We are freaking MAD!

Are we all insane? Maybe, if we think we are reasonable creatures. They say a mad person has lost everything except his reason. So a mad man is a reasonable man? Note that a "mad man" acts in ways that are "reasonable" in the face of a distorted reality. Therefore, it is not his faculty of reason that is fractured. It is his perception of reality.  The truth is that it is difficult to tell who is mad and who is not. A megalomaniac (even a psychopath) may be insane but he may be your president! There is a little insanity in us. If sanity is a person free from all illusions, then, except for the clinically depressed, none of us is sane. We live with self-reinforcing illusions and sometimes delusions all the time. We therefore deceive ourselves to survive and thrive. We deceive ourselves in three ways: an exaggerated sense of self superiority, an exaggerated sense of control and an exaggerated sense of reality, largely, unrealistic ones. Self deception is the grease that oils modernity, its society, it's financial markets and most of all, it's government. Groucho Marx once said, "The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. Once you can fake that, you've got it made." Self-deception, in sports, is known as the "championship mentality". This ace mindset would require athletes to primp themselves up with exaggerated self-confidence, which they know are far removed from the truth. And we all can readily agree that self deception is far from being a reasonable act. It is said that the reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. The unreasonable people adapt the world to themselves. Therefore, all progress depends on unreasonable people! In the end, we all suffer from some form of madness, whether we like to admit it or not. We cannot be free from positive illusion, or delusion, unless we are heavily sedated. Seen from this obtuse angle, zombies have better chance of sanity than us! So, the next time, when we are tempted to make a disparaging judgment on the insane-ness of an act, spare this thought in mind: we all suffer from some form of self-delusion, or insanity, and it is much better to try and understand the person than to pigeonhole him into a nutty corner! (Last thought: One writer concludes that sanity is having an "optimum margin of positive illusion").

How about a second helping with this long letter called "HERESY PHARISEES"?