If I ever get off this killin' floor, I'll never get down this low no more.

I am making it. My psychologist, I'll call her Mary because that happens to be her name, says that I am fixable. I have been taking the PTSD cocktail (buspirone with a sertraline chaser from my psychiatrist, Dr. A.) long enough now that I can be reasoned with.

Ha, ha. Never thought that would happen, did you?

We -- Mary and I -- are working on a lot of behaviours, gestures, stances, and speech acts I have that, basically, make me psychopath bait. I am trying. Mary specialises in trauma and anxiety. Dr. A just makes it so I am not beyond talking to. I will probably be on the meds for two years, he says.

One of the problems that I have is the question of this whole Greater Good thing; I am not supposed to internalise and/or solve other people's problems. Ok. Fine. Other people are adults, and are in charge of their own mistakes, oversights, mis-steps, and failures in Life. Ok. Fine. I am not obligated to have empathy for everyone; it is not up to me to save the world.

Query: Whose responsibility is it, then?

http://youtu.be/4aWbo84ZENs

And no pathetic crapping out with some bullshit about your favourite sky fairy. There is no sanctuary (bonus points for identifying that one), there is no sky fairy, and if you are good all your life, when you die, you are dead just like Adolf Hitler. No one is going to give you a lollipop. No one gave Hitler a lump of coal. The cake is a lie.

I am sorry if that hurt you. Santa Claus isn't real either. People lie and people believe incredibly stupid things; just look at Peter Popoff and the Mormons. Get over it. Try not to be one of them.

I adhere, generally, to a standard of consequential ethics; in other words, the 'right' thing to do is the thing that helps people, brings pleasure, preserves Life, and so forth. The greatest benefit for the most people kind of thing.

As a side note, the antithetical position to my ethical code is that fucked up mess where humans run around killing other humans (including children, sometimes their own) because some god told them to do it, which -- to them -- is a totally legitimate reason to commit any form of fuckery, regardless of the injury it may bring to other humans, including children, sometimes their own.

I am not going to pretend that I can even begin to wrap my mind around that point of view, I just thought I'd mention it.

Butsoanyway. If I had been all detached and making other people shoulder their own burdens, well... Harry would probably be dead or a homeless bum. Mummers wouldn't have had a chance once she started getting sick. And I could go on for hours; my point is that *someone* has to care. *Someone* has to help. If I am not helping, how am I any different from the narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths I am supposed to be arming myself against?

I do not want to ever have an evil person in my life again. I am trying to change what I can. Yes, Mary is right, but...

...who is supposed to be fixing things if the ones who are able won't because that is what makes them appear as prey to the amoral psychos?

I don't have an answer. I give Mary examples, counter-examples really, of how my being 'over-involved' (as she terms it) has worked, has been for the Greater Good, has helped, and she just shakes her head and tries to get me to see that if I fought and did for myself like I do for others, I would be so happy, successful, and scaring the bejeezus out of the sociopaths so badly that they would be racing to get *away* from me. And of course there are examples of where I have failed miserably.

I would still like to hold on to my belief that The World to Come is actually something that could be had -- by us, right here, in this lifetime.

Or maybe that is just a stupid superstition, as well.

http://youtu.be/y1wDEueYocU




- Posted using Speak-n-Blog from my Fisher-Price Chatter Pull Telephone