Posted:
Remember this scene in Alice in Wonderland?
"Mad Hatter: "Why is a raven like a writing-desk?"
"Have you guessed the riddle yet?" the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
"No, I give it up," Alice replied: "What's the answer?"
"I haven't the slightest idea," said the Hatter"
"Have you guessed the riddle yet?" the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
"No, I give it up," Alice replied: "What's the answer?"
"I haven't the slightest idea," said the Hatter"
I think when I read this it was the first time I thought that I had really understood the concept of insanity but as is turns out I still haven't figured it out... (And no, I'm not talking about the medical aspect of it.)
Pythagoras was misunderstood, and so was Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton.Their ideas/theories were unacceptable and some of them were even called insane.Why? The limits of the societies field of vision were taken to be the limits of the world...
To quote Philip K Dick- "Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans. . . If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn't we really be talking about plural realities? And if there are plural realities, are some more true (more real) than others? What about the world of a schizophrenic? Maybe it's as real as our world. Maybe we cannot say that we are in touch with reality and he is not, but should instead say, His reality is so different from ours that he can't explain his to us, and we can't explain ours to him. The problem, then, is that if subjective worlds are experienced too differently, there occurs a breakdown in communication ... and there is the real illness."
What do you think?Is insanity a coping mechanism?Is it freeing? Is it catching? Is it the loftiest intelligence or just a lapse of reason?
