| Some people never develop that social intelligence with which we
realise that what we feel is for real, and that other people feel what
they feel; so we relate to each other.
Dogged with that deficit we take the world as it comes and simply do not realise what someone else has in mind; so we don't recognise him nor try to understand him and assume that what we have in mind is all that matters, that the other is of no real consequence. So many managers, parents, educators and priests etc. seem afflicted with this social unintelligence, which can be understood as metaphorical autism. The real waste is that we who have grown up with this deficit become control freaks to compensate for our own fearful state and cannot see any other way to conduct ourselves. We assume that we are normal and that's how life is; we seem not to notice that for all our protestation we are maybe efficient in doing the thing right rather than effective in doing the right thing. Read Robin Dunbar's Grooming, Gossip and the Evoluion of Language to understand autism and the Asperger's Syndrome, within the context of Theory of Mind. |
| This social unintelligence corresponds to metaphorical
dyslexia in that we who are sufferers never do read the social consequences
of our actions.
It's obvious, if we dare look, that those we most affect, e.g. our children or subordinates at work, are confused and unable to speak straightly lest we imply they are stupid in not being able to make sense of how we see the world, and what we want done. |
| We who are afflicted find our handicap is all too easy to disguise; were we blind or lame it's there for all to see, but this social unintelligence is a dreadul affliction, in that we imagine it private and confidential, whereas everyone around us knows something about us is morbid. |
| If we are to be released from this dreadful handicap we desperately need someone to care sufficiently to stand up to us and show us that we are out of order; but that is often a thankless task. |