I'm short on cash. Should I rob that convienience store?

You are down to your last twenty bucks, and people are streaming in and out of the convenience store across the street. There’s money in the register and a gun in your pocket. Should you rob the store?

Most people would listen to that question, laugh, and say, Of course not! That’s because most people have enough empathy to realize that robbing someone will cause them great distress. The ability to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes – and an appreciation that other people have rights too – is enough to curtail most of our worst impulses.

We may not articulate such thoughts consciously, but they run through our minds at moments like that. We might also consider risk to ourselves or the possibility of jail, but for most people empathy stops us short. We just don’t do really bad stuff to other people, most of the time.

We say, It’s wrong to rob people! I just would not do it! And that’s probably true for most of us, but it has to be based on something. That something is empathy. You might even say empathy is the neurological foundation of the Golden Rule we all heard as children.

So did empathy take a back seat to logic, or is empathy just a “sometimes” thing?

The person standing in front of the store with a gun clearly has alternatives to robbery. He could get a job, seek a meal from a soup kitchen, apply for emergency public aid, or even panhandle. The thing is, none of those options provide the quick cash fix that walking in and grabbing the till delivers.

Empathy may act as a subtle mental push – it may even push hard at times – but we have to be willing to listen. All too often, we allow ourselves to be subsumed by greed, laziness, and the dream of winning it all without any work.

If you doubt that, look at the success of state mega-millions lotteries. Everyone who flocks to the lottery hopes for an easy score.

Our brains seem hardwired to support the empathetic moral choices. We talk about “working hard” for something, and “feeling so much better in the end.” And I think that’s true. I know it has been, for my own life. Yet the temptation of easy fixes is strong. That’s why society constructs barriers. Marriage and property division laws make it hard to blow up a relationship in the blink of an eye. The threat of prison deters some from robbing stores.

Sometimes people ask if those of us with Asperger’s are blind to such things, because our empathy isn’t triggered by the same factors that work on nypicals. In situations like those I described, I actually think we Aspergians may act more empathetically, because our social blindness – our difficulty reading other people – often causes us to consider our moves more carefully and logically, and that gives more chances for us to make a good or right choice.

We are also more likely to be swayed by logic, and in most cases the logical arguments for getting a job over robbing a store are strong. Sometimes, the same is true for keeping the guy or the girl.

There is no doubt in my mind that Asperger’s has helped develop my sense of right and wrong, because I am such a reflective and logical person as a result of it. At the same time, I acknowledge that my morality may have been slow to develop because it took many more years for me to develop a true awareness of other people, due to the Aspergian weaknesses in my sensory apparatus.

Will society and your mind’s barriers hold you back this holiday season, or will you go robbing and shattering? This holiday season, I hope for the best for you. Think carefully before you act and be mindful of the increased stress at this time of year. January will be here before you know it.