Passing Through a Hostile World to a Better Place

I think we're all, or at least those of us who are not really evil, passing through a hostile world to a better place, and that this life has meaning that none of us understands. We should suspect there are reasons for adversity, for changing emotions, for struggles with our thoughts, opinions, and understanding, with hatred, jealousy, and that we're finding meaning through our glimpses of happiness, our longing for joy, we're finding value in our fears, that our uncertainties matter about death, and finding hope, and that there are reasons we experience grief, that might seem meaningless, unfair, and without future purpose now, but that these are immeasurable learning stages we must pass through toward a far brighter tomorrow.

I know God is not a tyrant, that he is not irrational, therefore we must scrap and cover over some of the pages of our old books, written by the irrationality of irrational men like us, said to be God speaking, and realize instead that God knows the human heart, he knows ideas are not clear to us, the way not marked universally for all, and that all thought has its attraction, its persuasiveness, but that real fairness is on side with all human beings and will never abandon us as we humanity wonder in this place in the great mysteries unknown.

In the light of imperfect wisdom, where error, ignorance, misunderstanding exist here, but not completely, not forever; every person wonders an imperfect course, some figuring out ways of peace, of compassion, of love, others lost to a nature that never grows, never matures, but though so many are lost; though so many minds are filled with poison; despite the resolve to hate, to judge the worth of others, the light of love is never eternally extinguished because we are really in a world made by God who is far more just, fair, and compassionate then we realize.

Me Listening to God’s Voice and the Publics Reaction (A Donald Carter rant)

(Rant will follow initial statistics) 

 Vince Li (Will baker),  Jeremy Skibicki, Glen Race, Gregory Despres, John Paul Ostamas, Kyle Sequeira, and Michael Stewart all live with the illness schizophrenia like I do. 

 In 2008, Li beheaded a man on a Greyhound bus in Manitoba. Diagnosed with untreated schizophrenia, he believed he was hearing the voice of God. 

 Jeremy Skibicki killed four native women. 

 Glen Race killed two men in Halifax and a third in New York. He believed he was a vampire slayer. 

 Gregory Despres killed and decapitated a neighbor in New Brunswick.  

 John Paul Estamas murdered three homeless men in Winnipeg. 

 Kyle Sequeira killed his parents with a golf club. 

 Michael Stewart killed his mother.

 Though schizophrenia is associated with an increased statistical risk of violence, actual homicides committed by individuals with the disorder in Canada are rare. Based on available data as of 2026:

 *  Total Homicide Share: It is estimated that approximately 6% of all homicide perpetrators in western countries, including Canada, have schizophrenia.

 * Annual Risk per Patient: The annual risk of a person with schizophrenia committing a stranger homicide is estimated at roughly 1 in 70,000 to 1 in 140,000.

 * General Violence Contribution: Individuals with serious mental illnesses (including schizophrenia) are responsible for only about 3% of all violent acts in Canada.

 * Key Risk Factors: Homicidal behavior is rarely caused by the diagnosis alone. It is overwhelmingly linked to specific external factors:  

 Substance Misuse: Research shows that the risk of violence in patients without a history   of substance abuse is only slightly higher then the general population.

 Lack of Treatment: Approximately 94% of homicides committed by patients with           schizophrenia involve individuals who were not receiving planned treatment and/or were misusing drugs at the time.

 * Victimization Risk: People with schizophrenia in Canada are significantly more likely to be victims of violence than they are to be perpetrators. 

 The information I researched above shows homicide statistics for people living with schizophrenia. Obviously most people living with schizophrenia are not murderers and serial killers but a percentage of us are capable of committing violent crime. 

 The reason I have for deciding to research these murder statistics and post them is due to an angry belief I have that I wanted to share here. I can't prove this belief true quoting a scientific study but it's a theory I have formed from my own personal experiences. The theory is that you (society), and your cruel attitudes toward people struggling with schizophrenia, is driving people already unbalanced by mental illness psychologically over a line. Yes you (society) and your unfairness, your meanness, your rejection of people, your laughter, or your judgmental condemnation, depending on what type of angry mood you're in, and what kind of anger your spewing, is hurting people like me. You’re treating people unkindly who already have a lot of woes, struggles, suffering, that we're trying really hard to endure and not give up our lives from. We're trying to have a meaningful life just like you are.

To put this theory in perspective I'd like to share a few observations I made over the last couple of weeks through the Christmas season. I see only a very few number of people in my life because I have such bad anxiety. Simply being in the same room with someone I'm not used to seeing causes me to become anxious and grow silent. It's difficult to communicate and most of the time I say nothing. 

At my parents house there is a friend of my fathers who visits. I'll call him Leanard Grey not wanting to use his real name. I really liked Leanard for a long time and I even defended him when I heard him being criticized a few times.

 I have no clear window into the outside world. No one tells me how many people in the community dislike me. I have to try and figure it out in other ways, and I'll explain that way here. The first time I realized Leanard disliked me was a month before Christmas. He walked over to where I sat on a chair with an iPad and said to me rudely.

  "You must know just about everything there is to know by now."

  It was a sarcastic remark, and I thought it sounded mean. Several weeks later he appeared in the same room this time wishing me a Merry Christmas followed by a high-minded look at my father, a coughing sound, and a self-righteous comment about all people being worth a Christmas greeting. I wasn't left feeling uplifted by the experience.

 After Christmas there was another rude incident and then last night my father talked with Leanard over the speaker phone. I finally heard in their conversation how much this man really dislikes me. 

 It became evident listening to them talk that they were discussing me and that their topic was not a new one. What they talked about clearly had been discussed between them before. Leanard began discussing people who hear voices and then he said: "Every time you learn of a person who hears voices isn't it always right after a mass shooting or a car plowing through a crowd. The voices are always instructing people to kill people." 

Leanard Grey (which is not his real name) spoke words similar to these on the phone but his words were much more articulate then I remember. He had an anger in his voice, and it seemed like he was trying to influence the mindset of my father. 

 I realized immediately that their prior conversation before this one most likely involved a discussion of my blog and it's content. I recognized quickly Leanard was stirring up shit and attempting to get my father to see my experience of communicating with God as dangerous. 

In my blog I talk often about how God communicates with me through clear thoughts that are very different from my own thinking. Overhearing this angry conversation Leanard Grey (a man very well liked in the community) gave me a window into seeing not only his views of me but perhaps a window to see what hundreds, or even thousands, of other Colchester County citizens are thinking about me and my experiences. 

This blog has an unknown number of viewers. I have no way of knowing the exact number of visitors the counter only works some of the time. The people who read this blog might easily have the same contemptuous thoughts as Leanard toward me. My claim that I have real friendship with God, and that it’s a friendship that can be trusted, could be viewed by most people in the same way Leanard views my claims in a dangerous way.  

I now considered soberly the possibility that a widespread gossip circle of hatred might very well exist in Colchester County against me for naively deciding to share God's clear thoughts in my blog and novels. 

 My thoughts then turned immediately to the only friend I once thought I had. I'll call him Bubbles (which is not his real name). Bubbles knows that all my former friends deserted me a long time ago. They came for visit after a fifteen-year absence, winking and whispering among each other, with attitude, and a plan to share a bottle of rum back at one of their houses after they'd humored me with their prestigious visit. Bubbles knows from our conversations that I find living alone without friends ruff, that's why he comes to visit me every two or three years; he's kind-hearted and compassionate like that.  

The last visit Bubbles made, previous to two years ago, was on boxing day and he said something that I now find suspicious. He pretended to be referring to a person he seen on TV who claims to perceive thoughts communicated to him from God. He said quickly after mentioning him. "How are we supposed to know that he's not listening to the voice of the devil?"

 In response to this memory of Bubbles my eyes were finally beginning to open. I then recalled another memory of a millionaire businesswoman from the area visiting my parents house on the previous Christmas over a year ago. She started asking me questions I couldn't answer because of my anxiety condition. The woman seemed to get angry before suggesting I lacked a work ethic because I didn't put up my parents Christmas tree. 

As I reflected on this, I then recalled a woman working in admissions for routine blood work at the Truro hospital just before Christmas and how bad she made me feel. I then thought of the rudeness of the woman who's chair I was accidentally sitting on in the reception area. Finally, I remembered the rudeness of the receptionist of my family doctor a few days ago. OH, it suddenly dawned on me; the people of Colchester County really dislike me a lot. 

In all honesty, and with considerable defiance, I think your society is immature, cruel, and really unkind to people suffering with the illness schizophrenia. For as long as "crazy people" (interesting likable people in my opinion) have existed in this world throughout human history you regular people have been attacking our humanity. For centuries you tied us to rocks, locked us unfed in the upper rooms of houses, beat us, chained us to the wall in unheated mental institutions, before dreaming up the inhumanly cruel lobotomy procedure that drives a stake up through the eyeball into the frontal lobe of the brain. 

Isn't it time you jerks did something nice to us people living with mental illness? Oh, I have an idea! (a lightbulb goes off) You could provide housing for the homeless; you’re an affluent country that could accomplish that. Most homeless people have mental illness. Yeah, it's mostly us who don't have a home. It's hard to navigate society with schizophrenia. Do you care? 

I started this blog post naming notorious killers who have schizophrenia. My intension for mentioning these notorious figures was to make a suggestion. What if society treated people struggling with troubling and disturbing delusions humanly instead of attacking us so frequently. This is just a suggestion but perhaps troubled people wouldn't get rudely pushed off the rails if your mean petty society was capable of using a bit of common sense. You could actually treat people with schizophrenia with dignity if you wanted to. You could look at us like people. You could include us in your snobbish society. The pain you've inflicted on people by your narrow prejudices really does do a lot of psychological damage to us.

 The reason this post is angry is because I spent the last twenty-seven years friendless, for the most part, and listening every Friday and Saturday night, until recently, coming from the lawns of either side of my house, to the loud drunken lecture sessions of community people ranting endlessly about me over and over again. Every freaking weekend these morons would repeat once again their high-minded  attacks through slurred speech. I don't know what made them stop but now it finally seems like I have friendly neighbors on two sides, and a house for sale, owned by a friendly lady nearby, with only one hateful neighbor directly beside me. He's Columbian and I guess he comes from a culture where people hate the mentally ill there, even more there then they do here, because he started hating me instantly. He hasn’t found a lot of fans here either. 

 I'm ending this blog post now but I'm glad I wrote these words. This needed to be said for a long time. If I never sell another book in Canada too bad. Wait I'm not done yet!

 The clear thoughts I pay attention to from God both Keith and Charles need to know are not the devil speaking. One of the ways I know the clear thoughts are from God is these thoughts are always peaceful, they always help me figure out some of the profound mysteries of this world, how to let go of my anger, how to love my enemies; the clear thoughts share with me reasons why there is hope to life, where I’m going beyond this world, who my real friends are: Jesus, who I talk to daily, and God the Father who I talk to in separate conversations more frequently now. These conversations with God are not like your little obsession with horror movies Charles. Evil things don't happen when you talk to God like they do in the movie Poltergeist instead God rewards people who search for him with his friendship.

  I can imagine how many people would thump their Bibles and object to the ideas God revealed to me through clear thoughts. People who are Bible literalists, and don’t understand or take serious the wisdom of scholars, refuse to believe the Bible has any errors in the books passages. I know of a few people who read my blog that are furious with me after hearing from them online. They are from religious and political circles in the USA and they refuse to accept the ideas that God revealed to me. God shared with me clearly, numerous times now, that he loves all people of this world. God told me he loves all cultures and communities in every region of planet earth. God loves gays and lesbians and God is impressed with the search for truth of atheists and agnostics through scientific research and in literature and has no plan of abandoning imperfect people looking for answers and searching for truth regardless what those answers are. 

Yes, I can see how this is all devil talk to some of you, but God instructs me to do nothing violent so maybe there are different voices people listen to. When I get angry from the perceived mistreatment of others it's God who helps calm me down.

 If people could be kinder to a lot of people out there, people with and without mental illness, I'm convinced there’d be a real drop in murders.

 Keith is busy trying to convince my father I'm an evil devil talker. What a crock of shit that is. The only violence you'll see from me is me chucking that old fool Keith into a snowbank. If he was younger I would.

 This is a real rant this time. I began ranting in other blog posts and then I edited the anger out of the writing. I’m leaving the anger in this time. Peace

 

Follow Me

 There exists a man, rumored by many to be an idiot, alive in the unknown, questioning time, not sure if life has the potential to lead forward or back, or which way the world is moving. He stands in a mysterious unknown place, perhaps a part of the infinite, admiring nearby hills, their grassy slopes, and numerous wild flowers. The man often recognizes God's voice speaking to him in clear thoughts.

"Follow me Donald", God says to him and Donald listens walking down a winding path through a meadow, past a stream, up a rising hillside past a patch of daffodils. He sees blue jays and a red-breasted robin fly by in song while gazing up at an azure sky into a forever blue but for wondering white clouds and one soaring bald eagle. On he trods around the twisting trail until he arrives at the hills peak and looks around. Wilderness meets his eyes, in the unknown distance, while noticing foreign lands, and unique valleys.

God says to me now again: "Follow me" and so I listen and on I go beyond the world, my heart leaping in my chest, until suddenly my eyes are opened. It is here that a higher truth is mysteriously revealed to me. I swallow saliva down my throat and say in awe in a low hushed voice, "What is the impressive scenery that I now look upon? What place is it that I am now being lead to? What mystery is this that I'm part of? What good is real and what are those ways about and where might they take me to?"

Looking up through a white mist I imagine an island in the sky, with a rocky cliff at its edge, patches of grass, and a trickling waterfall. The water streams over the precipice, falling and splashing into a pool, before overflowing the island and landing on the ground before my feet.

I say to God looking up at the imagined island. "God I know you're good. I know your ways are fair. I trust you unlike the deep distrust I have for other men. You are my God, my dearest friend". 

 "The hills you admire have their own eyes Donald". God says to me. "Tomorrow I will show you how the phenomena you contemplated in your world is only part of what I have prepared for you. In me is an endlessness; my plan and mystery reach far beyond the world you know. My kingdom transcends the temporary path you wonder on. The highest heights you imagine are not the pinnacle of my potential. I am one in which newness is never exhausted and possibility never at its end. I know of ways that reach beyond all revealed beauty, leading beyond hidden boundaries that approach newer realities, new mysteries, and unseen otherworldliness that I will gladly show you that will cause you to marvel with joy. Our friendship is a strong one Donald; nothing will come between us. Tell them they are loved if they will hear you; they need to know. "