The biggest doorway to insanity is the idea that nature, humanity, the self, etc. are all good, normal, logical, real, planned things.
A senseless person has no way of sensing the fact that he or she is senseless.
Therefore, Liebnitz was as insane as Nietzche., the former for thinking this the best of all possible worlds, the later by thinking that the absolute is achievable by a superman, right? Or even go further, any idealist, poet or whatever Holderlin, Crane, sylvia Plath, or plato, etc. Were all insane for believing an implicit perfection.
Jesus Christ was analyzed retrospectively and found to be insane by a group of psychologists, but is this at all a realistic appraisal? Can they go back 2,000 years, and apply modern standards of analysis and declare people insane by virtue of categories unheard of say 200 years ago?
I think it was Mahler who refused analysis, since he thought it would detract from his artistic expression, .
I think it is completely misleading to correlate a sensibility of belief in an ultimately benign universe, with a projection of human sensibility. Another new fangled trap science has created to undermine faith.
Perhaps it is the insane ones, who really are sane, and not the other way around.
I’m referring to the majority of people who think they are perfectly sane, while most of them are actually to some degree insane themselves, but since they believe everything is normal and natural and sane, they don’t have an eye to look for what is wrong and insane in life and all around us. It’s like thinking you have the full absolute Truth makes you stop learning the truth because you think you already have it. Sanity must be earned and maintained, it isn’t normal or common, or natural. We need negatives to open mind space. Doubt is the negative/negation I’m referring to, although there are other negatives that are also greatly needed in the world. Also notice how I said ‘planned’, i meant, people think everything is going according to god’s plans and designs. When in reality, it is fragile and incomplete, imbalanced, poorly formed, and even terrible.
I’m not talking about faith here. Faith is just trust in things based on indirect probability, it’s guess work. It’s not what dawkins makes it appear like. He screwed a word and changed its meaning. I think instead we gotta make new words instead of rewriting the ones we already use only one way.
Yes, and re-writing a dictionay full of misused ideas is quite challenging. If it were just a matter of words, well it would be simpler, but ideas are not simple words to most people you are referring to.
Are there many people who think both nature and humans are all good, logical, planned things? I see some people who think society is fine - though generally these people think nature is wild and dangerous and pretty irrational. They get afraid and go to Court and skirmish level war, this is literal, if someone lets their lawn grow too high. There are people who think nature is all good, logical and planned, but they tend to be critical of society. Most seem to fear nature and are critical of other humans.
And the people who get labeled insane seem to fit in one of the above categories for the most part.
But I do see insanity as connected to certain kinds of certainty that something makes sense when it doesn’t. There are only degrees of insanity/sanity. No pure cases.
After discovering exactly what sane means, I have yet to meet sane person.
I agree there are only degrees.
Certainty in an uncertain world, in an uncertain human sense receptor.
I deviate away from common word use in my posts. Anyone who has read me might expect that.
Common terms of insanity and sanity, I think they are false. That is why I feel compelled to make new definitions.
To me it is like the common word for the sky’s color is green, then I want to change the meaning of the word to something more blue.
Faust calls it metaphysical lust. Trying to have absolute certainty.
Tent calls the people knowers. People who are totally convinced they know things, usually thinking they know allot.
I’m referring to people similar to this. When ever someone thinks they know enough, they stop learning. It’s a huge problem which is a lack of negation.
JS says he has yet to meet a sane person. I feel I’ve met a few, but yeah, they are rare.
james you are the one sane person
As far as I can tell both Tent and Faust are utterly certain, but at meta levels. At the level of facts, perhaps, though Faust has said some questions are stupid, one involving evolution, seemingly because there was only one way to conceive of ‘species’. Not to make this expecially about them, but the agnostics - take the term in a broad sense not simply about whether God exists - have generally just pushed their certainty to epistemology, models of perception, etc. At that level they strike me as as certain as anyone else. Sort of like in three dimensions they lack certainty, but in these smaller dimensions - just being metaphorical - little wrapped up certainties abound.
Sort of like there is this huge building phase where a lot of certainties are piled up - including a lot of facts based on authority and memory. After the building phase with all its certainty, then a position is taken: uncertainty. From this position other certainties are judged, the irony missed, because officially, when that specific issue is being focused on they are officially uncertain.
There is a modern panic about delusion. There is an opposite symptom. When one believes what is there is not.
I suppose to me sane is a little different. People extend into the universe in various ways and to various breadths/degrees. In the areas they do this they can be quite sane, but problems arise when they interact with someone who extends into different areas. To sanities can have a fight, though that’s not the only phenomenon I am referring to.
I wish that even I could get on that list.
It’s ok to be 100% certain about some things. But you have to remember that you are working with odds and percentages, in an imperfect world, as an imperfect human.
Also I think especially faust does not think he’s reached the end, he keeps reading.
People who think they’ve reached the end, they stop learning, or they change what they are learning.
The end of knowledge, the idea of the end, it is an absolutism.
Religion also deals with absolute truths. They encourage trust in doctrine. In the abrahamic sense of the word, trust in things that are actually either wrong or very hard to know in the first place.
It’s not just religion that is the problem, it’s believers in the state, too. People who think their governers are all doing a good job and are sane themselves.
Society is very conformist. At school see what happens if you wear something like a bow-tie.
It’s rediculus. In a way it’s mass insanity, but people think it’s mass sanity, an inversion on their part.
Capitalism is also insane when compared to a higher value system than money.
I’m just listing a few examples.
Oh, no, I never would have thought either of them remotely thought or even perhaps would like to Think they were finished Learning. They strike me as people who enjoy it.
Though this is pretty common all over, just in growing up, it underlies much of what we do and Think. Of course some people go back and try to test a lot of the stuff most of us take for granted. We grow up via a lot of implicit appeals to authority, rationalism (call it temperment created cognition) and conformism to Culture/language. Then from there we play around with some of those received ideas, especially if one of the received ideas was these should be tested or verified somehow. But we don’t get at most of them, I would guess, and they even provide a Foundation, rightly or wrongly. Sort of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorum in reverse. But it’s very rare any goes through much of it. And if they do, through go through it with the Tools they have, drawing on experiences they have.
I do see insanity in conformity. Or the social enforcement. Things are very tight. I mean we have many tough issues to deal with and sources of suffering, and then ties, jeans, cellphones, car brands, sneakers, hairstyle are raised to crisis level importance by choice. I choose to have this as a problem and see it as a problem in others.
Wasn’t there something more pressing at hand?
This is kind of a strange statement–you’ve jumbled together a whole bunch of terms that I’m not sure have any relation to each other.
First, you connect “nature” with “humanity” and the “self”–the latter two I can see being connected, but what has nature to do with humanity and the self that it doesn’t have to do with almost anything and everything?
Then, you connect “good,” “normal,” “logical,” “real,” and “planned”–this is an incredible hodgepodge. Is the normal good? Is it logical? If these are attributes of nature, humanity, or the self, then certainly they must be “real,” maybe even “normal”–but “logical”? And in what sense are they “planned”?
Despite these lingual confusions, I think I actually get what you’re saying. Yes, one of the marks of insanity (although I’m hesitant to say this is the mark of insanity) is the inability to see insanity when it’s there under your nose–whether that’s within yourself or out in the world–and to think of everything as “business as usual.”
To me, what this suggests is something rather obvious: the function of the mind, or consciousness, is to make us aware of reality as it is–or at least to present us with reality as seemingly being what it is just like that (i.e. as a brute fact). So even if a certain chemical imbalance in your brain tells you that the world is filled with pink flying fairies sprinkling their pixie dust on us to give us magical flying powers, and you’re constantly hallucinating this, well, that’s reality for you. I mean, if this were the onset of some form of psychosis, you might seriously consider the fact that you’re insane (and therefore wouldn’t really be insane by your definition?), but if this was what you lived with all your life, or maybe it is something that gradually crept up on you slowly enough for you not to think of it as a sudden, and inexplicable, change in your reality, you probably would consider it normal. You probably wouldn’t think of yourself as insane but “special”–i.e. someone who can see certain things that others can’t
All this means to me is that whatever it is that our minds or consciousness make us experience–whether it be real or the result of some neuro-chemical misfiring–we experience it as reality, not our minds (although we can think of it as mental, but the impression that it is real is the “default” impress, so to speak, and is way more often the impression we assume to be correct). The brain isn’t designed to make us experience delusions or hallucinations, or at least not to present us with our experiences as being delusions or hallucinations; it is design to present us with experiences as being reality–thus, to think of ourselves as insane is a kind of secondary interpretation of our experiences, if not a last resort (incidentally, I can tell you this is a major misconception that those who are considering experimenting with psychedelic drugs always assume–they assume that whatever hallucinations/delusions they will end up experiencing, they can just sluff it off saying “I’ll just know it’s a hallucination or delusion”–it doesn’t work that way–once the brain experiences it, it processes it as real–it is not designed to interpret it’s own experiences as unreal).
