A point that Richard Reeves makes a couple of times in President Nixon: Alone in the White House
is that Richard Nixon did not like people because he assumed that they
were like him, with his deviousness and flaws. That made me wonder: Do I
assume that other people are like me, and, if so, would that explain my
dislike for a number of them?
At first, I doubted that I have
enough empathy to think about what other people are feeling, and thus I
would not really be contemplating whether or not they are like me. I
think that it would be a gross mistake to maintain that I, or anyone
with Asperger's syndrome, lacks empathy altogether, for I can sympathize
with people when they are going through good or bad times, since I
remember how I felt when I was going through similar occasions. But I
was wondering to what extent I sit around wondering what makes other
people tick. There are many occasions when I see myself as a victim of
other people, whom I believe are rejecting me, rather than trying to put
myself in their shoes.
And yet, as I thought some more, I realized that there is a sense in
which I do project my own flaws onto other people. I'm not the most
accepting person in the world, and I tend to project that onto others.
In a sense, I may be right, for many people are rather sparing in terms
of their acceptance of others. But my hunch is that I tend to
exaggerate the degree to which that exists in other people.