Greetings from the Light

[Immortalis Vigil]

Immortalis, looking back on your previous approach to life, what do you think, if anything, differentiated you from a psychopath? By "psychopath" I mean its clinical sense rather than a pejorative label. E.g., http://www.hare.org/

I was a highly functioning non-violent psychopath. To this day I struggle with selfishness and lack of empathy. There have been periods in my life when I have felt amusement at the suffering of others, and glee at the downfall of rivals. In some very dark periods I have nursed fantasies of violence towards enemies.

I doubt my ironclad self-control would have allowed such thoughts and impulses to come to fruition, out of fear of reprisal, but often that self-control was the only thing that separated me from a criminal. Having experienced these energies first hand, there is no monster who has ever walked the face of Earth that I cannot sympathize with. It is difficult for me even now to think of that time. I wish I could say the difficulty is purely from repulsion for that version of myself - but there is also present an element of seduction. Only the full knowledge that path leads to a dead end enables me to resist. I suppose in a world full of pain it can sometimes be tempting to laugh rather than mourn.