Greetings.
For what it's worth I'll put in some opinions of my own.
When talking about "insane" people, Derrick said:
"Do YOU think it is 'well' to cut yourself every day? To hate yourself so
passionately that desire only to end your life? To shit yourself rather than
walk five yards to the toilet?"
Well, as I remember it, Pirsig was classed as mad in ZAMM because, amongst
other reasons, he would let cigarettes burn himself (re - cutting yourself),
and he would piss himself (re - shitting yourself). And what did they do to
him, they "treated" him, and in the process, created the narrator, a person
who accepted the state and the affairs that Phaedrus saw as futile and
lacking in quality. Am I the only person to see this as social control?
Phaedrus had studied the world, and taken a decision to piss and mutilate
himself. What right does anybody have to stop him? Not obligation in the
name of humanity. Humanity is about letting people have the choice. (On the
question of the narrator, the edition I have it says in the introduction
that the narrator is wrong, and maligns Phaedrus, but right at the very
start it is this narrator, Phaedrus' alter ego, who calls for "channel
deepening". Can anybody explain this to me?)
I don't want to make a generalisation, but I presume, and feel justified in
presuming, that almost everybody has had "insane" thoughts at times. Even if
it just watching a film, and wishing for a death/gory bit, because it is
"fun" and "exciting". So is the distinction between "insanity" and "sanity",
just the difference between acting and thinking? Because if that is so, then
what is the point of philosophy, if thoughts count for nothing? I don't know
anything about these normalised tests, and I too would like to know more -
if you answered from a dream-like state, would you most probably be taken as
mad? Because I'm of the school of thought that dreams reveal more of our
personality than measured speech. (I don't know this topic, but isn't that
what Jung said?). It's linked to the phrase "vino veritas" - why are people
more violent when drunk? Because the violence is their true personality
which they repress when sober? That would make "repressing thoughts" a
definition of sanity, and by extension therefore, "self-deceit" becomes a
definition of sanity.
As regards a present day Jesus, he most probably would be called "mad", as
he cared not about himself but others. He didn't care about his "image". As
with the cutting yourself etc, it's all a sign of the neglect of "image", in
my view now a driving force in the world, and we can't accept that someone
would chose to put "image" so far down their priorities, that they must be
"mad". In latter days, the idea of "image" wasn't so all consuming, and so
people could say and do things that might be regarded as "mad". But as a
literature student, one of the books I am reading is William Golding's "The
Spire", set in a middle ages cathedral, in which the dean of a cathedral is
obsessed with building a spire, to the extent that this becomes his driving
force, and people see him as mad. If he had been a peasant, people probably
wouldn't have given a damn, a peasant didn't really have an image to keep
up. A leading cleric did. Would mystical experiences be termed a form of
"insanity" by these normalised test used? From my limited knowledge of
Native American lore, a vision or mystical experience gave you respect and
authority, not it's opposite.
Philosophy is all about how "I" as an individual look at the world, and
whilst other thinkers can help show me other interpretations, no-one has the
right to violently criticise an interpretation, however offensive it may be.
Was it John Stuart Mill who said "I don't hold your opinion, but I would
fight to the death for your right to hold it"?
Thanks for reading,
Si
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