If there was one man, wise and good, whom had to live in a whole world of mad-men, lies, fools and distorted individuals, how so and by what means would he avoid having himself also go mad? What would he have to do to save his own mind?
Would he, pehraps, have to base all of his judgements and choices upon his own created thoughts, and never copy anyone else? If he were to copy others, he would thus repeat something foolish or mad, therefor he would have to live in a way that was different from everyone else. But because of this he would also not be able to gain education or knowledge from them, because education and teachings from fools would not improve his mind at all, and he should not copy their ways of thinking. Would he most-likely have to live alone like a sort of woodsman, in order to best save his own mind? If this were the case, then privacy, the peace and seclusion of being outdoors, out in nature, completely away from society, if being out in the wilderness like this is good for a man’s mind, that is because the society was bad for his mind, and to be out of that society later resulted in a relief from the contamination, stress, distortions, untruths, etc.
But he’d be the mad-guy Dan. Because sanity is an index based on how well individual behaviour/thought integrates with enviromental/social conditions towards the end-point of improved survival/reproduction.
The ‘mad-man’ phenotype has obviously out-bred the ‘wise-good’ phenotype, and therefore, by the only objective definition, is more sane.
The stark reality is this:
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is handicapped.
If the group of mad men consider him handicapped, or say that his higher intelligence is a defect, one way that he would avoid loosing his sense of value would be to ignore these claims after disprooving them through logic. If his mind were faster, stronger, wider in comprehention, more fareseeing into the future, more stable aswel as more centered, able to handle the world more fluently and obtain knowledge more quickly, it would produce more success for the tasks of the mind in each case. This itself would be proof that it was better, in the same way that 5 slices of bread are more than 2, and even the most absolutely simple form of sane reasoning could evaluage quantity, but in this case, when evaluating himself, he would not say 10 to 4, he would measure the true nature of each facility in himself.
The mad men may say, all is bad other than what is exactly the same as themselves, or lower than themselves. If they were foolish, they would say it was good to be even more foolish, even dumber, and glorify children born with mental handicaps. This index would be flawed, and would not suggest sanity. The mad-men, because they were incorrect, would be decaying, and slowly going extinct. To act like them would not be evolutionarily superior.
Reproduction does not exactly improve the chances of survival, and if done improperly, it merely destroys the future of the species. For if a defect grew a little more with each reproduction, aswel as that style of reproduction outsourcing, over-producing against the others, until there was so many of the lower quality yet higher quantities, that all of the food was eaten from the land, later a starvation would occur. In normal ecological terms [and by the way, ecology operates contrary to certain supposed darwinisms, of which hopefully you would not suggest], a species reproducing not too much and not too little, living not too long and not for too short a time, would ensure that the specie does not destroy its own environment, and thus not self-destruct. An over-reproducing herbivore specie would, for example, soon desertify its forest, and then be unable to survive in the desertified area, aswel as having no forest to live in, if all of the forests were desertified from it, therefor it would go extinct. Many species do go extinct, which cannot repeat a sustainable enough, stable enough pattern. In this way, reproduction is only good within environmental parameters, and if it makes “progress” beyond that point, if the animal is too fertile, too strong, too healthy, too long-living, then it would soon over-eat its food sources and thus become extinct.
In some ways I may be prooving your point ever-more, in other ways I may be disproving something.
The wise one would understand this, though; he would know the difference between progress and imbalance. He would clearly be able to see what was better and what was worse for survival. Also he would not limit his sense of value to survival of a specific kind of species, because some species are parasites, diseases, etc. and he may not glorify the survival of one species that degrades or extincts the others. So, for example, if the mad-men were causing the extinctions of other species and environments, he would know that the specie of the fools were destroying the dependancy factors of survival of the whole system of life on earth, and would then want the fools to go extinct instead of wanting the whole earth to be so eventually damaged by them.
That would be like saying, in the land where everyone else could only run at 5 kmph, the man who could run 9 kmph was handicapped. This would simply not be true. A strong and above average person, either if having above average body, or above average mind, would not be handicapped by his own superiorities. Because these principals of additional strength being good, in the case of both mind and body, conformity is not the true definition of perfection, and in many ways it is better for a species to have a wide variety of differenciation amoung its members. A more diverse group is more flexable, and less vulnerable to pandemic. Therefor, a place with blind, one eyed, two eyed and three eyed all in various different places, would be the best, in the dialects of survival, and anti-diversity would be the true definition of a handicap, in that context.
Dan, in reading your orignal post I thought the kind of man who avoids it would be a romantic figure, one to be admired. Then I thought the type of isolation he would have to withstand might drive him to the brink. But even if he proved superior enough to endure a life separate from others, would the outside world recognize those singular acheivments. Then I realized that in order for the avoiding man to do so, he would have to be so far removed for the mad men’s lives of influence, that it would be hard to get close enough to deem him superior. Further along this line of thinking, I wondered what is a man, whether he be mad or super sane, when is not deemed to be so from others. That whole nobody around, tree falling in the woods thing . . .
What I think I now understand is that madness is far from what someone experiences, and more about what the lynch mob shouts about you “Stay away from his madness, kill him–he is mad or else contain him.” Who would be there to say, “He is great–put him on our shoulders and carry him” How would he define himself, when the definition of madness is given to him by others.
I may be off track here, Dan, so tell me if this is compatible with you ideas.
For me, the romantic figure cannot be aspired to, so in joining the ranks of the mad, it would be better to develop your own brand madness. And while you’re at it, save the world. Haha.
Such a man could never exist, seperate and isolated from everyone elses thoughts and teachings. He is inescapably part of their world. It wouldn’t even be possible for him to acknowledge that he was the sane person, because would basis would he have to judge that on? He is the only ‘sane’ one, so he has no knowledge of what it is to be sane. His own created thoughts would invariably be copied from those who raised him, at least until he could survive himself. And if they were mad, then his own thoughts will be mad too. And he cannot learn to think any other way, because there is no ‘sane’ people to show him how.
If however this ‘man’ was from another world, of sane people, and he was dropped into the depraved world of mad-men, then yes he may describe himself sane, but only by his standards, as has previously been mentioned. He could not convince these other men, of their insaneness, as he would be the one that was bucking the trend so to speak.
It may be possible that he could teach them the error of their ways, but that would depend on their brains being wired in the same way as ours and being able to comprehend logic and reason. For instance if they thought the best way from A to B was zig zag line, he may be able demonstrate that a straight line would in fact be better, providing they had the capabilities to understand the logic involved. It depends on what you mean by ‘insane’, and obviously there is differing descriptions. If you mean different from the norm, then the lone man is ‘insane’ but could convince the others of his ‘rightness’. If you mean brains wired differently, or something of that nature, then it is possible the two are not even of the same kind, so couldnt be compared.
It would depend what the man himself wanted. If he wanted to be part of the ‘norm’, then going ‘mad’ would not be a problem to him. As in your example he doesn’t want to be part of the norm, then he has to escape the norm, which in this case would ultimately mean his own extinction, and the end of his way of thinking.
Aha. I knew that sound-byte would bear a bit of examining. The key point of Dan’s world, and my ‘land of the blind’ is that the blind, and the mad, precede the sighted, and the sane. Not important, you might presume - but you’d be wrong. The land of the mad, the blind, is totally geared toward madness, and blindness. Otherwise it wouldn’t exist, would never have arisen.
It is a world where sight has been circumvented. People have personalised beepers that announce their unique audio-signature perhaps. All corners are padded. Short-lived pheremones advertize location and direction maybe. Books are in Braille. Cinema is unknown, but people enjoy concerts a whole hell of a lot more. The super-models are all pigs but wear fabrics of unimaginable textures and scents. You have imaginations.
The important thing to remember is that in the land of the blind, they do not simply lack eyes, but also lack the neurological mechanisms to interpret visual input in any meaningful or useful fashion. In the land of the blind, there is nothing to see, because the concept does not exist in the lexus of their sensoria.
In such a world, the one-eyed man would live like a blindman in an art museum trying to discern a Picasso from a Van-Gogh by licking the paint.
Don’t believe me…? I didn’t think so. Don’t matter. Try this then.
Throughout history there have been people who have claimed to have second sight. Even now there are people who, whether you believe in such things or not, make their living by Ghost-hunting, mediumship, horoscope-prediction and other such hocus-pocus. They have an elusive third eye.
I believe us common folk used to burn witches by the score.
Or world is not built, our society not constructed to allow this third eye much of an advantage. Why…? Because most people do not percieve ghosts. And as such, the sensory data derived from the seeing of ghosts is not particularly valuable.
“I saw a ghost the other day.”
“Really…? Shit. What was it like…?”
“Kinda whispy.”
“Whispy…?”
“Whispy.”
“Hmm.”
“Yeah.”
“So, did you watch Eastenders last night…?”
In the land of the blind, sight has no value.
Why isn’t there a breed of super-giraffes with kilometer-long necks…? Why isn’t there a über-cheetah which can run at 150 mph…? Because there are no kilometer high trees, and no formula-one racing gazelles.There are quite strict limits to how extreme a usually favourable trait can become before it becomes a handicap. Sexual selection can go some ways to maintaining an extreme trait in the name of conspicuous consumption and the attraction this brings, but again, there’s a point where an extra inch on your peacock-tail is just one inch too far.
The general trouble with breeding the übermensche is that the world’s fucking average retards insist on having babies too. And because their bodies require less energy to build and maintain, they mature faster and shag each other more often. Damn their dumb-ass asses.
I’m afraid the only time in which supermen can thrive, is a time when only a superman can thrive.
Believe me Dan, I wish you were right.
Let’s do a little imagining.
We’ll create a big computer and populate it with hyperlife. This hyperlife consumes computer cycles to ‘live’. Just because we can, we’ll forgo normal bottom-up evolution and create a principle hyperlife species of long-term thinkers. They know that the computer they live in has a finite number of cycles to consume before it burns out, and so they unilaterally decide to consume the minimum required cycles necessary to exist for some short span and reproduce at a rate of one-for-one.
Say now a mutant form occurs. This type is a short-term thinker. It doesn’t give a shit about species longevity. Say it consumes twice the number of cycles, grows to maturity twice as fast, and breeds at a rate of two-for-one.
Which takes over…?
Let’s assume that the long-termers are sentient and reactive. How do they prevent the short-termers from taking over…? The short-termers are cheetahs to their puddy-cats, and fire eventually must be fought with fire. So the long-termers decide to augument themselves into triple-consumers - consume three-times as much, move three times faster, breed faster, fight faster.
The ‘long’-termers win the war and the short-term menace is over. As they agreed before the war, the hyped-up long-termers unilateralty deceide to slow down again.
Except a revolutionary faction don’t. They are young and free and wild, and don’t believe in the boring-traditional concept of a ‘finite mother-computer’. “Fuck that” they say - and slash and burn their way over the horizon. Yee-Haa !!!.
Bollocks say the long-termers. This time however, they get clever, and instead of augumenting themselves, with all the perils of temptation this brings, they create a sterile caste of quadruply maxed-out warriors, with in-built self-destruct dates, and set them on the rebel faction.
The rebel-faction is wiped out. Hooray - life is back to normal. Except it isn’t. Because now everyone is kinda dubious about everyone else. There are rumours of secret cadros of speedy-short-termers masquerading in public as long-termers. So a standing army of the warrior caste is maintained.
Then of course, the faction in control of the warrior caste finds that is has aquired a little more say in the daily running of hyper-land, because everyone is a bit leery of their great big stick.
So other standing armies begin to spring up, controlled by other factions to balance. Some decide to push the augumentation envelope to quintiple consumption, and beyond.
Madness and mutually assured destruction.
It is insanity to consume the world at such a rate as to doom our children’s children. Just as it is insanity to take a drug that is guarrenteed kill you in twenty year’s time.
But if that drug saves your life today, then suddenly it is not insanity at all.
Actually, this scenario is unreal. As I said - we’ve used a top-down version of evolution. Created a race of angelic long-term thinkers right at the start. The reality is bottom-up. We were always short-termers. All animals are. Put any animal on an island with a food-source and no predators and poof - suddenly they overpopulate immensely, and die out just as quickly. We’re no better, just go to Easter island and ask where all those stone-head chiselers have got to.
There is no proper or improper to reproduction. Reproduction just is. Have resources - will reproduce. That’s it.
You know the alchemic saying “As above, so below.” Well that’s the wrong way about. With evolution and culture, it’s “as below, so above”. Just switch ‘fitness’ with ‘finance’.
Money doesn’t grow on trees, money grows by burning trees. Therefore, in any culture, where money represents power, and let’s face it, it always does, then the shortest-term thinker, if he/she can maintain a continual momentum of consumption, will always have the financial edge, and therefore the advantage in power over a longer-term thinker.
The average First-world Joe, however green they may consider themselves to be, consumes twenty times more resources as a third-worlder.
To go back to definitions of madness.
Your mistake, if I may be so bold, is one of perspective. You are judging from an external viewpoint. To us, sitting outside of the computer, the behaviour of our hyper-lifers is pure madness. But to one of them in there, it is just the way things are, about as abnormal as pizza for dinner.
In isolation, anti-life, extreme short-term actions are usually dubbed madness, and those that exhibit such tendencies, locked up or killed. But if such actions are socially supported, they are simpy deemed ‘espirit du corps’.
This is the mistake people make in judging nazis. At that time, in that place, their actions were not mad or sociopathic. They were normal. They were just what poeple did.
Your question is the wrong one. The wise should not simply seek a way to avoid going mad. The truly wise should seek ways to make the insane sane. Futilely in most probability, but still, one should try, that is the only truly sane action. Domination or isolationism is for assholes.
sometimes the Music of the 60’s is great stuff , such as Moody Blues " Days of Future Passed " album ( I don’t agree with all the album by the way ) but
" Lunch Break " on this album hits the target of this thread completely and throughly
Save the world or save huamnity from itself.
Parable:
A honey bee has been to the nectar. The enlightened bee- spins, whirls, jumps, and buzzes in an effort to relay the information to the rest of the bees.That bee knows that there is abetter life out there. But the hive has become complacent. The hive is fat dumb and lazy. They ridicule him call him crazy, mad and maybe even confine him. So the bee that had a more better sane livelihood thought is oustrecized and the human maddness continues.
to quote from the Moody Blues " eyes are subject to what should be done , problem solved time can not be won . all life is wrong , only thing to do what can be done , be calm … be calm …etc " there is more
It does not have to be inevetable. Chaos is from the madness and the madness is from believing our own thoughts. The mind created this madness and the mind can uncreated it.
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I knew that sound-byte would bear a bit of examining. The key point of Dan’s world, and my ‘land of the blind’ is that the blind, and the mad,