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Old 03-31-2012, 03:20 PM   #29
Elystan
 
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Join Date: Sep 2011
Posts: 346
Quote:
Originally Posted by Solumina View Post
Also remember that not all psychological disorders are something to worry about, many of them just mean that you do not operate like a normal person but that doesn't mean that the way you function is wrong, bad, or inferior.
Yeah. Something like this:

"Empathy allows us to experience the grandeur of life, to be truly alive, and is one of the defining characteristics of what makes us human.
Psychopaths have no empathy and as a result, they are neither truly human, nor truly alive."

reeks of bullshit, and I could make a few comments on the probable motivation behind such a statement, but quite disconcerting when you're having a "wait a fucking second, do I have empathy?" moment.

Also, like you say, how can you ever know how your experience differs from the norm, beside some guesswork? When you question your own ability to feel a certain way, there is never a control subject. Like colorblindness, you'd have to be told that there was something there that you had no experience of, but emotional reactions aren't as easy to spot as colours.

I won't take this up with a psychologist though, partly because I think you need to have a GP refer you to one, but mostly because I don't see the purpose. My life could in the long term be vastly improved if I were not so quick to shirk all responsibilities, but I'm quite content. I seek understanding, but am skeptical of the way I've seen the health service deal with mental illness in others, and if I came to them with this in particular I could only see it making my life more difficult.

Anybody here ever read Schopenhauers On The Basis of Morality? Because I really want to discuss it.
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