Insanity is a typical “learned” (fancy) Latinate word that only means Not-Sane, but doesn’t define SANE. Dementia means “no-mental”— gone, holes, physical, organic.
Sane mostly means conventional. It means reasonable, but what is “reasonable” varies from one place and time to another. It may mean that what is done doesn’t hurt others. It may mean conformity in clothing, like keeping it on. Stigmatized people can be considered sub-normal, marginally crazy, okay to punish or control. Insanity due to unconventionality is dangerous because it can be used to support greed, exclusion, incarceration or even execution.
Insanity is related to psychological and we are in a state of major change when it comes to psychology. On the one hand is the idea that it’s the result of childhood, simply a misunderstanding of life. On the other is the notion that it is willful, a refusal to admit that you’re a (choose one) narcissist, neurotic, whatever. You’ve just got it all wrong.
The deepest kind of insanity is dementia based on the limitations of the human body as an instrument, when it simply cannot distinguish between the concrete reality and some imaginary unreality — or can’t perceive, can’t feel, can’t organize because of lesions, infections, or something else that prevents the body, particularly the brain, from working. One might call it a hardware problem.
https://aeon.co/videos/what-a-rare-form-of-dementia-reveals-about-how-we-construct-the-world-outside
Or it can be a thinking or emotional disorder, a software problem. This brings child raising into the picture as creating bad software through trauma and neglect, CREATING people who have “bad apps.” And supporting a culture that defines “fittingness” as obedience, nonthinking, evasion and elimination. But in different times supporting the people who can go wild with hard rock music or a battle ax. As long as everyone is doing it. Killing people all on one’s own for one’s own reasons is definitely psychotic. Unless the culture admires vengeance.
It’s a problem to deal with insanity when cultures are different. The story of the Blackfeet man who was considered insane because he couldn’t speak English and the Americans couldn’t recognize Blackfeet so thought it was nonsense, is not just an historical problem. Here’s the idea I’m sneaking up on: Trump (we have been afraid to say) was raised in the context of mafia and that’s the only culture he knows. The rules there are absolute loyalty to the Capo, profit even if force is necessary, total secrecy, and the legitimacy of outwitting and victimizing the mainstream which is Other. This is how one fits among the Other in order to survive.
We know this code because our story writers are fascinated by this subculture, which seems to endorse heroic exceptionalism, and yet we rarely see it as a separate culture unto itself, always making it into a romantic sub-culture the same way we do with indigenous people who are more obviously from a different culture, or immigrants. The mainstream wants to define mafia as evil, insane, and to be eliminated. Or so we say. But the Tweeters are always saying to Trump indignantly, “Don’t you realize that this is not right?” To him these protestations are insane. What are they talking about?
I slowly realize there is a layer of semi-criminality that exists just under the mainstream and often enables it with sex, drugs, bogus paperwork, inside information, bribing, theft, and so on — not organized but in a time of poverty especially it helps people survive. The mainstream rules are sometimes unjust. The shadow is a necessary part of governance.
An aspect of this is creating rules that are strict, but selectively not enforcing them. It came clear to me when working in the nuisance department of Portland that some offenses are best left alone, either because of injustice or danger or expense. This becomes a new source of privilege, but it also forces the constant consideration of consequences and challenges our sanity. Isn’t it nuts to have a certain kind of grass growing at a certain height in front of every house on the street when there's a water shortage?
A brain, which is the dashboard of our sanity, builds itself from experience with what is around it. What has always been the environment of Trump is mafia members. Ethics is what exists in that context. If you presented him with a betrayal of Putin he had committed, he would be aghast, shamed.
It seems clear that the Senate, particularly Republicans, have created a culture of their own that uses that “inside/outside” distinction. Inside people can do anything to outsiders so long as it benefits the insiders — on their inside terms. From the outside of them excessive wealth or insulation from real people are not good and do not benefit anyone, even the ones with the power to control business and crime through loopholes and cancelling guidelines, underfunding any oversight ability and firing anyone who balks. It’s nuts. Once they get control, their separateness feels to them as legitimizing. They want to be exceptions, but still enjoy belonging to the American people who know and protect each other. An impossible idea.
Because even though they are able to openly pass legislation that benefits themselves, there are enough mainstream voters that they must skirt or lose votes — obvious crime like killing (even on 5th Avenue unless it’s "pencil death" by passing a law or withholding funds), violence, extortion and kidnapping. Even with mutual protection, they often seem terrified of something. Guesses about what that is range from threats of murder to revelations about sexuality. Openly, the biggest threat is losing the next election, which motivates the rest.
This also applies to the supposedly guardian classes: CIA, FBI, Five Eyes, and so on. It’s not just American, it is a phenomenon of human institutions, producing paranoia which is a described psychopathy. They enforce the law and protect against enemies except when they break the law to protect against enemies, using their own definition of enemies. Justice and the law never quite match, which means individuals are challenged to achieve some kind of reconciliation, justification. Of course, as individuals they are human and must somehow reconcile their own emotions and standards. Perversions of something like Christianity are very useful for this. Religion is a King’s X. Being martyred is being admired.
I watch Netflix murder mysteries, often with subtitles. The same question over and over: how does one stay sane in an insane world ? WHY?
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