What is madness?

[StephenK]

In your own words, what is madness? Why do humans fear it so much?

[Forestluv]

I love the top-right image 

Madness is hard to describe. Yet, I know it when I am experiencing it. . . 

And, I think there are fine lines between madness, genius and the process of awakening.

[RichardY]

Own words? Difficult, maybe impossible.

Mutually assured destruction. Sort of like the scorpion crossing the river, on a frogs back.

[Greatnestwithin]

What we are afraid of, is going sane. Once one transcends the limitations of the finite mind, one realizes that the world we have constructed and live in is insanity itself.

We humans are afraid of going insane, precisely because we intuitive that we are actually insane and like a house of cards, once it collapses we will find that we were already living in that world which we were scared of.

You are already insane, you are not conscious enough tho

Edited November 2, 2018 by Greatnestwithin

[Forestluv]

@Greatnestwithin

[RichardY]

Sane meaning health, and health meaning virtue. Yeah I'm fairly insane, not totally... I think.... Things like smoking and obesity are some prominent ones...... I'd say government as well.... Madness being relative.

The majority of the world seems to be insane though, well at least there's company. I don't think I've really seen an online persona that is not in someway insane.

[Greatnestwithin]

@RichardY I meant existentially speaking, to forget as God and to dream this illusion of separation and duality with its implications... totally insane 

[PsiloPutty]

21 minutes ago, Serotoninluv said:

I love the top-right image

Vewy twippy!   

I've said this before, but since starting on this path, I've had to rethink what madness is. I think it's a continuum, and we're all on it at different points. There's a lady who walks by my office every week or so, and I see her out the window as I eat my lunches. She's always talking to herself and apparently answering herself as well, sometimes with wild, expressive gesticulations from the unfolding conversation. As I sit here and think "what a crazy person, the poor thing!" it occurs to me that I do that same sort of thing sometimes when I'm at home, and I'd be thought of as nuts if people saw me. Do I think that putting some sticks and glass between me and the outside world makes me less insane than someone who does it without walls to hide them? Who's crazier?

 

[RichardY]

@Greatnestwithin Oh right, I meant literally... Logically I see no separation. Maybe there is though, I guess it depends on how you define separation?

Figured might as well try and line the threads up. If all concepts are illusion(means not to play, delusion: to play) maybe could try and construct them as firm as possible. Whether it all comes crashing down, no idea. "Threads" is a good documentary movie. 

[Shin]

Pretty sure we're already "insane" by society standard.
If I had to be honest and say what is my goal, what I do on a daily basis, and why I do it,
I would either be seen as a crazy and dangerous person or a master of sarcasm.

Can't wait to be truly crazy and being murdered !

 

Edited November 2, 2018 by Shin

[PsiloPutty]

 

[Salcedoop]

@StephenK  to me, insanity is one of those things that you can't really know until you experience it, much like love. In my own experience, insanity is triggered when there's a huge enough gap between the idea we have of how the world works and the outcome. The gap has to be huge at many levels, emotional, psychological, cognitive. 
This is why kids can't really go insane. They are pure potential: they live in the moment an react accordingly. As we grow up, our brains weave a model based on these experiences. Sudden abrupt changes can really mess with that. Also mind games which are more subtle, but when chronic, they're lethal. 

[karkaore]

In my opinion madness is no more mad than absolute harmony. What might look like a complete chaos and "madness" to "you", could be absolutely normal to the "other" and vice versa.