When the Conscience is Wounded

Rolf Auer, 25 October 2014

Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded?
Through this wound a mans real manhood and immortality flow
out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death.
Henry David Thoreau, On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience
There was an unfortunate incident in my youth, not involving rape or murder by me. It occurred
because I suffer from manic depressive illness, modernly known as bipolar affective disorder. As
a child, therefore, I had many problems with my behavior, and so was punished for it, usually by
corporal punishment.
One modern scientific study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, describes
the effects of corporal punishment on a child as often irrevocably damaging the childs
subsequent life. The study highlights a correlation between sufferers of child abuse and sufferers
of mental illness. In effect, my life was destroyed because I was born afflicted by a debilitating
illness, which supposedly can be controlled via medication. This study can be found by
referencing the following link:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/219858972/CMAJ-Child-abuse-study
Table 1 describes the physicality of corporal punishment as child abuse. Table 2 shows that
about half the time, some commonly accepted milestones of life success are not achieved by
victims of child abuse, compared with those achieved by normal people. These include level of
education attained, level of income achieved, whether or not married, and so on. I am unable to
take post-secondary courses because of the poor quality of social interaction with fellow
students. Accordingly, I live in alone in poverty, have no friends, and am unmarried.
What Ive found, as welland you can attribute these observations to the paranoia which comes
as part and parcel to my illnessis that the general derision of me and my name, no matter what
Ive accomplished, is now almost a part of Canadiana. That is, for decades, total strangers remark
well within earshot of me, either verbally or through writing (in articles, newspapers, etc.) on my
supposed failings are a human being. In other words, deriding me has become such a part of the
common Canadian lore that any faint reference whatsoever to my name evokes feelings of
contempt. Needless to say, that being innocent in the first place, I am unhappy.
These evocations are often exploited by such entities as political parties looking for a quick fix
toby comparisonassuage their reputations. That is, by publicly denigrating me through
innuendo and the sort, they falsely construct a more robust credibility, especially as perceived by
the news media.
I write this in order to make this record public. My conscience is clear. Is yours?