Insanity

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Often people ask how can a true human being retain his sanity in this mad mad world? Whenever I hear  such a question I doubt whether the question is merely a rhetorical  expression of a confused mind or a statement made unthinkingly just to make  a conversation move directionless into abstractions. For who is a true being.  And how is this zillions year old world  mad? If the world is created to grow and move along  time's uncharted course with a purpose to reach a definite goal, the mater is different. But if this is a 'mad mad' world how could a 'being' decipher the mad elements being a part of it for some time- say a hundred or less or more years? If a being fails to retain his sanity is the world at fault or the so called being  fails  to come to terms with his reality which in any case is a partial perception of the totality as the being's movements both physical and mental, are spatio-temporally limited. One may call this hair-splitting. But is it not true  that sanity is an inner accord of all inborn qualities ? A man is born with a body ( machine) which is operated by mind and heart: The other parts are built around them to function in a rational manner . If  man is a rational animal his rationality is shaped and formed by nature- society and the unseen unpredictable happenings which shock man to ponder the energies impalpably present in the world of eye and ear. A rational man is never stuck at any point. His perceptions are seldom synecdochic.  He may generalise on particulars but does not particularize although to " Particularize is the alone mark of distinction" as William Blake opined. All particularities and generalities are sorted out by human observation and these observations are the components of a rational view of the world. This is human sanity.

What is insanity then ? When a person fails to assimilate and analyse the insanitary events and things , the incongruous and unfamiliar things into a meaningful whole related to life and experience he gets stuck at a point of incomprehension. His mind fails to control the psychosomatic system. His words, actions, movements become erratic and out of sync with what we call  normal rational behaviour. We call such persons insane, mad and lunatic. A man who fails to win the love of a woman at times goes 'mad'. People laugh at him and say - see what a fool this man is ! There are  so many woman in the  world if one ditches you, you ditch ten, well, the lover is a rare specimen. He finds his world, purpose and meaning of life in one woman. He cannot find substitutes for his love does not compromise or settle for less. Would you call him mad, insane? Was Hamlet  mad? I would have called Hamlet mad, had he eloped with Ophelia. Insanity is at times a poetic  frenzy where the world seems to be too small before his love. What will you call Harry and Meghan who have forsaken royalty to seek out their own identities? They are saner than the others. Diana was insane for she moved out of the charmed world of royalty to seek forbidden pleasures.

There are exceptional people who relinquish power and the mundane luxuries to find out their society. They have the right to ask the question with which I have begun this piece. Was Alexander Fleming insane to work in a ramshackle openwindowed room to save wounded soldiers? Insanity has different connotations. We have clinical insanity where the mind has congenital defects or induced defects because of a weak nervous system. But where the mind searches for ways and means of changing the state and fate of man and behaves abnormally we have to pause and think before calling them mad. Einstein, Nietzsche, Romeo, Dr Schwitzer and  Newton were all mad to keep humanity sane . Some politicians like Vajpayee, Churchill, Mao Tse Deng  were mad to change the society and put man on a higher order. Rousseau, Lincoln and Marx were mad but their madness was  Super-rational. They thought not of themselves but of the rest of humanity.  The creative  artists is always irrational and insane for they follow a different order of nature  to change the society for the good of man.

Sanity is a balance of contrarian values proportionately harmonized to avoid extremes either way. They never try to reach the moon, never spend sleepless nights imagining heavenly grace with their beloveds. They are homeopathic men and women who worry  how to get more from petty lives. They never dream of giving things in word or deed. They generalize like idiots to particularize and  hold he value aloft as a beacon for man is not in their mind or heart. The genius is often called insane but how true and beautiful is that insanity which gives a turn to the drab routine of history!