To Insanity and Back

The first time I had a real encounter with an insane person and I gave a good thought about it was when I was in high school. Everyday at 8:30 I used to go to school to attend the morning assembly at 9:15. I didn’t usually see him when I reached the school but almost everyday when we returned back from school to catch bus home, I saw him doing some usual things by the passenger waiting area. He would do things that were not considered normal by the usual standard of the society and the kind of things people would do in that context.

I thought why does he have to sing a patriotic song in a very incoherent way in a loud voice when everybody is in a rush to catch a bus and nobody has time for the song? Why does he have to talk about metaphysics and god when nobody is paying attention to him. Although, unusual by the usual standard of sane society, it was usual for him and people had learned to just ignore him and his antics.

When in a packed bus you never get a chance to even turn around. Especially if it is a hot summer day and you are just so tired of the days activities at school you just wish that for once you didn’t have to take this packed bus. We usually climbed to the rooftop on summer days, but had to climb back down when the police were awaiting in a market area nearby. Nevertheless in such a hot weather you kind of think of just having a cold bottle of water.

On that packed bus I was thinking why would he not behave like the society expects him to behave, a sane way? Why does he have to do that? Why can he not keep quiet or express his frustration in a friendly manner asking people for some time or have some drink at the cafe and talk to people passing time there? Then I had a big realization that in his thinking what he was doing was perfectly normal. His expression of frustration over the government is probably the result of his inner desire to set things right and in a sense he is thinking he is doing service to society. In his mind, probably, he has that obligation to express his feeling about patriotism and make people believe in things he has suffered from. In his mind everything is necessary and what he is doing is perfectly fine. The only fact of the matter is that his obligations and society’s constraints are not in harmony.

I always wish I could be like one of the people in category which he belongs. What would it feel like, why would all the obligations of responsibility need to be expressed in bizarre of circumstances? The different definition of sanity in that world would probably educate me a lot of new things. I am not sure if being in that world is exciting as it is being in this society with social standards set over many hundreds of years. At least the standard in his world is different from the one we call sane/normal society. I think I wish to be a part of that society. In other words, I wish I were insane.

Nature is far more important than any society ever. Both society and nature are dynamic but the time scale of their transformation is vastly different. The societal dynamics have a very insignificant time scale compared to that of natural scale by many order of magnitudes. In jumping from a particular society to other we can’t ever disregard the natural constraints. The natural constraints are far more broader than societal ones but nevertheless they are there. The natural constraints are existential while societal constraints are more romantic and ephemeral.

Then there comes a realization of that society having its own constraints too. We have already established that, the members of that society do not fit into sane standards. We have to have a complete an independent functioning framework within that world. The fundamental limitation set out by nature is that we have to eat drink and sleep in order to keep maintaining our existence as individuals with mobility and expression. If it was the desire to learn and behave according to the standard of insane world, that we enter there in the first place, there is no point we cease our existence. But the insane society is very small compared to the sane one. Most importantly it has no coherence and there is no law and order as we have here (the whole point is we escape the normal standard law and order).

The desire of the people to go there is limited by the constraints there. But the ones that are already there might have a different perspective which I assume lasts for a very short period of time because of incoherence. A lot of these constraints scare me from getting the insane society membership. I wish we could create a framework whereby we can transition to that society live there for while and turn back when natural constraints are too restricting to continue existing. This might sound that it has greed involved in this, which I can’t completely deny.