The word pathological was coined to describe poor human choices with the same nomenclature as disease. If a pathogen is in your body, your body can fight it using various internal systems designed for that purpose.
In modern times, pathological conditions are treated as if they were untreatable diseases. Excusatory language attempts to absolve individuals from any personal responsibility over how they think, feel, and act, but no amount of excusatory language will absolve them of the guilt they feel over poor choices they make, nor spare them from the real world consequences of doing so.
Pathological thoughts, actions, and feelings are not conditions beyond the control of the individual. Instead, a pathological state is one in which a person ceases to be intentional.1 They become passively emotional instead of proactively rational.
When people fail to live intentionally, they allow emotions, other people, and situations dictate to them what is important. This causes their prime purpose to unconsciously and constantly change, becoming an equally unconscious source to wasted energy, poor outcomes, and a host of undesirable feelings along the way. The cure to all of these problems is to intentionally seek greater joy.
Footnotes
- 1. “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” - Vicktor Frankl ↩