Is madness more then a value judgement
I've always pondered if the mad are actually so, or if they are just odd. The source of this stems from the huge variation between cultures as to what shows a mental difference or divergence to the normal. In some places like Spain, throwing knives at an angry and wild bull is a national past time whereas Tibetan monks believe in pure pacifism to the point of avoiding small insects as they walk. Cultural differentiation seems to be wide and undefined and so different behaviours have different reactions; put a Tibetan monk in a Spanish bull stadium and the end result will not be met with cheers from the crowd, but a tragic awe.
So firstly, given the cultural subjectivity of judgement (the agreement of what is normal behaviour) is there any objective grounds for madness, in which I mean, is there a universal constant behaviour that indicates madness in all cultures or perhaps a neurological in function that invariably causes mad like behaviours. If there is, then madness is not a value judgement but an innate awareness of abnormal behaviour found in all humans, which we all recognise – for instance, if the sun started to dance in the sky, everyone would see abnormal behaviour because there is something inherently wrong in that behaviour for the sun.
In respect to the first, if we look at all human cultures over time, it becomes clear that no one type of behaviour is universally found as a sign of madness. We find human sacrifice all the way to extreme altruism, from warlords and infanticide to spirituality and the preservation of life. Every type of behaviour has been found to become a norm of at least one culture, so while at one point rape and pillage was seen as perfectly normal and seen only a species of passive madness in those who allow it to happen, those who were raped and pillaged see it as violent insanity alien to their cultural understanding, so in this case it seems that one particular 'mad' behaviour has no universality in normality, at some point all manner of madnesses have been accepted.
In respect to the latter, that is a scientific approach we find in writers like Thomas Szasz. The underlying theme is that for psychiatry to be a science, it must be based in a materialism, thus gaining objectivity, otherwise its becomes a mysticism. To be sure, there have been cases that show similar brain behaviour in people who have been determined mad or mentally unstable, which is a promising result for answering the question presented. But does that brain behaviour amount to actual behaviours or does it fail to account for the intentionality of the subject? There is a difference between holding that belief of pushing the sun with your mind and actually standing and actively trying to do it. The intentionality must be followed with a behaviour in order for it to be known that something is off, but you cannot deem one who may have brain behaviours similar to a clinically insane person, to actually be so, if they do not behave absurdly. To make madness a scientific qualification cannot sufficiently account for the subjective realm, even if brain states are mind states, we do not act on every single thought generated by odd brain make up and chemical unbalance.
It seems, at least for this short series of thoughts that madness is a value judgement based on the cultural norms of a given society. As such, we should be weary about placing this label, for there is a difference between divergence and dangerous and against the right orator, anyone can be made to seem mad with a simple reductio ad absurdum (an argument structure that tries to guarantee the conclusion by making all other options absurd) creating necessity about a statement or invalidating it, a sense of 'it cannot be any other way'. Used at lot in mathematics in the case of proving your sanity, an example is the twilight zone classic tale of the gremlin on the plane, if you haven't seen this:
Imagine you are on a plane and you look out the window and there is really, actually a little monster ripping up the wing. You scream to the hostess 'I saw a monster on the plane wing, and its tearing the wing apart, I gotta stop it!'. The hostess pauses and calmly asks; 'Which is more likely sir, a little undiscovered monster, clawing on the outside of a plane as it is flying at hundreds of miles an hour in the sky, with no clear visible damage to the wing, or, could you just be hallucinating because you are afraid of flying?'
It makes more sense to see you as mad, when really you could be the sanest on the plane. If you experience something unique and possibly bizarre, and tell someone, even act on it (like in the example the man on the plane, he actually tries to climb out and stop it!) no one can see the value of your action (to save everyone on the plane) in a reasonable understanding. To them, you just tried to climb out the window of a flying plane. What you know, is not what everyone else knows, thus you seem absurd. The infidelity of sanity, like a rug that is pulled under ones feet, could happen at any time to anyone one. This is a shame because does this distinction to an extent not limit our ability to make dreams, imagination and idle mental wondering a reality? A certain magic is lost from our humanistic lives when the madness of life is no longer allowed to become a reality, and science fiction becomes only a mad mans dream.
By Tomas Moon
