Dr. Sanity has the better of the scrimmage:
The Paranoid solution to unacceptable thoughts or feelings is to say, "If I am having these bad thoughts or feeling or behaviors, then someone else must be to blame and is making me do it." The Paranoid person does not take responsibility for his own thoughts or feelings or behaviors.[My emphasis in red, bolding in the original by Dr. Sanity.]
The healthy individual's solution is to take responsibility for his or her thoughts,feelings, and behaviors. Even if it is painful to acknowledge. But by owning his or her feelings, the healthy individual is able to exert control over inappropriate behavior that might spring from those feelings.
Another way of saying this is that you cannot choose the feelings that you experience- emotions are not generally under conscious control; but you can choose how to act on those feelings, because behavior is under conscious control.
Paranoia strikes deep. It will creep into your heart when you are afraid of your own feelings and try to disown them by blaming the "Jews", the "Blacks", or "Gays" or even President Bush. History has been littered with millions of dead bodies resulting from the denial, distortion and projection of paranoid leaders like Hitler,Stalin, Hussein, and Bin Laden. But those people had followers who believed just as they did, and did most of their dirty work.
You have to stop, look and see what's going down in your own heart if you want to understand how such evil can exist.
Here my friends is food for thought that strikes at the heart of the apocalypse. Ponder it for I will have more to say -- but you should be able to put the pieces together for yourself in advance now...
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