stepping on other people not because you specifically wish to hurt them but because they are obstacles in the way of your goal. You don't take literal pleasure in their pain but neither do you have remorse. You just don't think about their pain one way or the other. It's irrelevent. The only relevent thing is how far you go personally or how much wealth you gain.

bonding meaness: this is when a group solidifies its group identity by being mean to somebody who is not in the group. There can't be an Us without a Them. It's at the heart of bullying so every Aspie has been there. Lots of NTs have also been labelled one of Them, not Us and bullied but I think if you are NT you can move process it and box it off and move beyond it because being NT means the ability to gather your own group of Them's together until it becomes Us- and so the Castro District in San Franciso was born, and every other subculture gathering of NT people who got bullied as children. Aspies have a much harder time doing this but various threads show me the desire is strongly there. On a lrger scale, this happens during every political upheaval or war. A group gets scapegoated or is the non-combatant victim of war crimes. It's also at the heart of racism and all other mean acts that arise from an "ism". The group that is Them will be treated with cruelty.

meaness to retain power:you've already got power within your sphere but it will slip away from you if nobody fears you. So you use meaness as the means to an end of maintaining fear. This is the pimp who beats the hookers, the gangsters who shoot through windows in driveby shootings, the organized crime boss who kills snitches and all dictators.

meaness because it's funpure sadism.

meaness to destroy a group:you aren't looking to make them afraid of you or to corrall them into a Them group of outcasts. You want them to just stop existing once and for all. Genocide.


So I take it you think someone can't be mean just because they're evil?? This used to be my honest take on all meanness until I learned I was Aspie. Now I'd assume that 20% of them were evil, with the other 80% fitting the categories you described



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17 Aug 2009, 4:59 pm

I would say that at the very least, the last two categories ARE evil. Anyone who is inflicting pain because they actually enjoy the suffering of others or because they want the others' entire group to be destroyed is evil. I think the third-from last category: meaness to retain power, stands on the borderline. Purgatory rather than Hell, if you will. Although it's hardly an open-and-shut case. But I can't think of an evil so evil that it somehow went BEYOND both sadism and genocide. Well, Satan does. But I'm not religious and so don't believe in him.



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17 Aug 2009, 8:50 pm

Greentea wrote:
Yes, she said family is all about doing services for each other and if you can't or won't do services, then there's no sentiments, you're out. My parents and I moved next to her house to help her because she had 3 babies. Then when the babies grew up and didn't need any more baby-sitting and she had enough money now for servants, and my mother became ill with a horrible illness and my father became disabled and couldn't help any more, she just cut all contact with them and blackmailed me to do the same. I refused and she cut all contact with me too. To justify her actions to the relatives, she invented stories about us so they wouldn't call her heartless. Among other things, she told the family that raising her kids had been a regular job I'd been hired by her to do for a monthly salary. I had an excellent international telecom job then, by the way, and worked 11 hours a day, and didn't need any extra money. i gave my love to the kids out of love, simply.

I don't think I'm religious enough to believe there may be a drawback to being like her, in the afterlife, though... Seems to me she's a 100% winner...


Could you be describing a sociopath?

http://www.youmeworks.com/sociopaths.html

"A sociopath's goal is to win. And he is willing to do anything at all to win."



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18 Aug 2009, 12:20 am

Willmark, I started a thread on the question you raise a few months ago. I'll be happy to bump that thread to resume the debate, since this thread is only for questions and answers.

Lepidoptera, thanks a million for that link. Once in a while I need to read other victims' sharings to remember I'm not alone in this horrible situation. I read both the articles and the people's comments and I'm feeling a lot better.

Janissy, the reason it's not a good idea to be a user is that users live a very dangerous life, just like race car drivers. They certainly live in heaven, riches, love, etc. but only until they use and dump the wrong person: someone who they didn't know was more powerful/clever/reckless than themselves. Then they can end up in tragedy. I once heard of a woman user who ended up with her face bathed in boiling oil by a disgruntled ex boyfriend she'd used for money and dumped - her main charming weapon had been her beauty. I also heard of users that had the misfortune/miscalculation to choose potential murderers as their victims and ended up murdered. And so on. I have to be very patient and have faith, and I think some day I probably WILL see her burn in hell (on Earth). It is my belief that she's slowly but surely making lots and lots of (currently still silently seething) enemies, some of which, unlike me, may be stupid enough to take revenge and ruin their lives in the process.


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18 Aug 2009, 10:43 am

I read more of the comments left in response to the sociopath article. There was one comment left by a man who claimed he was a sociopath. I found it amazing that he felt he could size up a woman's life in 30 minutes by watching her body language and observing other subtleties. I could not imagine possessing such a skill. Do NT's in general believe they can do this?

The other thing I found interesting was the sociopath's lack of empathy enabled them to use people as they do with no guilt, remorse, or any other bad feelings. Everything I've read on AS forums would lead me to believe that aspies experience these feelings when they realize they have hurt someone in some way. It seems really unlikely that aspies lack empathy. Maybe it's not lack of empathy but difficulty recognizing another's emotional pain?



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18 Aug 2009, 11:14 am

Lepidoptera, that man's comments were amazing! It's very rare that we get an insight into a sociopath's mind. Good for him to share with us! Again, thanks for sharing that wonderful link!

One more thing: please take into account that the word empathy in that website has a different meaning than the one used by AS professionals and by us here on WP. Empathy is for them as compassion is in the AS field. For the AS field, the word empathy is used to mean the intuitive knowledge about what's on another person's mind, whether you later experience compassion for any suffering they may be experiencing or not.


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18 Aug 2009, 2:57 pm

Lepidoptera wrote:
I read more of the comments left in response to the sociopath article. There was one comment left by a man who claimed he was a sociopath. I found it amazing that he felt he could size up a woman's life in 30 minutes by watching her body language and observing other subtleties. I could not imagine possessing such a skill. Do NT's in general believe they can do this?



No, NT's in general do NOT believe they can do this.


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18 Aug 2009, 2:59 pm

LOL The NTs here are saints, we ask such questions sometimes! :lol:


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18 Aug 2009, 3:08 pm

Greentea wrote:
Thank you, Janissy. Your words did me good. Once in a while I have a crisis about this sister-issue. I think it's the latter possibility, because she kind of said so herself several times, and has shown it with actions too: a person is only worth what they can give her at any given moment in time. I wonder...should we all be like her, seeing as it brings her riches and love and a life just the way she wants to live it and enjoy it?


I know there has been discussion on this, but here is my observations: seeking riches and a superficial life tends to be an indicator of emptiness. The pursuers wrongly believe these things will make them happy. They acquire, they remain unhappy, they acquire more, and still nothing changes. They aren't willing to look inward at all the discarded relationships and notions, so they continue on the same path, but it is and always will be empty. They refuse to understand it, and they hide the emptiness under bragging words, but they are not happy.

Studies consistently show that friendships and personal relationships are the truest marker of happiness, at least in the NT population (a whole other discussion could be about how that fits with AS). Someone who is a user, and who cuts people out like your sister has, does not have and will never have relationships of the depth it takes to have a truly fulfilled or happy life. Some of the happiest people I know don't have much money or success. They have something better. Think of the love story at the beginning of the movie, "Up." The wife got nothing of what she had dreamed of, but had a life she loved better than she might have asked for. The wife was rich by knowing it. My sister, the world traveler, told me she couldn't stop crying when she realized that was the message.

Rich and successful people can be happy, of course. But they aren't all like your sister. I have had clients and friends over the years who have amassed much success and are still, simply, wonderful people. Loyal to me, loyal to family, in love with life, and that would never, ever, act as your sister has. Coming to think of it, one of those people I think so highly of is part of the Pixar inner circle. Your sister may live on the street with people like my clients and friends, but she will never be close to them, and she will never understand why. She'll just find a reason to look down on them and hang out, instead, with other shallow, empty, neighbors.


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18 Aug 2009, 3:28 pm

DW, that's a very interesting perspective too. Thanks for sharing it. She told me she's not interested in intimate friendships. She doesn't want others' problems on her mind and doesn't expect others to carry her troubles in theirs either. It's not the kind of relationships she enjoys. She could have them if she wanted, because people tend to seek her very much for friendship, much more than they seek me, of course. So how would this new input now modify what you would write to me in your post?

And for the record, the more perspectives the merrier, always!


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18 Aug 2009, 3:29 pm

polymathpoolplayer wrote:
So I take it you think someone can't be mean just because they're evil?? This used to be my honest take on all meanness until I learned I was Aspie. Now I'd assume that 20% of them were evil, with the other 80% fitting the categories you described


I would put the number of people that are truly evil at far less than 20%. I have met or known of so few in my life. I think living on the assumption that less 1% are truly evil makes life simply a more pleasant place to be. Enough to know it exists, and to keep certain protections in place, but not enough to feel it around you every day, every place.


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