Is Arrogance and Self-Superiority an Aspie trait?

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Greb
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30 Mar 2013, 7:55 pm

MannyBoo wrote:
Is it?

"Feeling different" is a common thing people say. Well not only have i felt different, but to be honest, i also felt "better" than the people around me. More intelligent, more creative, seeing patterns they can't, etc...

When i look at it objectively, this is obviously an arrogant way of thinking. This has contributed to me losing friends in the past. I am not a bad person, i love people, i totally believe in equality of all people, but admittedly, i also have feelings of self-superiority. It is a contradiction, so i am wondering about it.


Dunno if this an aspie trait, but I could sign every word of those two paragrahps.


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30 Mar 2013, 8:01 pm

Mirror21 wrote:
I sometimes get the feeling that sounding/being smarter is offensive to people. I have gone through this before and it makes me think well, dumb ass . . . about other people, not myself.

Here is an example:
I spilled soda on one of our lap tops a bit ago (my fault in circumstance the actual process is irrelevant). t My gf says; leave it on so it dries with heat. Here I am thinking, if you drop water on an electrical socket, it shorts! So I told her, I think I should turn it off. She says no. So I leave it on until it poof! Turns off on its own. It would not turn back on. She took it apart, cleaned it, and turned it on in a bit when it dried (what she should have done in the first place?). I start looking up online the best way to handle it. She gets mad and tells me that I always trying to prove people wrong so I will not be at fault (like I did not take responsibility for the spill in the first place) well she thinks its my fault too that certain keys do not work now. It is eating at me that I cannot sit down and rationally explain to her that leaving it on with liquid could have contributed to the shorting out of the keys, because she will think I am blaming her. She tends to be very logical, but only on her terms. *Sigh* I feel my intelligence is often under-appreciated.

Sorry for the rant but it has been eating at me for weeks now.


Ugh.

That totally sounds familiar....... :cry:


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uwmonkdm
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30 Mar 2013, 8:35 pm

sackcoat wrote:
I pretty much feel the same. In my university classes I spend most of my time wondering how people could possibly be so ignorant and fearing the fact that many of them will in fact get degrees and go on to do important jobs in society. Some of the most ignorant I have seen are in training to be teachers, which scares me even more. I don't mean to be arrogant, and I work really hard not to be, but I still often have these superiority issues. I don't know if it's an aspie thing or not... but I do indeed share this trait.


Yup, definitely this ^^^

I do feel as if I am involved in things that the 'average' person couldn't care less about, and I feel as if that makes them happy to be ignorant, which I interpret as stupidity.



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30 Mar 2013, 8:48 pm

uwmonkdm wrote:
sackcoat wrote:
I pretty much feel the same. In my university classes I spend most of my time wondering how people could possibly be so ignorant and fearing the fact that many of them will in fact get degrees and go on to do important jobs in society. Some of the most ignorant I have seen are in training to be teachers, which scares me even more. I don't mean to be arrogant, and I work really hard not to be, but I still often have these superiority issues. I don't know if it's an aspie thing or not... but I do indeed share this trait.


Yup, definitely this ^^^

I do feel as if I am involved in things that the 'average' person couldn't care less about, and I feel as if that makes them happy to be ignorant, which I interpret as stupidity.


Universities teach ignorance. I pulled from formal Uni eduction for a number or reasons and that was one of them. I still learn, just unofficially in my own time for my own enjoyment.



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30 Mar 2013, 9:23 pm

Not all, yet sometimes with some people it seems to be just the case.



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30 Mar 2013, 9:49 pm

I may feel or know often that I am smarter than someone at certain things, but regarding other aspects I feel inferior or awkward, such as social competency, and visual spatial skills, directions or reading a map.


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Mirror21
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30 Mar 2013, 10:59 pm

XFilesGeek wrote:
Mirror21 wrote:
I sometimes get the feeling that sounding/being smarter is offensive to people. I have gone through this before and it makes me think well, dumb ass . . . about other people, not myself.

Here is an example:
I spilled soda on one of our lap tops a bit ago (my fault in circumstance the actual process is irrelevant). t My gf says; leave it on so it dries with heat. Here I am thinking, if you drop water on an electrical socket, it shorts! So I told her, I think I should turn it off. She says no. So I leave it on until it poof! Turns off on its own. It would not turn back on. She took it apart, cleaned it, and turned it on in a bit when it dried (what she should have done in the first place?). I start looking up online the best way to handle it. She gets mad and tells me that I always trying to prove people wrong so I will not be at fault (like I did not take responsibility for the spill in the first place) well she thinks its my fault too that certain keys do not work now. It is eating at me that I cannot sit down and rationally explain to her that leaving it on with liquid could have contributed to the shorting out of the keys, because she will think I am blaming her. She tends to be very logical, but only on her terms. *Sigh* I feel my intelligence is often under-appreciated.

Sorry for the rant but it has been eating at me for weeks now.


Ugh.

That totally sounds familiar....... :cry:


I think its more so people perceive me as me thinking I am better than them that me feeling I am. I more so feel ignored a lot. People think I argue a lot when I state facts or want to converse.



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31 Mar 2013, 6:00 am

I think I've had to develop a sense of the ways in which I am 'better' than others as a compensation for the many ways in which people/society tells me I'm not up to standard. It's a compensatory action to prop up a badly damaged ego.

The trouble is, a mentally ill person who gets very angry against society and seeks revenge can use their self-assumed superiority as justification for what they end up doing



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31 Mar 2013, 11:09 am

No, I don't personally feel this way. Though I might have when I was younger but more due to other things like intelligence (I didn't think about AS much back then). And then about a year ago I felt the opposite - I felt inferior at times. Now I would say I neither feel superior nor inferior - I consider everyone equal in general.


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CharlesMonster
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31 Mar 2013, 10:26 pm

Quote:
Is it?

"Feeling different" is a common thing people say. Well not only have i felt different, but to be honest, i also felt "better" than the people around me. More intelligent, more creative, seeing patterns they can't, etc...


Anyone can be arrogant, not just us.

What you are feeling is something that the newly diagnosed usually feel, they identify with brilliant minds, but it's an illusion.

What good is brightest person, when they can't observe what NT's take for granted. Some of the more "brilliant" Aspies can't even tie their own shoe laces.

We're 2% of the population, NT's need us 2% of the time, but we cannot survive without them for 98% of the time.

I was fortunate to see my daughter as an Autistic, before I was diagnosed as an Aspie, and I too identified with the more brilliant people of history, but I had the grounding that came through observing the difficulties my daughter has, and the realisation all of our advantages come at a heavy price.



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31 Mar 2013, 11:14 pm

Maybe so, but if they only survive 98% of the time, then that's not surviving, is it? Our little 2% contribution makes for a better world. We may not be superior to them, but we're not inferior either.

I get read as arrogant sometimes. I forget that you're not supposed to say things like, "I know more than my professor about Subject X", or "My textbook is out of date; they got their facts wrong," because those things are above you in the hierarchy and you are supposed to pretend that you don't ever know more than they do, even though there are so many things to know that you are bound to know at least something they don't even if they are experts and you just studied the subject for fun. You're not supposed to say those things because people think that you believe that this makes you better than them, when in fact you are just saying something that is true, just like you might say, "I suck at tying my shoes," or, "I'm bad at doing group projects," and that would be true too. So if you talk about your strengths it's arrogant, but if you talk about your weaknesses it's normal, even if both things are facts.

I wish that weren't the case, so I wouldn't have to think about everything I say first to make sure it doesn't sound arrogant to somebody who thinks that being able to do something that somebody else can't do must make me superior to them. From my perspective, it doesn't. Human beings are too varied with too many skills that you can compare them on, so that pretty much everybody has something that they're better at than somebody else. And how would you pick which thing was important and which wasn't? You can't; it's entirely arbitrary. So I think we should be able to celebrate being good at something, without having other people think that we're being stuck up. I want to be able to say, "I'm pretty cool"--without it implying, "And you're not." I wish our culture allowed that. Because I think other people are pretty cool, too.

Also, this post is a good demonstration of the complex grammar involved in theory of mind. No wonder young autistics have trouble with it.


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01 Apr 2013, 12:28 am

Yes, in a couple different ways.

1. Some of us come across as arrogant unintentionally when we say things that we think of as merely matter of fact vs. being arrogant.

2. There is an AS trait of some feeling like they are superior in a God like way and should be respected/bowed down to etc. It's often these types that end up as business leaders/CEO's etc if they can utilize other skills to get into a position like this - but it's certainly helped along by their holier-than-thou confidence & perceptions of themselves.


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01 Apr 2013, 12:33 am

CharlesMonster wrote:
Quote:
Is it?

"Feeling different" is a common thing people say. Well not only have i felt different, but to be honest, i also felt "better" than the people around me. More intelligent, more creative, seeing patterns they can't, etc...


Anyone can be arrogant, not just us.

What you are feeling is something that the newly diagnosed usually feel, they identify with brilliant minds, but it's an illusion.

What good is brightest person, when they can't observe what NT's take for granted. Some of the more "brilliant" Aspies can't even tie their own shoe laces.

We're 2% of the population, NT's need us 2% of the time, but we cannot survive without them for 98% of the time.

I was fortunate to see my daughter as an Autistic, before I was diagnosed as an Aspie, and I too identified with the more brilliant people of history, but I had the grounding that came through observing the difficulties my daughter has, and the realisation all of our advantages come at a heavy price.


I hope that was sarcasm because that sounds rather demeaning at face value.


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01 Apr 2013, 12:54 am

goldfish21 wrote:
Yes, in a couple different ways.

1. Some of us come across as arrogant unintentionally when we say things that we think of as merely matter of fact vs. being arrogant.

2. There is an AS trait of some feeling like they are superior in a God like way and should be respected/bowed down to etc. It's often these types that end up as business leaders/CEO's etc if they can utilize other skills to get into a position like this - but it's certainly helped along by their holier-than-thou confidence & perceptions of themselves.


When you really think about it though, people only think that way because they have feelings of inferiority in some way. They're afraid to be wrong, so they make it as if people shouldn't share the knowledge that they have, that would make them appear smarter than other people. And they hide it as simply being polite because they feel inadequate due to not being right 90% of the time. In other words, they're afraid of looking stupid.

This is something that just about anyone who is "normal" thinks and so that's how society is set up.
The solution is easy, though no-one in the world would ever do it: State only known facts, keep opinion to oneself, if one knows not the answer, ask someone who might and take their answer as a way to find out.
But instead, society masks their own arrogance for politeness, thus maintaining the status quo and shunning anyone who dare speak a lick of fact regarding anything, by saying that the person stating said facts is arrogant.

It's an NT world, and we are only guests with restrictions, not part of the whole. Sad, but true.


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01 Apr 2013, 1:11 am

Jaden wrote:
CharlesMonster wrote:
Some of the more "brilliant" Aspies can't even tie their own shoe laces.


I hope that was sarcasm because that sounds rather demeaning at face value.


It wasn't sarcasm, I was quoting fact. Albert Einstein was a very brilliant man, but could not tie his shoe laces, and constantly got lost if he didn't have a minder.

What I was trying to get across is that we have no reason to feel superior, we have deficits in other areas, that should ground us, otherwise our egos will take over, and we will become arrogant.

E.g. I'm smarter than you, but just don't ask me to boil you an egg. I'm smarter than you, I don't understand how you could be offended by that statement?

Sure we have advantages, but we have very huge social disadvantages, that's why our way of thinking is a disability.

My problem is that I take whatever anyone say as true, even with the more outrageous statements I have to stop and think whether it's true or not. Why, because I don't tell lies and I don't understand why anyone does.



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01 Apr 2013, 1:41 am

CharlesMonster wrote:
Jaden wrote:
CharlesMonster wrote:
Some of the more "brilliant" Aspies can't even tie their own shoe laces.


I hope that was sarcasm because that sounds rather demeaning at face value.


It wasn't sarcasm, I was quoting fact. Albert Einstein was a very brilliant man, but could not tie his shoe laces, and constantly got lost if he didn't have a minder.

What I was trying to get across is that we have no reason to feel superior, we have deficits in other areas, that should ground us, otherwise our egos will take over, and we will become arrogant.

E.g. I'm smarter than you, but just don't ask me to boil you an egg. I'm smarter than you, I don't understand how you could be offended by that statement?

Sure we have advantages, but we have very huge social disadvantages, that's why our way of thinking is a disability.

My problem is that I take whatever anyone say as true, even with the more outrageous statements I have to stop and think whether it's true or not. Why, because I don't tell lies and I don't understand why anyone does.


While I can agree that we do have huge social disadvantages, I do not think this has anything to do truly with whether or not someone is actually arrogant. Just like it has nothing to do with their intelligence. If our intelligence was based off of our social disadvantages, then not many of us would be that intelligent.
As with strengths and weaknesses, everyone in the world has them, some moreso than others, but it isn't our weaknesses that should ground us, rather our strengths should keep us in line and mindful of the fact that we can hold arrogance when gloating about our strengths blatently (not just stating it as fact, but rather bragging without cause) and as long as we keep that in mind, arrogance will not enter the fold. Our weaknesses should only be a reminder of what we should work on next, if we base what should ground us down, by our weaknesses, then we'll never accomplish anything and we will crumble to society because they will always hold us back.


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