yeah anyone can be downright selfish shallow and passive aggressive .. i notice this in people more and more the older i get

I wonder whether there's an expectation implied here that others should be like you? That rather than honoring others' gifts and what they have to offer, there's an assumption they should be capable of the enormous empathy you are able to offer?

Or does the resentment burble up only after they don't value your gifts first?

Could you please set me straight?

Thanks!

you know I related very strongly to this post because where I live there are a great many very educated males who are very low on empathy. Arrogance is also a common trait in a some of these men. Not so much that they put down me, but they were very arrogant towards people around them, especially poor or the homeless. You know abusive to wait staff, ridiculing people who worked in menial jobs etc. And yet, I have met some very successful men who were CEOs of their own company who were very kind and very wonderful people who have done so many great things.

But still it seemed that there was this disproportionate number of highly educated men who were really low on empathy. I couldn't figure out why education and arrogance as well as low empathy would seem to go so hand in hand. I mean coming out of my background education was seen as the great path to enlightenment (e.g., Voltaire)

I had to sit with this for quite some time to try to understand it. It was relevant because during this time I kept attracting this type and it was very frustrating. I'd keep getting dates with very successful intelligent arrogant men and it was frustrating. Eight years of looking for a partner in this milieu so close to silicon valley. The Bay Area has the most number of PhDs per capita. I was up against a great deal.

Eventually my brother, who probably knows me the best of any of my friends, said to me: "Look for a man with a lot of heart. Avoid the really intelligent men, because they aren't going to have much heart." He even began to suggest professions. Carpenter, for instance.

At first I couldn't see this. I thought it didn't make sense. I was brought up to value intelligence (more so than even financial success) as ideal in a mate. My father was a scientist and it was expected that I would go to college and there I would find a very bright man. And I kept focusing on brainy men because that is what I was taught.

Eventually I began to reorient myself to looking for a different kind of man, the kind my brother spoke of. But I needed some kind of compass with which to guide me to that man. Eventually I discovered it. Non-empathic, arrogant men don't relate well to children, animals or wait staff. I have never seen it. Every arrogant/unempathic man is either indifferent to children/pets/wait staff or if they want them it's because they serve some utilitarian purpose. They might become fathers and providers, but they rarely make great fathers or pet owners. At worst those less powerful are treated cruelly, at best they are tolerated or are considered utilitarian extensions of their own successes. (E.g., my child reflects me through his scholarly successes, or he is going to take over the family business when he is older etc.)

I've never read why some grow up to be arrogant/unempathic. I have some ideas, but I don't think they are all that well-developed. Mostly its about the way education is set up in this country. There is a huge emphasis on being right in the earlier grades and I think some men who have the answers to all the questions get this idea about themselves that they are infallible because often they are right--when it comes to facts--and a great deal of early education is unfortunately memorizing and spewing back facts. And so they apply this kind of logic to their personal lives as well and they go around with the idea that they have all the answers because they are so successful at having had the answers in the past. And so they become hypercritical of anyone who is different, who is the opposite, who isn't successful.

But because we all have shadow selves--those unowned parts of self--that get shoved under I feel that in many cases these unempathic characters have suppressed their empathic selves because they are seen as weak, just as you have stated. I know of someone who is around married couples of this sort and he told me that his boss said that these couples often break up when the kids are grown because the women can't take it any more. They just can't take the cold arrogance of this kind of mate. As soon as those kids are teenagers these wives are gone, even though it often means lower status and loss of a lifestyle.