On the Definition of Madness
According to the American Psychiatric Association, mental illness is characterized as a disorder if it is “associated with distress and/or problems functioning in social, work or family activities.” This definition implies that mental disorders, as most things, are relative. Of course, in our current society, depression, for instance, is a disorder (as, it hinders the functionality of the afflicted organism). However, in a hypothetical world where all are depressed (as in, the average individual is depressed, relative to our world, and still functions properly), depression would not be a disorder (nor would it even be termed as something irregular, per se). Perhaps on some other world, individuals are much happier than us, and by their standards, the most optimistic of the human race are a hopeless bunch of sorrowful, downtrodden individuals that require urgent medical and psychological attention.
Imagine for a moment that you have experienced a tumor in your thalamus (the part of the brain that processes most of the senses). That would be quite troublesome: the brain interprets the world indirectly - the hand does not feel a surface; rather, the hand touches a surface, and then afferent neurons send the signal to the brain so that the brain can determine what it feels. Thus, the thalamus with a very hostile tumor would, in this instance (for the sake of this little hypothetical) degrade, and one would lose their sense of touch, hearing, gustation (taste), and sight (not to mention the sense of pain, largely). Suppose that now, the track for the sense of olfaction (smell) should be lost (as, olfactory receptors do not run through the thalamus).
In this instance, your human consciousness would be living in a life sentence of solitary confinement. We all live in complete isolation: it is up to our senses to tell us what the world is; up to our mouths to communicate; up to our ears to interpret communications; up to our eyes to read…If we are completely cut off from the world (which can medically happen, under extremely rare and unfortunate circumstances), isolated in our own consciousness, with no way to perceive anything around us, would the world still exist? Even if it did, would it matter? How could the world exist if we cannot perceive or discern it?
Assuming that you are not color blind, can you imagine a world without color? I think that it would be depressing, but scientifically speaking, color does not actually exist. Color is the brain’s interpretation of specific wavelengths of light produced by the arrangement of electrons upon atoms of particular elements and compounds that reflect light in specific sequences. Evolution has primed us to see specific things as specific colors (for instance, the animal from millions of years past who saw the predator as the same color as the bush likely got killed by it, but the animal who saw the differences of colors would have known to stay away).
I would like to break away now from my opening paragraph. To eliminate any confusion, I would like to state that this essay is NOT about clinical psychology, or treating mental illnesses. I believe that mental illness is a serious problem, and that therapy and psychopharmacology do have a place in society. Mental illness is real, it is not whimsical or romantic, and it is something that society should focus on treating. This essay is not - once again, NOT - intended to speak at all about the essence of mental illnesses as we are familiar with them.
Rather, the purpose of this essay is to examine how fragile the human mind is when confronting the bizarre. Our world is full of subjective social norms, behaviors that are socially-acceptable due to our culture and evolution. In the United States, for example, nudity is highly looked down upon; Europeans tend to be a lot more lax about it. Western cultures tend to value individualism; while Eastern cultures tend to value collectivism. Place anyone from any existing culture into one that is much different, and they will feel discomfort.
The European explorers to the deep jungles of South America and Asia during the late 1800s encountered local languages, traditions, and cultural customs that they found bizarre. But these customs and traditions were completely normal for the individuals already living in those cultures - the explorers were the bizarre ones to them. In a world that they were not familiar with, many of those explorers died or were killed due to their lack of understanding of how those societies functioned or were capable of. The ones that survived largely did so because they learned how to communicate with, and understand the customs of, the cultures that they were confronting.
Today, the world is globalized, and cultures and cultural values tend to mix. Rather than risk life and limb to visit a foreign nation, one can simply conduct a quick internet search of the social norms and customs of that nation, and they thus know how to behave. I recall visiting France once, and I was struck at how rude everyone was. I said “bonjour” to a gentleman walking down the street, for instance, and he looked at me like I was a lunatic. It took me a few days to learn that the French were not rude; rather, they simply had a different culture than I was familiar with. Where I live, it is considered rude to NOT to smile or say a simple “good day” to someone walking down the street.
Similarly, where I live, no one announces themselves when they enter a restaurant or a store, and then again when they depart. But that custom is common in France. Take national borders: no nation’s borders actually exist - the land upon them does not recognize where one nation ends and another begins - humans create borders that they recognize and respect (usually), but those borders do not actually exist. Similarly, social norms are not universal, but subjective. And that is why the world is so diverse, colorful, and simply amazing. However, this also opens up the door to some rather terrifying possibilities.
I am not sure if anyone else agrees with me on this (I would assume that a few of you will), but I think that Salvador Dali’s paintings are terrifying. His goal was to paint surreal, nightmarish landscapes, and gee, did he succeed. Thankfully, we do not have to be burdened by those horrifying depictions beyond simply looking at them. Or do we?
Our world is defined by the way that our brain interprets it. For all we know, we may not even see color as the same, person to person. Who is not to say that perhaps, either in this world or maybe even after death, we are thrust into a world of barren landscapes and drooping clocks; long-legged elephants and maddening colors. Suppose our universe should entail nothing more than a blank void, or a dark abyss. We may as well be dangling from a string, here on our subjective world with our socially-and-biologically-constructed norms, clinging on desperately should we descend into the abyss of chaos and madness beneath us, where colors are random and vivid, the laws of physics do not apply, and existence is truly absurd…I would go insane. I don’t know about you.
Thankfully, as far as anyone can discern, we do live in a universe where the laws of chemistry and physics dictate practically every aspect of life and existence. But who is to say that we are not one existence standing upon a fragile glass floor, and it would not take any great deal of effort to smash through and burden ourselves with the surreal. To cross a world where the laughter is manic, and the screams are unending; where water is hard as stone, and skyscrapers bend; where the sky is orange, and the dirt is striped, and the ground does not exist…Where humans walk on their hands and clap with their feet; where fear and happiness flow through crack and crevice in an unending stream of madness that neither our familiarities nor our evolution have thus far prepared us…To think that maybe, even, we are already upon this world…Is it not terrifying?…
We take for granted our ability to live in a world, with a culture, that is familiar to us. Our ability to be able to interact effortlessly in an acceptable and familiar manner is more priceless than even the most precious of fortunes. The fact that we can stare at our trees, our ground, our sky, without panicking, we must see as a gift. We have evolved to live life under blue skies, upon natural, Earthly landscapes, and with fellow humans.
If the coronavirus pandemic has proven anything to me, it is just how fragile our existence, perceptions, and reality are. We were meant for social interaction, and without it, we have been thrown into depression; we were meant to see sunlight, and spending so much time indoors has led to anxiety…Do not misinterpret me: we all must do our part to ensure the end of this pandemic. But from this we learn: evolution has not prepared us for what we do not face. Our social norms, our morality, our sense of normalcy, our familiarity, our meaning, and our value are all subjective. Let us just contemplate upon that for a moment: revel and be relieved in how fortunate we are to be living in a world that is familiar, not maddening.
We are afraid of what we do not know. We are discomforted by those things that operate without our knowing why, how, or even if it is simply too different. The fact that the unfamiliar is always lurking beyond our sight - beyond our reach, grasp, or conception - helps us to study. Let us return to our lives, following this pandemic, with a sense of how fortunate we all are to be a part of this familiar, diverse world. But I speak for myself, at least, when I state that the fear of some bizarre and completely nonsensical manifestation of reality will always hang over my head.