Blog - Joyful Curmudgeon - Blog
A Mary T. Hoffman Commentary from All-Creatures.org

 

"Joyful Curmudgeon" An oxymoron?
No! I see all the beauty of God's creation and I'm joyful.  At the same time, I see all the suffering and corruption going on in the world, and feel called to help expose and end it so that we may have true peace and compassion.

 

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Who’s the Psychopath? - 22 Apr 2006
By Mary T. Hoffman

Why is a person who lacks empathy for other human beings classified as a psychopath or sociopath (a person who has an antisocial personality disorder), but a person who lacks empathy for non-humans is not labeled the same way?

This is something that I’ve been wondering about. It seems to me that such a label is arbitrary. Isn’t a person who can look into the eyes of another animal and kill it for fun a psychopath? What about that pastor I’ve mentioned before, who killed a doe and her fawn on his property? What about those who pay thousands of dollars to kill a “trophy” animal, as part of a canned hunt? Surely, such behavior must qualify as a disorder, mustn’t it?

Until humanity begins to face the truth about this dilemma, how can we consider ourselves to be “civilized”?

I’ll end this Blog with an Emily Dickinson poem that provides some food for thought:

Much Madness Is Divinest Sense
By Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
’T is the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur, – you’re straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.

Go on to: Christ Is Risen! Truly, He Is Risen! – 23 Apr 2006
Return to: Holy Friday and Christian Orthodoxy - 21 Apr 2006
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