Thanks Chico - please check that quote again as I have modified it for clarity. I also enhanced it... please check to make sure you still agree.
Here's the more... (I just remembered this). I truly believed (in fact this belief was at the core of my world view) that the very most successful folks on Earth were that way because God felt they were best to do what these successful folks do - "shape the world" and "stand against evil" and that the earth was in a spiritual battle of good vs evil.
I believed that God knew what was in my heart and thus my successes were approved by God and that God was also giving me well deserved breaks along the way.
Guess what went wrong?
First I started seeing how I cut corners. Then I saw why I justified it. This is again because I felt God knew what was in my heart and so I could get a pass here and there (meaning I would do things against my ethics and against my morals - more on this at the end). Yet as I climbed higher on the world ladder I saw that the folks above me were even more vicious than I could ever imagine. This is when both my doubts about God and what was actually going on on Earth started sneaking in along with my own revulsion at my justifications for doing unacceptable things... doing these things to get to a power position with the real movers and shakers so I could then change (save) the world. When all these things fell apart, that's when the Book of Job event happened. That was perhaps my highest profile meltdown but not the worst and not the last.
On morals... I realized my morals never seemed static. They seemed to shift or be dependent on the situation. So I gave up. It is only the last 4 or so years I have tried to build a set of ethics I could stick by. My failures in 2015 proved that to be another false hope. So now I made what I am calling "operational protocols." Protocol Number One is - Maintain my right to experiencing the wonderment of life on my own terms. Having others tell you "the way it is" may work for some, not me. Protocol Number Two is - Never allow another to pull me into their other worldly story emotionally. When someone starts to tell me they were so and so in some past life, I have no issue. The minute they tell me who I was in "their past life" I now quickly move on. That game (for me) is a trap... a box. I will never be caught in that again (at least not this lifetime and hopefully never beyond this lifetime).
Bottom line Chico is that I see I am not a sociopath (at least not now). If ever I was, I got out of it. I know what I experienced and the changes in my thinking that I can see probably played a role in my direction heading towards empathy. But I also would be lying that if someone (or a group) significantly harms a loved one, friend or vulnerable (myself included on that list) I will use all honest means to repel that attack as I eventually did in late 2015 and still am doing when the opportunity or reason arises.
Having read Laura-Knight Jadczyk's Editor's Preface to Political Ponorology I can see the odds against my success are great (with regards to that old crowd) but it is what it is. In addition, I no longer count on some benevolent third party fiction of my own wishful thinking to make things right.
Last edited: May 21, 2016