amanamagus
08-01-2008, 11:51 AM
Humans vs. Animals and Insane: I think this comparison is important since it is related to madness since we assume that animals and insane are at a lower rung of consciousness.
Humans – What exactly do we think about when we think of that word? I think being a human is just an opportunity; an evolved consciousness which is an essentially neutral situation; one that provides its holder tremendous faculties to go about his business; transcend to higher levels of consciousness or satisfy the primal urges of the “human” and turn back into a beast.
Attaining the state of “human” is not the end of the horizon for other supposedly lesser beings; the road goes far beyond that. There indeed are constraints that limit human existence. Humans can achieve anything and everything they want to; they just haven’t gotten there already.
People associate humans with everything good and noble about this world and everything bad with “animal-ness”. The words like savage and animal have negative connotations in most of the languages to an extent that everything bad is considered primitive and savage. This is a bit queer if not out rightly unfair and narcissistic you see.
We see “humans” indulging in most “inhuman” acts like genocides and rapes among other things. But they too are “humans”; well, at least biologically they are. What force makes them revert back to animal-ness mentally? Or is it that they were
Normality is the globally accepted set of paranoia and prejudices. It is a standard perception propagated and generally accepted by a certain group of people. I don’t know much about etymology but the word seems to have originated from the word “norm”. It translates into “prescribing to a norm”. Normality does not have anything to do with “good” or “bad”.
Insane is just differently sane; differently normal. Rules of the society have less hold over them. They do things and act the way that defies logical thinking. Some have a tendency to question something that’s considered obvious.
Man has built a world (A set of rules to sustain his existence – Civilization) around him and has been trapped in it and has been complicating it for so long that it seems like that’s the real human nature. Why can’t the trait of human uniqueness that we witness in physical and mental behavior of people extended to include all the crazy people into the purview of normal. I do agree that there is a certain set of basic rules which define our existence as human race – certain similarities which without question are a part of human consciousness.
Sometimes I wonder whether we all are “differently normal” and have some sort of a perception gateway which makes us interpret the action of others the way we do even when we have different reasons and different actions. The perception gateway of the insane is distorted but it can be fixed by mechanics which go by fancy names as psychologists, psychiatrists and evangelists.
And being insane is not a bad thing every time IMO. A lot of people like Galileo were considered insane for attacking and questioning the prevalent rational fabric of society.
Considering the conventional sane thinking of our times, he wouldn’t have been considered a threat but in a different time and age, he was a heretic and a charlatan just coz he thought beyond the microcosm of the prevalent conventional thinking of his time.
If madmen are a mortal threat to society, then there might be a problem. But a lot of apparently sane people do that too. I mean to say they are a threat to the society too. I wonder what the world would be like if everyone was sane in the same way. It’d be too mechanical IMO.
And insanity is relative IMO; all insane are equally insane but some insane are more equal than others. I refer to insanity here in context of its good, bad or neutral repercussions on society.
John Nash (Remember the movie “A beautiful mind”) wouldn’t be called crazy even if he suffered from schizophrenia (He used to see things; to put it in simple terms – insane enough for Common Man to be considered Insane even though psychologists just consider it “abnormal”.).
What I want to say here is that we can typecast all of them who think and act differently on one of the basest human traits as insane. Osho, Mohammad, Jesus and a lot of prophets have been called crazy in their time. A prophet or a philosopher would not be uneasy with his way of thinking even if it’s opposed to the society. A “madman” would feel uneasy. Maybe it’s more a question of consciousness. A prophet or a master is more conscious; that’s why we misunderstand him. A “madman” is less conscious; that’s why we misunderstand him. But the point is that it’s very difficult to differentiate between both of them.
The lady stripping and a guy drinking out of toilet are harmless IMO. I mean we all used to roam naked a few million years back. Now we’re socially conditioned to be shocked when we witness such behavior. Also people used to drink yellow water a century back (I saw “Johnny Cash” movie where prisoners in Folsom Prison had to drink yellow water). We’ve been conditioned to be prejudiced against everything unhygienic. Now we’ve been programmed not to drink “dirty” water. We should study what spurred them to act the way we do coz it’s easier to identify “abnormalities” in such isolated cases than get in touch with the lunacy that is endemic to the point of being invisible and is hence considered natural.
Whenever I wonder if they are really the ones who are trapped and if we’re the ones really free, I come to the conclusion that just the nature of the prison is different.
Madness is a quality which is eerily similar to someone knowing that someone just pee’d in the swimming pool. We identify coz it stands out in the crowd. It wouldn’t bother you if you didn’t know about it. All aberrations aren’t necessarily always good or bad. It’s not like everything else otherwise would be fine. What if sweating in the pool was as disgusting as peeing in there? :)
While we’re on the topic of pee, it’s pretty interesting to note that India’s former Prime Minister Morarji Desai attributed his longevity to his habit of drinking his own urine everyday. The idea sounds disgusting and quite possibly to us but not to him. Everything is not the way it seems to be. Every event and action is essentially neutral. Our perception makes it good or bad. Even Swami Ramdev (The Yoga Guru of Indian Masses) encourages drinking cow urine everyday for maintaining good health. Yucky but it makes sense. Some concepts are so true but so alien to us that they are discarded even before thinking. So a seemingly insane person might be perfectly sane in some other culture – another frame of reference.
Fashions and normality inhibit creativity and freedom. But if this trait becomes a new fashion, it might lead to anarchism.
Recommendation: Chapter 3 What You Can't Say of Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham in which he talks about heresy and the trait of fashion and conventions having less hold on hackers.
Humans – What exactly do we think about when we think of that word? I think being a human is just an opportunity; an evolved consciousness which is an essentially neutral situation; one that provides its holder tremendous faculties to go about his business; transcend to higher levels of consciousness or satisfy the primal urges of the “human” and turn back into a beast.
Attaining the state of “human” is not the end of the horizon for other supposedly lesser beings; the road goes far beyond that. There indeed are constraints that limit human existence. Humans can achieve anything and everything they want to; they just haven’t gotten there already.
People associate humans with everything good and noble about this world and everything bad with “animal-ness”. The words like savage and animal have negative connotations in most of the languages to an extent that everything bad is considered primitive and savage. This is a bit queer if not out rightly unfair and narcissistic you see.
We see “humans” indulging in most “inhuman” acts like genocides and rapes among other things. But they too are “humans”; well, at least biologically they are. What force makes them revert back to animal-ness mentally? Or is it that they were
Normality is the globally accepted set of paranoia and prejudices. It is a standard perception propagated and generally accepted by a certain group of people. I don’t know much about etymology but the word seems to have originated from the word “norm”. It translates into “prescribing to a norm”. Normality does not have anything to do with “good” or “bad”.
Insane is just differently sane; differently normal. Rules of the society have less hold over them. They do things and act the way that defies logical thinking. Some have a tendency to question something that’s considered obvious.
Man has built a world (A set of rules to sustain his existence – Civilization) around him and has been trapped in it and has been complicating it for so long that it seems like that’s the real human nature. Why can’t the trait of human uniqueness that we witness in physical and mental behavior of people extended to include all the crazy people into the purview of normal. I do agree that there is a certain set of basic rules which define our existence as human race – certain similarities which without question are a part of human consciousness.
Sometimes I wonder whether we all are “differently normal” and have some sort of a perception gateway which makes us interpret the action of others the way we do even when we have different reasons and different actions. The perception gateway of the insane is distorted but it can be fixed by mechanics which go by fancy names as psychologists, psychiatrists and evangelists.
And being insane is not a bad thing every time IMO. A lot of people like Galileo were considered insane for attacking and questioning the prevalent rational fabric of society.
Considering the conventional sane thinking of our times, he wouldn’t have been considered a threat but in a different time and age, he was a heretic and a charlatan just coz he thought beyond the microcosm of the prevalent conventional thinking of his time.
If madmen are a mortal threat to society, then there might be a problem. But a lot of apparently sane people do that too. I mean to say they are a threat to the society too. I wonder what the world would be like if everyone was sane in the same way. It’d be too mechanical IMO.
And insanity is relative IMO; all insane are equally insane but some insane are more equal than others. I refer to insanity here in context of its good, bad or neutral repercussions on society.
John Nash (Remember the movie “A beautiful mind”) wouldn’t be called crazy even if he suffered from schizophrenia (He used to see things; to put it in simple terms – insane enough for Common Man to be considered Insane even though psychologists just consider it “abnormal”.).
What I want to say here is that we can typecast all of them who think and act differently on one of the basest human traits as insane. Osho, Mohammad, Jesus and a lot of prophets have been called crazy in their time. A prophet or a philosopher would not be uneasy with his way of thinking even if it’s opposed to the society. A “madman” would feel uneasy. Maybe it’s more a question of consciousness. A prophet or a master is more conscious; that’s why we misunderstand him. A “madman” is less conscious; that’s why we misunderstand him. But the point is that it’s very difficult to differentiate between both of them.
The lady stripping and a guy drinking out of toilet are harmless IMO. I mean we all used to roam naked a few million years back. Now we’re socially conditioned to be shocked when we witness such behavior. Also people used to drink yellow water a century back (I saw “Johnny Cash” movie where prisoners in Folsom Prison had to drink yellow water). We’ve been conditioned to be prejudiced against everything unhygienic. Now we’ve been programmed not to drink “dirty” water. We should study what spurred them to act the way we do coz it’s easier to identify “abnormalities” in such isolated cases than get in touch with the lunacy that is endemic to the point of being invisible and is hence considered natural.
Whenever I wonder if they are really the ones who are trapped and if we’re the ones really free, I come to the conclusion that just the nature of the prison is different.
Madness is a quality which is eerily similar to someone knowing that someone just pee’d in the swimming pool. We identify coz it stands out in the crowd. It wouldn’t bother you if you didn’t know about it. All aberrations aren’t necessarily always good or bad. It’s not like everything else otherwise would be fine. What if sweating in the pool was as disgusting as peeing in there? :)
While we’re on the topic of pee, it’s pretty interesting to note that India’s former Prime Minister Morarji Desai attributed his longevity to his habit of drinking his own urine everyday. The idea sounds disgusting and quite possibly to us but not to him. Everything is not the way it seems to be. Every event and action is essentially neutral. Our perception makes it good or bad. Even Swami Ramdev (The Yoga Guru of Indian Masses) encourages drinking cow urine everyday for maintaining good health. Yucky but it makes sense. Some concepts are so true but so alien to us that they are discarded even before thinking. So a seemingly insane person might be perfectly sane in some other culture – another frame of reference.
Fashions and normality inhibit creativity and freedom. But if this trait becomes a new fashion, it might lead to anarchism.
Recommendation: Chapter 3 What You Can't Say of Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham in which he talks about heresy and the trait of fashion and conventions having less hold on hackers.