Mental stability is a topic our species has grapled with since the beginning of our existence. And yet despite the technological and biological advancements we are yet to fully understand the concept of lunacy, not due to lack of trying but it seems understanding the human psyche is one of those things we can’t comprehend, it is beyond our understanding.
What stipulates insanity?
Identifying the sane from the insane is quite easy because since our childhood we once encountered a ‘mad man’, and you would immediately observe from the social cues that it is not something to be desired. From the poor hygiene, visible mumbling, erratic behaviour and acting out of sync with the rest of the population. Therefore, by our observation and the constant berating from our gurdians we conceptualized it’s something you should try to avoid. But, if we are being honest we didn’t quite understand we just formed set parameters to avoid being labled as so; always be presentable, don’t speak to yourself/mumbling, have a set standard of hygiene and relate with other people amicably and most importantly stay grounded to reality.
This becomes quite confusing especially for a child to understand, because at some point in each of our lives we were all kids, and we didn’t really care about what others thought, we were spontaneous and didn’t have to filter ourselves to appear more appealing to the eye, our imaginations run wild and just like the ‘mad man’, we sometimes escaped reality through it conjuring up characters, frolicking in the mad and at times even speak to ourselves visibly and yet we were wildly accepted and even sometimes praised for that very imagination so what changed?
The truth of the matter is most of us are all on the brink of madness…Hanging on a thread hoping we get to see another day with a stable clear head on our shoulders
As we grow older we get to understand that their is a certain standard we must uphold/ a script you should play (if you ask Shakespeare), and failure to do so might be equated to ‘psychosis’ which is basically social suicide. But, with maturity we get to understand that our vague description of madness was nuanced and greatly misconstrued. Because now we not only get to be shown a crazy person and pass harsh jusdgment of them not making great life decisions, which seemed quite obvious, and we would never be like them as we have distinct dreams and life ambitions and it would be unimaginable for you to ever turn out like them. This judgment slowly fades and our harsh thoughts are slowly transformed into empathy or at times even disgust or a combination of both.
This might be so because as we mature the training wheels are off and we get to experience life for what it truly is, we dont get to just pick and choose how our story goes in the idealistic manner we imagined. You, get to understand that the world isn’t always rutting for your success due to our chaotic human nature and even to things you can’t control even if you wanted to. So, the next time you coincidentally meet an unstable person you get to understand that they too had dreams and aspirations, they too had people who believed in them but the world possibly crushed them and their only mistake is they ventured to deep into the depths of their mind and went back to default of not caring about their surrounding and completely shutting down and escaping to their own reality.
Therefore, with this realization in common human fashion we create parameters of how not to go out of bound with reality, because lets face it their are times when the voices in our heads get louder and our emotions get the best of us, but instead of dealing with this emotions as they come fall back to our survival instincts and find a way to distruct ourselves and wishfully hope that our demons will be buried as showing them will expose who you might be and you might get barnished. But you can’t repress your shadows cause it will always follow you even in the light.
So, despite your attempts to prove you are a ‘good person’ or more accurately you are a stable individual sometimes your darkness comes into the light and exposes who you truly are and feelings of envy, arrogance, cruelty, selfishness, or even unlived potential. Moments like this threaten the ego as it makes you question who you truly are and evidently how everyone sees you,the moral facade broken but humans forget quickly “so what the hell”, you can always craft a new persona from scratch. Although it being quite hard to face uncormfortable truths about who you truly are you’ll never be at peace. But luckily, we are advanced enough to create so many distructions that will keep us a float till we die an ‘honourable’ death one where no one will judge us or question our sanity.
Various thinkers and even at times scientists make comparisons between madness and genius since most if not all have a propensity to act in a peculiar almost odd manner and often at times they are labeled insane, making you wonder what if madness is the pinnacle of man’s genius? From a closer observation this two figures share a lot of similarities but the most common one isn’t their melancholy, aloofness or untidiness but their will to not only disregard social norms but throw away completely what is needed from them because they fully understand that at the end of the day no matter how hard you try to play along you’ll always be judged and why should society get to create the perception of what is acceptable, yet our judgment and standards time and time again have led us into turmoil.
For instance, when you place a well dressed politician next to your local ‘looney’ the differences are evident the politician has a sweet tongue and can openly lie to millions of people, give them false hope and in their sadistic and often smug way they will not only break their promises but also steal in excess to acquire unecessary luxuries that they will possibly never use, from the red bottom shoes to the expensive watches e.t.c in contrast the mad man will speak to themselves, wear torn clothes or at times none at all and look for food in the garbage. And yet you’ll teach your child to treat everyone with respect but hint that you should respect a person in a suit slightly better. You would acknowledge their presence with honor and ‘ass kissing’ yet move far away the minute you get close to a crazy person, at times even switch lanes. So, what makes you give a pass to a morally corrupt individual despite knowing what they have done especially when they exude wealth and power, yet distance yourself to one who seems to have deviated from the norm?
Perhaps the distancing and judgmental glances aren’t because you perceive them as the bottom feeders or their lack of decorum, it might probably be a projection of our insecurities of who we might become once we unveil ourselves and fully accept who we are. Don’t get me wrong nobody deserves to live a life with no structure but we must restructure the meaning of true madness. Madness is the cruelty conducted by people to maintain power and opulence, it’s the endless consumption of things we don’t really need to elevate our standards, it’s the mindlessness to other peoples well being,
it’s the creation of moral obsolutes we create yet break time and time again when it suits our self intereests, it’s the judgements we pass to others just to feel better about ourselves, it’s our obvious failure to identify where our mask ends and true self begins. Generally madness is you and me. So the next time you want to see a mad man perharps we should take a good look in the mirror.