A Little Provocation Goes A Long Way
I have so much fun with digression within postings that I do believe I will take the time to digress between postings as well.
I'm hoping that this will convince the self-appointed herdsmen of this mad blogger that I've crossed some line and that they are therefor entitled to cross their own lines. Ideally, they will do so in ways that will make them first in line to stand before a judge and explain how their actions do not constitute violations of a new Maryland law classifying as hate crime willful violence or discrimination against persons who are -- or who are believed to be -- disabled, and/or homeless.
For some reason there's a phrase in the language "crazy like a fox". I'm not a mental health professional, so I couldn't tell you whether or not that's a step up, or a step down, from being as "crazy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs".
But I think I've made it clear, before, that while people doing crazy things to people doesn't mean that the victims actually were crazy -- in any case, violence is hardly therapy and it's also criminal -- if you want to make someone crazy, keep being pointlessly violent to them for no legitimate reason.
A certain kind of mindset would probably think thus: "if they aren't crazy, but I treat them as if they were, then they will become crazy, and once they have become crazy, then my abuses are justified".
I'm not entirely sure how a mental health professional would characterize that sort of rationalization, but I doubt they'd call that sane.
Thus, what you have is one crazy person picking on another crazy person... but the one person wasn't crazy until the crazy person started picking on them "for being crazy".
Does your head hurt as much as mine does, trying to make any sense of this?
Look at it this way: so long as society and government will accept the notion that "it's okay for me to abuse them, they're crazy", insanity will indeed be contagious, because the crazy will be maddening the sane... if mostly because of the very strange fact that sane people appear to insane people to be the crazy ones. But such is the nature of madness.
But that's okay. There's an entire pharmaceutical industry with all of the pills you can afford. That won't make reality any more appealing, you just won't be able to care.
Moving Right Along
There are ways to make people crazy which don't necessarily rely on violence.
One way is religion.
I am not going to say that any one religion is crazy, or that their beliefs are crazy, or that the people who follow these religions are crazy. Actually, a lot of good has come out of the ethical cores of many religions... so long as people stick to those cores.
I am going to say that the difference between Philosophy and Religion is that one is a matter of Debate, and one is a matter of Faith.
That which is debated is debated because it is amenable to proof or to disproof. That which is a matter of faith may be debated but it isn't amenable to proof or disproof; at some point in the debate you simply have to say "well, that's what I believe" even with no way to support the belief outside of the fact that this is what you believe.
Yet if you're going to try to transmit your faith to others, it's very helpful to actually be schooled in that faith. This is particularly true when teaching to children who are of an age to ask questions and have lots of willingness to do so. Or you could just beat them when they ask questions, but this will only teach them that people who don't have all of the answers may still have power over you. And what will they do throughout life? They will probably live lives ruled by the credo: "violence is the ultimate resort of the incompetent". In civilized societies, this isn't usually allowed to be true. In civilized societies, "the just and thoughtful ruler has the admiration of the troops".
Faiths are generally internally consistent, if self-referential. They can also save a lot of time with explanations. Why should people respect the property of their neighbors? "God says so" is a lot easier to say than "If we don't respect their property, why should they respect ours". It's easy to develop arguments around the latter saying, but the former brooks no dispute, at least not among those sharing that faith.
Faiths are sometimes badly transmitted, or poorly remembered, and this is where people can get crazy. It's no longer faith when it has degenerated to Superstition.
Superstition is, generally speaking, pretty disconnected from reality, and thus might be thought to be irrational if not actually insane.
But what can you say about Superstitions that have gotten so far from their origins that people don't even recognize them as superstitions, and start to take them as commonplaces, and start teaching these commonplaces as if they were facts?
I'm thinking I might take a stab at this, in an artistic and literary way, of course.
The difference between a simile and a metaphor is that the one is a direct comparison using "like" or "as", and the other doesn't use "like" or "as". One is more direct, and one less so, amounting to exercise of artistic license. Examples: a simile would be "he is as dumb as an ox". A metaphor would be "he is a dumb ox".
Some people don't quite "get art", and a metaphor's meaning escapes their comprehension. Most of these folks would easily understand the simile.
Some people don't quite understand the concept of metaphor, and they may actually think that an idea can fly right over someone's head. I'd love to point out that ideas, so far as anyone can tell, do not fly. At any rate nobody has every photographed an idea flying over someone's head. But I digress.
Some people perfectly well understand the metaphor, and the allegory, which is an extended metaphor.
Some people actually can write stories which don't merely make use of allegory and metaphor, but which also are allegory and metaphor.
And as such, they can be real in their abstracted way, as real as the fact of someone that people call an ass.
No human being is an Ass. An Ass is a quadruped beast of burden also known as a Donkey. Yet many of the characteristics of the Ass may be seen in the character of certain individuals, and through the power of metaphor, we may speak an utter untruth -- "that man is an ASS" -- and nobody can say either that this is a lie, or that the person making the statement is crazy or wrong. It's a figure of speech, a colloquilism, a metaphor.
I do believe that I may have to find or make a way to drag into the progress of this blog the elements of a popular role-playing game known as Shadowrun.
Why?
Because by declaring this as my Motif, I can get away with a lot of artistic license, and people who are competent, sane, literate, and are educated as well as being fond of Role Playing Games won't think I've gone as batshit crazy as some folks might otherwise suggest.
Especially not when I start talking about legendary creatures as if people out in the world actually believed in that sort of superstitious crap and madness.
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