Reacting to my own defensiveness, of course.

The issue isn't so much that one's empathy is being directed one way or the other -- the issue is that one's empathy is the object, no matter how temporary, of this pervasive morbid competition, the culture at large.

What I want to tell to fuck off wherever it surfaces is this general competitive intolerance. The endless qualifying, correcting, withholding. Which I just engaged in. Just fuck the fuck off.

At the same time, I appear to be in no hurry to let go of my need to be number one or nothing at all.