Maggots and Empathy

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Would it help the NT world understand that they can lack just about as much empathy in the same way they perceive aspies do if a radical illustration using maggots was made to help them out?

Empathy is understanding and entering into another's feelings. Are there any people who can empathize with a maggot that say (for example) has burrowed into his or her head? If not, then why not?

Even though aspies and NTs are both human beings, obviously both do not think alike. Do maggots think like people? I doubt it. Do people think like maggots? I hope not.

The point? I think that the reason anyone who is unable to enter into another's feelings is almost always because of a lack of understanding. It seems like whenever understanding exists, so does the ability to enter into another's feelings.

Saying someone lacks empathy without emphasizing that it's because understanding is missing, is like saying someone has a headache because they didn't take pain medication. Such logic would mean everyone who doesn't take pain medication should have a headache. So why do people say others lack empathy because they can't enter into another's feelings. That's circular reasoning and circular reasoning is illogical...but yet so many people fall for it because they don't think critically enough.

I might not have expressed myself logically just now. I can't be sure thanks to my brain being deprived of sufficient sleep. I guess I'll find out how logical this is by reading what posts end up in this thread.

You are right that NTs lack empathy. Many things like empathy, pity, sympathy are highly selective things in practice and require you to be delusional. I'm not saying it is a bad or good delusion, but nevertheless thinking you can feel or experience something exactly the same as someone else requires you suspend disbelief because it impossible to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, so to speak. None of these are entirely selfless acts The only thing we are guilty of lacking is the correct display of empathy in the ‘right’ situations. That has little to do with empathy and more to do with what is the expected/acceptable response.

Ad companies know about this. Charities know which images bring in donations. Those images are selected and sanitised for maximum response.

When people say aspies and autistic people "lack empathy" I think that sometimes it is a sort of misnomer.

What NTs have is termed "empathy" but it is not "empathy" it is syncronicity. They have these bunches of cells in their brains that make them watch faces and body language carefully and tune into them, and instinctively match their emotions and actions with others. They dont do this out of concern or sympathy, it is an automatic brain response. Apparently people on the spectrum lack these "mirror cells".

However people on the spectrum are at times capable of empathising with others when they recognise that another person is going through something bad that they have been through.

That is what empathy is and we dont need "mirror cells" for it.

Zen Mistress, what an interesting insight.

Hmm.. consuming without restraint or thought of consequences? Responding to stimuli without conscious thought? Forsaking reason in favor of instinctual emotional reactions?

The two might be closer than you think.

Don't mean to offend any NTs out there but even you have to admit you've met people like that.

And yes good point Zen_mistress. What people commonly mistake for empathy often has little to do with actual understanding and more to do with an autonomic reaction to someone else's emotional signals.

Like how yawns are "contagious".