Lack of empathy

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Today my girlfriend pointed out something to me as being an example of autistic emotional thinking and said that as an NT it would never occur to her to think or feel that way. As far as I know I'm not a psychopath but in this case my emotional responses do seem rather strange (I had the same conversation with a colleague 20 years ago and had to convince her that I did actually feel like that and wasn't just winding her up). The situation is this: I sometimes read books about twentieth century European history and I have one book describing in detail the allied air raids on the German cities in the second world war. So, first of all, I can't read this book. I literally can't bring myself to read it. It is too painful. (So far that sounds fairly normal.) When I think of the terrible damage done to these old cities it breaks my heart. Similarly, when I read about the destruction of Warsaw by the Nazis or the bombing of Bristol or Plymouth I get a visceral sense of grief over the loss of the architecturally fine buildings. Especially the heavy bombing of the German cities causes me deep personal pain (although I'm not German myself), simply because of the destruction of the buildings. The loss of LIFE, on the other hand, I can appreciate to have been a bad thing for the people involved but it hardly affects me emotionally AT ALL. If somehow the buildings could be miraculously returned to their original state I could read the book with interest and would not be distressed by it at all. I don't feel deep pain at the huge loss of life,, although I can recognise that it was a bad thing to have happened. Another example: I am currently reading about Stalin's purges, in which millions of people were killed and although I can appreciate that that was a bad thing for the individuals involved and imagine how grim it must have felt to be taken away and shot I don't have any intense emotional reaction or sense of loss about all these people being killed, more a sense of the crass stupidity of taking people off and liquidating them for no reason. But when I think of trees being cut down during the soviet five year plans to make way for power stations etc I feel pain. I could give many other examples of this. At the same time I'm definitely not a psychopath. I don't hate people and don't like them to be hurt or disappointed or to have something bad happen to them. It's just that when I hear about something bad happening to things it affects me strongly in a way that hearing about something bad happening to people doesn't affect me. As I said, my girlfriend is NT and says that this way of thinking is typically autistic.

Last edited by Halligeninseln on 27 Mar 2012, 6:11 pm, edited 5 times in total.

I think she is probably right, you don't have a lack of empathy, but a different type, you have more empathy for some stuff than nonautistic people do

bah how do I delete this

Last edited by starkid on 27 Mar 2012, 7:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Empathy is not the right word to describe these particular feelings you have. Empathy involves the feelings of another, and buildings and trees don't have feelings. A person can't have "empathy for stuff."

I understand you saying that for buildings, but trees are living

Empathy is about sharing in the emotional experience of others. Trees don't have emotions.

Looking into the past to people you dont know whom most would be gone now vs the trees that most would be here still and the history of the building that are lost.
Just saying, I feal loss for loved ones that died but unless I see the pain for my self in some one eltses eyes it is just history. Its illogical to feel pain for some one you have never meet. It may be history but might as well be a storie to me. Sorry to thoughs whom this will anoy this is the way I think.

Understandable.

These buildings were incredibly old as well as beautiful. When I traveled to Europe, I saw as many castles and old architecture as possible. It was very devestating seeing buildings, such as the ones in Berlin, partially destroyed.

It's complete careless, and often times irreversible, destruction. Bombing beautiful cities in Europe definitely proves a point; you never can get them back. A lot of those areas are now filled with modern architecture....

That might not be what you mean, but that is definitely how I felt when I went to Europe.

Last edited by Ria1989 on 27 Mar 2012, 9:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The pain is an emotion. Logic has nothing to do with emotions. They are alogical.