Two Kinds of Crazy

heretolisten (51)in #psychology • 7 years ago (edited)

There are two kinds of people in this world; those that know they're crazy and those that don't. By crazy I mean not being in control of all your faculties.

That's a classic layman's definition. Interestingly it shows clear recognition that we have different aspects and components that are all part of our internal makeup, called faculties. Thing is, those that see themselves as sane, believe they are the sole originator of every thought and action. Oblivious to our internal plurality, they assume they know exactly what they are thinking and why. BAHAHAHAHA!

It's true there are people that have all their "faculties" on board and working cohesively. These people are generally rational, quite often they're easy going and able to ignore it when other people's faculties are acting out. I'll call this group "the seemingly sane". Overall, they appear to be sane and often go through life smoothly leaping hurdles and avoiding on-coming train wrecks.

Understandably these individuals have no reason to believe they're crazy. The one pitfall the seemingly sane have, is that they can't afford missteps

Although all the faculties I refer to technically belong to each individual, we don't control them. What we control is one small spark of awareness. There are all sorts of impulses and influences that are either on board and making us look like we got it all together, or they're not. The seemingly sane have all impulses and inclinations flowing in the same direction, so all they gotta do is go with the flow. But that's why they can't afford missteps.

If for any reason they get it wrong, they will find themselves at odds with the rest of their entire beings. Plus it's such a rare occurrence, that the seemingly sane are clueless how to cope.
The reason I call them onlyseemingly sane goes back to my layman's definition. They are not in control of all of their faculties, just in cooperation with them. But having all your faculties on board and working cohesively together does mean freedom from conflict and subterranean desire, a condition that's far from common.The seemingly sane are an extremely rare breed of individual.

For the rest of us, all our faculties are not in perfect agreement. Instead of just going with the flow, we have to play arbiter and rationalizer, choosing between numerous conflicting impulses and inclinations, then coming up with an explanation for feeling and acting the way we do.

Meanwhile the faculties that don't agree with our decision are simply left out of the equation entirely. And, since we don't control them, they act out. Quite often it's without us even knowing about it. This is one way those who know they're crazy have an advantage. We are much less likely to be completely blind sided by our own irrational behavior.

It's hard to go through life without witnessing people being completely oblivious that some part of their behavior is irrational. The better you know someone, the more likely you are to see their faculties acting out.

Our own mothers can be primary offenders. We can see it, but we just accept and excuse them. Because we've been exposed to their particular brand of crazy since infancy, we never stop and question it.

I had a friend who was forty-six and battling stomach cancer. Her mother would complain that she was too skinny. The reason her weight was declining was that she was losing the battle and her mother was repeatedly pointing that out.
Mothers are experts at pushing our buttons. At times they can even seem purposely cruel. I know from episodes with my own Mother, that is not what's going on. When on occasion, I calmly brought up what she had said, she honestly had no recollection of saying such a thing and was baffled by her own behavior.

But my friend's reaction, rather than think how inappropriate it was for someone to badger a cancer patient about her inability to put on weight, criticized herself for letting her mother's remarks bother her. Good children enable bad faculties.

Mothers are only one example of the faculties acting out and getting away with it. I could give many more (and actually have in other posts). Bad faculties have a zillion ways of making us behave irrationally. Very few people are immune. The best we can do is know we're crazy. Try and become aware of our own faculties and their bad behavior. Making them conscious is the only way to gain conscious control.

For the sake a clarity, I speak here in absolutes. There are, of course, no absolutes. People are varying degrees of one type or another and hopefully during the course of a lifetime we bring more and more of our faculties under control. That is how we expand consciousness, (and become less crazy).

So what do you think? Which kind of crazy are you?