Relative and absolute Insanity

In the last post, I touched upon a touchy subject: insanity or the fear thereof. Here I try to touch on it in a bit more detail. My definitions of insanity below roughly correspond to the official legal one and also the psychological one.

My mother was pretty sharp most of her life. Lately (at 87 years of age) she is starting to get demented. Yesterday, she was convinced that someone at her retirement home was going to steal this poster she made long ago in honor of my (now deceased) dad, highlighting his accomplishments. But she was OK with leaving a painting on the wall that she claims was worth $100K many years ago (it is not). When I asked her why she thinks the painting won’t get stolen, she said that someone would have to be able to separate the dog in it, which she thought would be a deterrent.

I recently had left a rope on the ground that I used to tie some of my mother’s furniture to my car roof, when I was moving it to her house from the retirement home she is moving out of. I got the rope out of the car because it was taking up space I needed, thinking I would put it back later, but I forgot to do it. The insane thing was that I thought I left it in the driveway of her house, rather than the sidewalk of her retirement home, where I actually found it. I excuse that insanity due to stress.

Another person I know was convinced that considering the possibility that her sick dog who was exhibiting symptoms of antifreeze poisoning may have actually been poisoned by antifreeze was stupid, because, why would someone do that? Even if it was due to carelessness, nobody would do such a thing, because it is very painful to consider the possibility. Strangers are thus motivated by avoiding being careless at all times, because it could be painful to her, a sort of magical thinking. It is less painful to ignore that possibility and consider alternative ones that are less painful.

It’s easy enough for most people to tell when someone else is insane, or beyond a threshold of insanity (since insanity is a continuous trait). They say or do enough things that do not seem to correspond to reality (aka not distinguishing fantasy from reality), which is a subset of mental illnesses (corresponding to several more specific psychiatric terms, which we don’t need to distinguish for our purposes). However, when it comes to recognizing our own insanity, we have more trouble. We have several ways to test whether our words and deeds correspond accurately to reality. An individual can tell when their expectations of what will happen do not correspond to what actually happens when the future becomes the present. The right and left hemispheres, and the 5 senses offer cross-checks (unless there are some anatomical issues, like a severed corpus callosum for example, preventing the right and left hemispheres from talking to each other). Or they can tell sometimes if their short term memory fails them based on present evidence. However, like conspiracy theorists, we have infinite stories to account for inconsistencies between expectations, memories, and reality, after the apparent inconsistency happens. So it may not be obvious to us when we are going insane, at least not while it’s happening. Luckily, most of us live in social groups, where many people can help us notice if we are starting to slip beyond some threshold of insanity. Unlike intimacy and trust, which require SMALL social groups like families, villages and tribes, spotting insanity can easily happen with strangers.

Social groups may consider insanity to be not only due to inconsistencies between a person’s words/deeds and reality, but also someone contradicting social norms (and hence according to psychology today: “not being able to take care of their affairs, or is subject to uncontrollable impulsive behavior”). This is a bit trickier because geniuses also contradict social norms (Einstein could not take care of his affairs without his wife and later his maid), which is why there is the saying that the line between insanity and genius is a thin one. Rebels may contradict social norms without being insane, because they might see some things that others are actually blind to. Also, what is normal for one culture, may be abnormal for another, so this kind of insanity is relative to a social group, but the “social construct” definition is incomplete and misleading if the implication is that congruence with reality is also a social construct. A group that considers jumping off a cliff, sticking their appendages in electrical sockets, and drinking poison kool aid safe, or exterminating intellectuals or Jews beneficial, or wearing underwear over pants (the latter is a joke from the Movie Bananas) is not sane just because everyone in the group shares these normative beliefs, because they are not congruent with reality (the last one is borderline).

Eric Fromm thought there was an absolute insanity that could be spotted when people did things that were not congruent with human nature, but human nature is still evolving (with strong historical constraints, we are not going to turn into tigers or chimps any time soon): someone more sane gets selected by natural or sexual evolution more often, all other things being equal. Or a sane culture gets group-selected, all things being equal. But all things are not equal, and fitness has other contributing factors than congruence with reality. There are examples of insane religious beliefs that are selected for because they enable group coherence (which has enormous fitness value both vis a vis nature, and vis a vis competing groups), and make people feel good to believe them either intrinsically or because of the communion they afford. Larger groups without nested smaller groups make it easier to hide insanity, than small groups where everyone knows each other.

If an individual is living only in touch with nature, without the buffer of a social group, the non-relative kind of insanity is much less tolerated by nature than by a social group. Incongruence with nature can then lead to injury or death. But we humans are the species that care for our young and our elders, and our sick, which also includes the mentally sick. And we offer everyone some protection from raw nature within groups. We also offer protection from competing human groups, and we give people in our families and friends groups much benefit of the doubt. Still, there is a threshold of insanity beyond which that protection turns into remediating actions, ranging from attempts at rehabilitation to expulsion from the group or both (as in mental hospitals).

The threshold varies between liberals and conservatives. Liberals tolerate insanity more than conservatives, when the insane are seen as ill, underdogs, traumatized, or just part of the family. If insane people get into positions of explicit power, liberals might try to appease them for a while, but eventually even liberals will turn against insane people with explicit power. There is plenty of implicit power though, which insane people can use to receive resources of all kinds from liberals who have resources to give.

Conservatives might tolerate insanity more than liberals in people with explicit power whom they see as their rightful leaders, avengers and defenders. It can even be a virtue for such a person since the insanity makes them unpredictable and sadistic (towards perceived enemies, not towards their in-group). Think about Attila the Hun, Caligula, Genghis Khan, and Hitler as well-known insane people with explicit power that were supported by their conservative followers, with tremendous butchery of both in- and out-groups as a result. Here again, the saving grace might be if the leader has a group around him who are sane and can offer checks and balances without being fired.

So far I’ve focused on the downsides of insanity, but it has some upsides too. The world would be boring if we were all perfectly sane all the time. We would be rather predictable, like machines. We appreciate some unpredictability and surprise from each other from time to time, even if it’s a bit on the insanity spectrum (according to the congruence with reality definition above). If we can’t get insanity from adult humans, then for liberals children or teenagers will do, and if not children then pets or elderly demented folks. Or strongman leaders for conservatives, as I mentioned before. Many cultures condone insanity during certain prescribed times, and encourage “uncontrollable impulsive behavior” during those times. Even our culture encourages fraternity boys to drink, middle class people to undergo Ayahuasca ceremonies, sports fans to riot, and everyone to have orgasms in private spaces.

Insanity, like other psychological traits, is subject to the Goldilocks principle. A bit can make life interesting, too much can lead to catastrophe.