Emotional Vampires By D West

Emotional Vampires

There are emotional vampires, and looters of material and spiritual values amongst us. And from the dawn of time.

They are those who cannot create...but can destroy. Those who cannot produce...but can take from those who can. Those who cannot think....but can trick those who do think many times and in many ways.

No good enterprise, even with the best of intentions, wholly avoids attracting such predators.

No religion ever came about, without some disgruntled farm boy figuring that talking to forty was easier then walking the back forty. No government was ever conceived without some thief or conman figuring that it would be better to make the law then break the law.

Any enterprise that shows potential of separating people from their money and productivity is fair game for them. Even charities, even companies. Any enterprise that has inherent in it, power and authority over others, attracts them the more...

Which is why you see so many representing God or Government.

Our society is well trained by our media, our movies, our schools and our parents to know of the existence of serial killers, pedophiles, rapists...and terrorists, of course.

We have no trouble at all in picturing and believing in these killers and destroyers of material and physical values (though **** is also spiritual).

Yet to suggest to anyone that killers of the spirit exist and walk amongst us raises eyebrows, gets people wondering if you are a conspiracy theorist, or just gets you dismissed as a kook.

Yet just as a **** may join the priesthood for no other reason then to sodomize children....so an emotional nihilist may join the clergy simply for his "joy" in perverting the gospel of that faith.

Just as some petty thief may become a bureaucrat so as to work little and get paid much....so a soul thief may get a job as a teacher for the "joy" of stunting year after year of young, trusting minds placed in his...or her...care.

Just as some sick and twisted men love to see the pain and desperation on a woman's face as he forces her to every indignity.....so some would become policeman to openly grin at the helpless fear of those people who see home and children removed from them for having a proscribed plant in their home. (Pot).

You cannot tell these...people...such as politicians or priests...by their looks. They usually look normal, not too bad looking, and usually not even too good looking.

You cannot tell these people by their demeanor, for there is no more friendly and warm a person to be around then a professional politician or priest. Their "job" regardless as to title, is to schmooze people. Just as you are good at building, or healing, or guarding, or hoeing, they are good at schmoozing...or they'd have been eased out, just as you'd have been for failing in your job.

You cannot tell these people by their stated intentions, by their claimed motives...for they are in enterprises that are in theory dedicated to lofty ideals. Striving to know and love a god/dess. Striving to serve and protect man. Striving to feed the poor.

What a chore for such as me to in any way point out the general type, let alone convince in a specific case! For such exist all up and down our society from National President to Net Poster, and whether their harm is Grandiose or Tiny, few can admit the existence of such types - few want to.

We all have felt the urge for the cleaner badness. A natural desire to lash out when angry. To yell or hit or kick in frustration. Usually we out grow this in youth, but we can at least remember it.

Few of us have ever been so malevolent as to feel the need to emotionally destroy another though. To be a nihilist. We know of envy...but we do not know of hating the good, simply because it is the good.

Since we cannot conceive of doing such things...we assume no other can either. Our fatal error.

So these vampires go undisturbed, for they are unnamed, unrecognized, unconceived of. And they continue to spread their pain, at all levels and in all arenas of our culture. A war here, a tax increase there, a subtly hate spun sermon there, a class raised to question their parents over there, a cutesy yet barbed post here.

But be it a the virtual crap you see floating around the forums, or policy changes that shape the course of history, it is all from those who feed upon the goodness and gullibility of others - as they diligently work to destroy it.

"Oh beware, my Lord, of jealousy, it is the green eyed monster that doth mock the flesh it feeds upon." said Iago, the very man who was the emotional vampire and anti-hero of Shakespeare's "Othello". Yet as brilliant as Shakespeare was, even he was not capable of recognizing that the traits he saw, and put into the character of Iago, was nothing so clean as "Jealousy", but was rather as Ayn Rand said, "A hatred of the good, for being the good."

Note in the play that Iago did not want the estates of Othello, nor Othello's woman Desdemona. He only wanted destruction - a destruction achieved by Othello failing to recognize or even conceive of, the existence of such a type as Iago was.

What is to be done?

Recognize the breed exists. That above all they do not wish you to do. For they are not in groups, they are usually lone skulkers. They being untrustworthy themselves, will never fully trust another, even of their own kind.

Learn to identify them. This is as simple as observing real consequences, not listening to forged motivations and intentions, and prettily packaged words. If it is pain and desolation being spread, then you may assume that it is not a perpetual accident. Few people accidentally kill. And fewer accidentally kill the spirit. Few mistakenly steal. And fewer mistakenly steal or destroy spiritual values.

Name them. They really hate this. I tell you now though, you'll hate it also. You'll be right, you'll know you are right, and so you'll tell those who are being harmed. And you'll be met with incredulity at best. More usually you'll be thought of as too angry, too sensitive, or just a kook. Of course the policeman was well intentioned when he accidently shot that minority boy. Of course the town councilman wasn't to know that the contractor with the same last name as his brother-in-law was going to rip off the city. Of course our President thought WMD were in Iraq. Of course a baptist minister didn't mean to overspeak himself. Of coures, MSN community posters who post hurtful pictures meant no harm.

But name them anyway...for you can see it bothers them.

Prove it. This is hard, but can be done to a certain extent by any of us. We are not compelled, we have not the duty, to expose all such creatures, all day, every day, for all of our lives. But little things can be done.

I would hope, that in this naming of a specific aspect of the battle, all good people who fight for justice and decency...can have an easier time in their battles, that they can see a bit more clearly, that they can thus be a bit more prepared, and a bit less puzzled at what might look in many cases to be inexplicable behavior on the part of these vampires.

Their behavior is inexplicable - were they simply human. That they are not lets it all neatly fall into place.

Man is said, by Aristotle himself, to be the "Rational Animal". There is nothing rational about pain inflicted for the sake of pain, for good destroyed simply for being good.

Thank you for reading this.

Dean West