“Don’t you think that we are all a little crazy?” I looked across the table only to be met by two blank stairs. One, a person with a masters in some sort of clinical whatever degree, the other still studying for her clinical whatever degree, both thinking I am a complete fool. How can this fool say that? They must have thought. Crazy people are crazy, and sane people are sane. No exceptions.
Their story was quite riveting. Apparently, a crazy lunatic had finally been given the correct meds. What was interesting, however, were his antics until then. Million-gazillionaire oil baron, wondering why he couldn’t be “cured.” “It’s not money, that I can assure you.” He would go on to divulge into his madness, and finally concede that “my brain is like a car-everything is there and I’m turning the key. It just needs more oil-it’s running when it should be seized.” He was crazy, oh yes. I wonder though if he and we are just more honest about his craziness than we are about others.
Elliot Crane in The Harmony of the Spheres is a great example of legitimate crazy. Diving into the occult, hidden microphones, and driving backwards at 90 mph an hour will get you that distinguished label. His wife was not above his rantings as well. “Look out for Lucy, by the way…they gave her the latest machines.”
Obviously, the man suffered greatly. He too, like the subject earlier mentioned, admits his madness. He even was in the midst of “working on a simple cure for paranoid schizophrenia.” Was this madness or an honest claim is irrelevant-we have labeled him and now he is beyond credibility.
Now let me paint you a picture. There is a man, works hard, tidy fellow. He goes to church in the mornings on Sundays, volunteers some of his time to various causes. What a good man someone might think.
Now lets see what else he does. Cheats on his wife, gambles frequently, drives up credit card debts, and also is in the middle of trying to take over a company in a very hostile fashion. But in his mind, he is a good man, as he is in ours. Who is crazier, the man who is true to his own condition or the man turning a blind eye towards his own self?
The narrator of the story, who supposedly is grounded just like this businessman, is much the same. He seems to have it all together and is merely sitting back and reading the memoirs of a perceived madman. This madman-by God-even thinks he cheated on his wife! He tells his wife of the harrowing account of the madman who fantasized about a torrid affair. Poor thing, he was really off.
Then sanity comes into question for this perfectly normal man, “Those weren’t fantasies.” Again I ask, who was crazier.
4 comments on Madness-who's to decide
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I think he would have liked to follow Eliot to wherever he was....maybe if he could have followed he could have helped him fight the demon who finally convinced him to check out. Suicide is the ultimate cop-out...this coming from someone who has seen the light go out of another human being's eyes. Eliot let others convince him he was mad; he bought into what society said was crazy. A thousand years ago he would have been a shaman or a wise man. But today's society says if you don't live your life the way we do you are crazy. So much for free will.
I agree that Elliot would have been a wiseman or something. It's sad that we live in a society that wants to know e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g down to the smallest atom. I think this is the failure of science-we can break things down so small but can't apply the knowledge (in some cases) in sensible, non-destructive ways.
and no matter how small we break things down we still cannot see what it is that is between all those little particles...all that huge yawning space where all the action is!
all that dense dark matter is probably where all the answers are