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Thanks a ton for the advice (that goes to everyone
who offered help and feedback)!
To be perfectly honest, this entire issue scares me greatly. What scares me
most is that the more I read the Codex, and the more I peruse the articles...
wow. After trying to finish that sentence like five times, it occurs to me that
just saying the words "psychic vampire" (without the protective quotation
marks around it) in reference to myself is a terrifying thing.
Primarily because consciously feeding off the energy of another person goes
directly against everything I've been taught with regard to ethics. I have a
hard enough time justifying my meat-eating habits with respect to "harm
none", and to that end I created the "Dead Cow Exception" (which
basically states "The cow was dead when I got here. My decision to not
eat the cow will not bring the cow back to life. Therefore, pass the ketchup.").
The Dead Cow Exception implies that if I had to kill the cow, or otherwise personally
hurt the cow, that would be unethical. Weellll.. here I'm discovering that in
order to properly function, I have to drain energy from other people. They're
not at all dead, they do seem to be rather attached to that energy, and it's
hard to say whether or not it would be harmful of them to take some of that
energy. It sort of crosses an ethical line somewhere between "violence"
and "theft", if my current paradigms are at all accurate (and for
the first time I'm starting to think they might not be). Of course, that's scary
as all git-out.
It was less scary when I didn't have a clue what I was doing. :-P
I still don't feel I understand enough to be able to make any sort of truly
informed decision on the matter, from any direction... but while I'm running
around trying to decide what to do about myself, I'm still sleeping 12 hours
a night, still sort of sleepwalking through most of the day, still getting headaches
from the effort of keeping my tendrils to myself, and still consuming more calories
than a T-Rex in the world's biggest butcher shop (to no noticeable effect on
my overall hunger level).
It might also be prudent to bring up the fact that I've spent a very large
chunk of my life fighting a sort of martyr, Gandolf-On-The-Bridge, "my
life is less important than everyone else's" complex. So when it comes
down to the choice between draining someone else and starving myself, my immediate
*tendency* is to go with the latter.
It just feels like I lose either way. I either harm other people (which violates
"harm none") or I harm myself (which violates "harm none").
I was thinking about just maintaining the current status quo and seeing if,
by some chance, the "addiction" theory is correct, but at what point
do I look up and say "You know, it's been way too long for this to just
be withdrawal"?
I haven't gotten to read all the articles yet, so I may be missing one that
deals with this question, but it's quicker to ask y'all. What are y'all's feelings
on the ethical implications of psychic vampirism?
And now, the paragraph that inspired this post:
While I am certain that your HP had the best of
intentions, her actions strike me similarly to Michelle. It truly disturbs
me that someone would try to tell you what is and is not ethical behavior.
I believe that is something everyone must decide for themselves.
~ OrthaeVelve
In all fairness, she had to take a rather hands-on approach to teaching ethics
with me because I had a rather difficult time grasping some of the finer points
of "harm none". Specifically that I would often redefine the word
"harm" on the fly to justify any action or situation I found myself
in at any given moment. The overall effect was that when she met me, you could
almost say I had no ethics at all. Now, after years of study, I *do* have a
sense of ethics... and current circumstances are bending it over the nearest
chair and making it squeal like a pig.
This article is presented as part of an ongoing effort to present other views outside of, as well as within, the online vampire community. Those of us who consider ourselves vampiric don't always look at things from the same viewpoint due to our life experiences. As such, the views and opinions contained in this article are entirely those of the author(s), and may not necessarily be shared by SphynxCatVP. The webmaster is not under obligation to update or otherwise keep current the contents of this article. Most importantly, only you can decide for yourself whether this article or any of the author(s) other views are useful or applicable to you - you are responsible for using your own reasoning and judgement, so judge wisely.
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