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Monday, April 23, 2007 12:00 AM

I'm mentally ill but I'm no mass killer

Will people with schizoaffective disorder be lumped in with psychotic murderers?

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  • Sunday, April 22, 2007 08:22 PM

    What VTech means.

    Although I think I understand what Cary is saying about the nihilism of Cho's actions, what they mean to me is that there are some people who are truly malevolent, and what that means is something I think about a lot, because I happen to know one of those people. Whether this malevolence constitutes badness or madness, is something I go back and forth on. It helps me to forgive the person if I think of it as madness, but then I recognize that there's an utterly selfish volition behind their actions that looks at other people and sees them as opportunities for gathering power, and then I have to see it also as badness. I guess real forgiveness involves confronting that aspect as well. In any case, I agree with the previous commenters who point out that you are clearly not in this category. Some people may not be able to suspend their prejudices for long enough to see this, but other people will know it, and so you're not that different from the rest of us, who are all in different ways viewed through the lens of prejudice, and have to live with the fact that some people don't like us. That's only a problem if we agree with their judgement, which, I regret to say, is all too easy for me at least to do.

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