“Who hurt you?” cries the embittered moral solipsist.

Truthfully, this is no question, but the following statement: “you are morally vile, necessarily damaged, and therefore intellectually dismissible.”

My greatest offense is not that I misrepresent, but that I represent others all too well.

The paradox of empathy is that, while it is known as the faculty of understanding, it is confined to grasping only the perspectives of the weak and vulnerable.

Trauma—the fragmentation of one’s psychological narrative—is the state of a mind incapable of integrating a past adversary.

The empath—confined to understanding only the victim, not the victor—becomes a psychological breeding ground for trauma.

Accordingly, a shattered mirror reflects a shattered world—and deems the world damaged, not itself.

“You’re heartless.” cries the embittered moral solipsist.

Truthfully, the deepest hearts hold the greatest latent capacity for cruelty—for they harbor the greatest potential for resentment.

To the embittered moralist I reply: “Uproot the stones and thorns from the garden of your heart—and where they once lay, plant the seeds of your adversary.”

In exchange for surgically removing the empath’s heart and exposing it to the world, I shall reciprocate by laying bare my mind.

Wielding intellect in one hand and beauty in the other, I climbed the mountain of my past adversaries’ corpses toward the heavens—only to now find myself grasping at air.

The empath is wounded by the adversary they cannot integrate; I am haunted by the emptiness of having no one left worthy of opposing me.