"mindblindness" a PC term for "selfish"?

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The more I read about it, the more it seems to me that this idea of "mindblindness" is just a sugar-coated way of saying 'selfish'.

You take so-called 'not knowing or being interested in' what another person is thinking, add 'being preoccupied with their own needs' and finally 'lack of empathy' and you've got; selfish.

I don't understand why this term is considered 'okay' if it's called mindblindness and applied to people with AS and not 'okay' if it's called selfishness and applied to NT people.

Aren't we all born selfish, essentially?
And don't we all have to learn how not to be selfish, how to think about others?
So why this new term, how is it different?

I am confused.

I'm not sure but I *think* Aspies can't help being like that, it's to do with our brains, but probably if an NT realised they were selfish and applied themselves to changing they could change their selfish behaviours. Aspies can care about people and hate that their so caught up in their own heads that other people get left on the curb, but try changing Aspie thinking - I have for 22 years before I realised it can't be done.

I never saw it this way. But isn't mind blindness where you aren't aware of someone's feelings or how they are feeling or picking up on any non verbal cues? Isn't it also where you have difficulty reading facial expressions? This also goes for lack of TOM.

I think selfish people are people that are aware of the feelings of other people and other people in general. These people just chose to ignore this, and only do what will help or serve them.

Someone with mind blindness would not necessarily mean to not think of others, this is just how their brain works. This person would be unable to figure out what other people are thinking or feeling. This person might be in their own world and not really think of others. This person might appear selfish to observers, but the person would probably not be aware that their actions appear selfish.

If you take that alone, you could call it selfish. But if you understand the context is someone like me who couldn't read people's faces, didn't understand basic feelings in real time, and deeply wanted the chance to be someone else for a day so I could see how other people think, then we only become uninterested because it is a void. At first we may be curious and then give up. Others may be totally blind to it (experience a void) from the start. Lack of empathy in this case comes from not understanding feelings, especially feelings and viewpoints of other people. Later, since our differing needs and feelings are invalidated, we become preoccupied with them as no one connects to us and supports us.

We're told to treat others the way we would like to be treated. That backfires when we'd like to be treated bluntly and explicitly and things don't work that way. We are incapable of putting ourselves in the other guy's shoes, often not for lack of trying, but because the other guy is very different from us in a fundamental way.

yeah.

the disconnect in our brains that makes us unaware can be got around with a lot of training, but I don't know that it's ever natural to be "aware". it took me forever to figure out that everyone lies about all kinds of stupid things. and that I need to explain what's going on in my head because no one knows (and usually no one cares, either).

the thing I've noticed about NTs who seem to be clueless... they're "narcissists". the part of their brain that would let them see others as separate and complete individuals is completely disconnected. they're unable to conceive of what we strive to understand. at least we have another route to that part of our brain, even if we have to actively analyze data to get there.

The two are quite different things although they might be correlated.

A baby who cries without considering or caring how anyone else feels about this or how others are effected is not being selfish. Someone who knows are does not care about how the loudness of their stereo at 3.00am effects near-by neighbours is being selfish. That's not being P.C. but taking into account the reality of the potential of an actor.

Consider that mind-blindness might result in a failure to realise someone else might want one of a candy and is not contrary to a willingness and even desire to share. Being selfish is contrary to a willingness and desire to share. Mind-blindness might entail not offering candies around to those who do not ask for one, but is not inconsistent with sharing with those who do. Selfishness entails not wanting to share the candies and will be accompanied by a desire to refuse anyone who asks for one.

I think it's only kind of partly right. The theorizing experts used to say that autistics had no emotions or internal reactions to others, but now with brain scans are proving them wrong (but rather than admit it, they just move toward more technical definitions of their words).

Not thinking to consider someone else's thoughts seems different than realizing they have them then and then not caring. I.e. It often doesn't occur to me that people don't have access to all the information in my mind, so I often forget to mention details needed to understand a story or explanation about something.

Is it selfish that I'm not considering that they don't have the info? It's not that I don't care, but that I just unthinkingly assume that my brain is wide-open and they have access to everything in it already. It's almost like opposite of being closed off -- being so open you don't realize the other person is a seperate being (sort of).

I don't know if this will make sense, but I see "selfish" as a strong fence with a mean guard at the gate -- as opposed to a fallen-down fence and no guard at all (I think that accounts for some of the naivete/'childlike' perceptions; normal adults are all about personal information control, for strategic social reasons. And, of course, being 'too open' can lead to piling up fences of other sorts; paranoia (me), muteness (not that that's the only reason), reclusiveness, defensiveness, etc. which probably clouds the picture from the outside.)

neurotypical people don't view it as o.k, we still get shouted at and sworn at and kicked when we didn't know we were being rude.

i think the question you should be asking is "why do neurotypical people tottaly ignore the face that we are mindblind and still get pissed off with us?"

mindblindness is not selfish dude.

No, it's not the same thing.

"mindblindness" refers to not knowing what somebody else is feeling.
"Selfishness" means not caring.

So, if you get your basic mind-blind Aspie, he may have no clue that his best friend is really sad over just having broken up with his girlfriend. Once said best friend tells him how he feels, though, the Aspie is probably going to feel just as much compassion as anyone else who has just found out that their best friend just went through a painful breakup. He might respond differently; maybe he'll be clumsy about trying to make his friend feel better, and he's much more likely to try to directly solve his friend's problem instead of just commiserating. But he'll care just as much as the average NT would care about his friend--possibly more, if you take into account the idea that Aspies are more likely to be introverts, and introverts are more likely to have a small number of close relationships.

The social part of autism is mostly a matter of not knowing or not understanding until one is told explicitly and plainly what is going on in the social world. It has very little to do with not caring. Even people without the most rudimentary theory-of-mind knowledge are not being selfish; they simply don't understand that other people exist just as they do.

Autistic people can be selfish, of course. It just has more to do with their being fallible humans than with being autistic.

We born selfish, because we generally have social problems that is impossible for others to even imagine our situation.
So, I think because of our trials in recognise our own problems, and our interests that takes our time, we don't have enough energy to think about others.
We first try to solve our problems to start to help others, and the solution doesn't comes.

Mentally, we are lost in our problems, and most of us are not multi-taskers. So we can't handle our problems and others' problems at the same time.
Being not a selfish person is too hard, and only a few of us can do it.

Mindblindness is a completely different term. It stand for recognising others' problems
However, selfishness is knowing the situtaion, but not helping beacuse thinking of ourselves.

So, we have both of them!

No, I don't think mindblindness is just a PC term for selfishness, unless the term is being applied to one who isn't actually mindblind. Then it's just plain, old-fashioned cheating.

If someone is selfish, they are choosing to ignore others. Mindblindness is just not having the automatic thought process that considers what others are thinking.

Of course, most NTs don't give a crap about any of this, and take any excuse to call us whatever stupid names they want.

I think selfishness is an end result that could be caused by several factors for example mind-blindness or over-ambition

Hmm, that sounded snappier in my head...

It's only selfishness to ignorant NTs who don't learn how to distinguish definitions.

I side with the, "there's a difference," crowd.

I definitely understand that I present mindblindness, but I am not always aware of circumstances where I have failed to account for someone else's knowledge, interests or feelings. From time to time, this has come across to others as selfishness.

But I am perfectly capable of dealing with these issues cognitively. If I fail to take the time and mental effort to turn my attention to other people and consider what they might want or need (or better yet, ask them!), then I think it is fair to say that I have been selfish. But the fact that I don't know, intuitively, what they want or need is not, in and of itself, selfish.

Yeah, it's more work for me than it is for them. But that's part of our particular package.