The Working Model of Insanity
When they said that the sky was the limit you think, okay, thanks for the directive. It turns out that the sky is not the limit, that there is actually no sky, so the limits are endless. This is a hard functioning reality and as we are faced with a very stubborn form of reality it can be a position that leaves you very exposed.
But let us face the real truth. We work in an existing reality, there is no reason to presume any time soon that this will not be the reality that we are faced with. But hey, we need a lunatic fringe, we need those people working with limitless reality because time can never tell, and if we do not prepare for extraordinary realities we will be very exposed. In the stubborn reality there are battles to be fought, we do not want a conservative world, of course we don’t. But the lunatics (as now viewed) are the great innovators, they are the ones that said – hey, one day we will have fire. One day we will fly. One day we will live in a world of limitless possibility and we need to be prepared.
So how do we defend this position? Because it is becoming more difficult when surrounded by people who are working hard with this functioning reality.
I have had great reluctance to face reality as it is presented. I cannot change that reality, I can function within that reality as I have a very elastic mind. This was not always the case. Suicide is a very close ally of the mad, it is can be beneficial as a companion, as the one that says – look you head that way, it looks the way of the complete freak and you may end up looking like an idiot, but if it gets too much you can just kill yourself. I am your safety mechanism. If it becomes too much I will get you out.
It sounds a little extreme but people, especially the young, cannot build a working model, they have to go on hunch and reckless nature.
Another model of comparison is that the things that truly threaten the world don’t come from what we know, they tend to come from what we don’t know. Yes, we need this present reality fighters, they are essential, but if we slowly prepare defences against maniacs like Hitler, and then we are faced with dragons, we are in big shit, until of course we find the guy who was preparing all along to fight dragons. Then the reality met will be his and he/she will defend the earth and he will take the plaudits. Until that day he is just another madman.
The mad must not be rejected offhand. In the work I do, I can easily say, you have a different functioning reality. That’s fine. Don’t concern yourself with the functioning reality. Be at peace with yourself. You may well have been dealt a different hand. That is okay. We need to establish a few things here. What are the functions of your reality? Don’t worry about comparing yourself to people who function in the accepted reality. They appear stubborn and limited in their scope, but they have to be in order to work well in the reality model that we are faced with. And lets not forget, they have built great things; hospitals, skyscrapers, airplanes and motorcycles. They have great diversions, musical, artistic, sexual, all kinds of entertainment. They have created a thing called internet which seems to encompass all kinds of reality, in fact it is quite overwhelming in its ability to mimic functioning realities that it really is overwhelming peoples functioning reality and taking people out into an unknown area. We don’t know this area. We haven’t planned for it. (some madman might have.)
I find it difficult when people talk about the revolution that we are involved in… I see the real battle being about the reality we face (within this we could include sexuality, disability, gender). Great change does not always come in increments. There is a limitless battle, a place out there where we are at the ends of the imagination, they who will reach the new point of reality first.
Within areas of research there are people on the cutting edge of development. So then does that destroy the model of the insane, are the real game changers the desert wanderers, or, as traditionally they are treated, are they just the losers – if you were thinking brilliantly, people would hire you, put you up in Oxford, NASA, scientific research, the military... I ask this to myself, because it is too easy to say, oh yes, but I’m different, I actually a genius, I’m just not recognised yet… how do we develop a distinction? We have to look at points of contact - those who have no boundary will find it difficult to function in reality. It is hard to walk around with the universe in your head. This is a key point, in fact it is the point where the whole model can fall down. Let us take a great innovator, say someone working in NASA, a person who is working on landing a spaceship on mars. They are working with the functioning reality and taking it to its outer limits. So the question is, has the madman failed in this reality and then invented another reality in order to succeed – as I am the only expert in this field then I am the leading expert in this field… this person is of course not ‘mad’ they are quite sane and are looking to win in this functioning reality and have failed. It is not the same thing as someone who for whatever reason is outside of this reality.
Because the sky wasn’t the limit. It is to the ends of the universe. Breathe with that one. Everything is possible. It might not be likely, and it definitely might not be occurring.
The quantum world – that is from the lunatic fringe. And everyone will jump to say see there is the real reality and as wonderful as the quantum model might be, there are still limits beyond it. All we will be ever faced with is a functioning reality. The true reality is probably multifunctioning.
It can be very jarring to be bluntly confronted with one-take model. It can in a way be threatening. ‘your multiple realities will die. It is now time to choose which model works.’ I personally see that as a death. The little bell that rings from this is Northern Lights by Philip Pullman where children’s daemons have to settle around 12-13 years old. And then perhaps if you do not do this you end up as a fantasy adult, someone who has not limited their reality to one function so is then left childlike… Picasso would say this is the ideal state. But, a world full of these mad bastards would be a fucking hellhole. So granted then, we need the functioners in reality, this one. We need the lunatic fringe to be on the outer edges of imagination and reason looking for the possible corners where the functioning reality may be unravelling. We need people to discern whether the mad are mad, plainly and simply cut off from the possibility of realities, including their own. The functionary has to come from themselves. Their needs to be a connection back to the communicator. If people have a separate reality – a belief, this needs to be assessed and worked with – is it a limitless potential or is it an aberration of the functioning reality that we live in. is it just a broken model of this reality and do they need help back to base. Or, are they true explorers of a reality who have taken off with complete abandon and forgot that the reality we are in is very stubborn. There are no indications that it is about to change. Perhaps yes, you are the great innovator that will shatter reality as we know it. But if you believe that you are working in self-absorption. The mad are innocent – they see something else. Of course I separate the mad from the ill. Society may not be so willing to be flexible on that distinction.