So, all of five minutes of looking into the meaning of the word 'sanity' and 'insanity' yields little in the substantive definition of 'insanity' but yields (in my mind) more interesting results for the meaning of 'sanity.' Using common sense (as much as I have) I'm going to go with 'Insanity is the opposite of sanity.' So with that...sanity. Wikipedia had what I thought was an interesting description - "of a healthy mind" according to its etymology. Functional definition: Insanity = unhealthy mind or state of mind. The dancing monkey will save us.
Next, let us consider the world we live in. It's pretty f@#$ed, no ifs, ands , or buts about it. Every time I have the misfortune of turning on the news (once every 2 months or so) It's always something dark and depressing and catastrophic. No one talks about kittens anymore...darn. To make up for it, we pay Hollywood billions of dollars a year to lie to us, stroke our matted fur and tell us it will all be OK, just as soon as overpaid actors dash daringly across a green screen to save our way of life. And this is the pinnacle of western civilization. or something. I could go on, but no. The dancing monkey will save us.
Another angle from to view this is from an applied relativistic standpoint. We have attempted to believe lies. 'there are no absolutes.' 'I can do what I want, because I live in a free country, therefore I'm right.' 'No one bitch slaps me when I say something stupid, I must be right, or God. maybe both." Our culture has attempted to fix the human condition with lies. By pretending to make new lies, we can fix the old ones! Eventually, we can lie ourselves out of our problems.' The dancing monkey will save us.
So, relativism. Postmodernism, etc. Whichever overused word you feel like using to describe how exactly we're screwed. So with 270 million people going insane (I'm assuming roughly 30 million sane people who are being hunted and herded into Montana and Wyoming slowly but surely) and thinking that they're all demi-gods who cannot be contradicted by virtue of where they're born, what's the point in being sane?
To get to my cracked metaphor already - if you're in a nuthouse, and there's no way to get out, and you're not in physical harm - why be sane? What good does it do you to be sane if everyone else is insane?
The only reason I can come up with is to get along with people. Relationships. If my circle of friends are all insane, and I'm sane - then I have an incredibly hard time relating to them and getting along. May as well become insane with them right? I'm not saying that we should all go off the deep end. I mean, this is America. We're there already. But it makes me wonder if we're trying too hard. If we're trying too hard to try and make sense of it all. Life doesn't make sense outside of relationships. I think it's possible that the human race has been insane from the day it broke the most important friendship we had and left Eden. By ourselves, this is what we become. The dancing monkey will save us. or Jesus. preferably Jesus.
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The way I understand it, the words 'sane' and 'insane' are actually legal, not medical, terms. I suppose it's easier to have just the one form that says "Insanity Plea" on it, rather than a different form for every type of mental disease. Because that's exactly what our bureaucracy would do.
You argue the point that I've been trying to make for years: what's the fun in being "sane"? It's so much work, when there's better things I could be doing with my time.
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