I've read posts about sociopaths and from sociopaths and although I'm far from an expert in any field I can't help but comment that we all, including sociopaths have free will. We can still choose to do good or evil, regardless of how we feel. I'm Catholic and we call that 'void of emotion' spiritual dryness, which I'm told is actually a gift. (I don't understand that but I accept that)Am I being naive to suggest that a sociopath can still choose to lead a good, honest life without feeling the emotions that everyone else seems to feel? I'd hate to think that there's no hope for them. I know of children who show sociopathic tendencies and what's to become of them? How can we help them? Could instilling in them a sense of making choices based on religious or societal 'rights and wrongs' and using their free will wisely be effective? Thank you in advance for your insight.
We all have free will. Every action is a conscious choice. Yes, sociopaths can be "good" people.
Even if you take all religion, all moral, and all ethical consideration out of our social customs and laws, what you call a good life, is still the most logically practical way for millions of people to co-exist peacefully. So, it doesn't necessarily require a conscience or a sense of good or evil to recognize there is a right and a wrong way to go through life.
In my experience, a child of this nature does not respond to a sense of making choices based on religious or societal 'rights and wrongs' at all but does respond to a sense of common sense and logical reasons for making choices. Attempting to teach guilt to one who cannot feel it is an uphill battle.
For example, rather than telling a child not to lie because it is a sin, you may need to tell him not to lie because you are there to protect him and guide him and are legally responsible to do so and if you have been lied to you don't have the most accurate information to make the decisions you have to make to do your job to protect him.
The emotional mind tries to grasp the logical mind.
Really you just need to make sure the person has "anchors" with society. Other than that just don't subject them to constant variables which would provoke their violence.
Also being born a psychopath in no way means you're evil. Technicly we are incapable of being evil. We are neither good nor bad by nature. We are just natural.
Imagine you were never sad. God took all your anger. Your griefs just melted away. No good. No bad. Just a moral code you live by. Always capable but of murder but never applicable.. Because you don't hate. You do feeling alien and sometimes alone. But you never regret anything. At the sametime you never feel anything. As if you are dead and you cannot die any more.
If you don't find purpose to existance and you can't taste the joys of life... there is only one way to live. Off the deaths of others. Through experiencing their deaths... you can feel alive. It's supposed to be the ultimate high... and a terrible crime. I couldn't imagine being so mentally disturbed as to need to kill to feel alive.
Perhaps we should discuss the medical applications of weed with psychopaths. I've noticed it makes me very mentally relaxed but at the sametime I become more social. But it really doesn't impair me like it seems to some people. Some people.. stop functioning and zone on the tv. I just want to go on adventures high. It allows me to achieve a deeper understanding of people as well as it seems to open them up and removes the tension and removes any real possibility of hostility. But yeah just a side thought.
I keep getting the impression that people think that if you lack a conscience... you're evil. And honestly... I think there's some stupid passage in the Bible that tells people that. It's always the God freaks that think you're evil.
As a Catholic, I acknowledge that there is a God who's a lot smarter than I. My finite mind (and yours) is incapable of grasping all of His mysteries. I take things on Faith because I believe that there is a God, His Son is Jesus who founded the Catholic Church (and I'm not asking you to believe this, too, I'm merely explaining my thought process)). Truths have been revealed through Jesus and I love and accept Him and His truths.
Think of a 5 year old child. They don't have the capacity to understand everything an adult does. Yet they love and trust the parent so when the parent tells them that it isn't safe to play in the middle of the highway, they child listens and accepts, even though he still thinks it might be pretty cool to play in the middle of the highway. He accetps but doesn't understand. It's a similar principle, except of course, that God is finitely perfect and infinitely good. Not like humans. Again, I'm not trying to push my beliefs on anyone. I'm merely explaining where I'm coming from. Thanks for asking. :)
The fact that you apply human traits to an infinite existance makes me sad. Not for you, but for humanity. You are that 5 yearold child, except that you will never grow up or understand why the road is dangerous, why? Because you can't be bothered to observe cars, throw something small infrot of a car and come to the realisation that highway+laws of motion=pudding. No, you will simply avoid the highway and tell everyone else that it's bad and that they will burn for all eternity if they don't listen to you.
Or maybe i'm just bored and felt like being a ****** <3
Hexi, whatever...believe what you want. it means nothing to me. Like I said, i was merely explaining some basis of Faith. Accept it. Don't accept it. You have free will.
Do you happen to have a reference for something written about spiritual dryness and how it may be a spiritual gift? I'd like to read it, if so. I've never encountered that idea, and I would like to explore it.
Do you happen to have a reference for something written about spiritual dryness and how it may be a spiritual gift? I'd like to read it, if so. I've never encountered that idea, and I would like to explore it.
It's an old idea, to try to reach emotional apathy so you can understand god without emotion or fear.
Uknown: Also try Googling “The Dark Night of the Soul” By St. John of the Cross or just that particular phrase. Spiritual dryness and this dark night (not to be confused with the other dark knight) are synonymous. The gift part comes into play when you are stripped of those internal attachments I referred to in the other thread. What's left?
Oh... i was mistaken. "void of emotions" has nothing to with crisis of faith hahahaha. I'm actually not gonna even bother with this one. Carry on! Oh, and linda, you apparently missed my last sentence in the post but i guess you didn't care at all so you were in a hurry to tell me that before actually reaching the end, cute. :)
Oh... i was mistaken. "void of emotions" has nothing to with crisis of faith hahahaha. I'm actually not gonna even bother with this one. Carry on! Oh, and linda, you apparently missed my last sentence in the post but i guess you didn't care at all so you were in a hurry to tell me that before actually reaching the end, cute. :)
Well, you were partly right, anyhow. It is an old idea.
I think what Mother Theresa describes in the link from linda is like the Buddhist dukka (dukkha?) nanas - the "suffering" phases on the path to enlightenment. Where the mystical is suddenly absent and one is left destitute and bereft of that former comfort and has to almost relearn the mystical connection without aid of that connection. It is the death of self which must be experienced after the initial enlightenment and before which a true acquiescence to the metaphysical can begin. (if I'm interpreting correctly, here)
I found a copy of Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill online and read the first 12 chapters of Part II. I think she was a Catholic mystic. At any rate, her description is that it is like a spiritual fatigue - which I understand (I think). She covers the St. John poem in that book very nicely.