Michal Kapko: http://mgrobelny.deviantart.com/

Bus Culture - By Ellese Elliott

Bus Culture

No I'm afraid I'm not an automaton

in the sense that I fail to conform

I wanted to carry the stick on the bus

and not leave it outside because of us

I would say please excuse my rudeness

but it be a fiction inferred from a moral mess

so instead I look into your eyes

your simple mind they fail to disguise

A diagnoses of weirdanity

is clearly directed at me

mindful in my challenge

you mindless through sleeker means than a syringe

thoughts running parallel to my actions

but you equal a congealed set of reactions

I really truly feel

you all deserve to be killed

and yet I am an automaton

as I cannot turn my emotions on

but there is still meaning

all around it is beaming

a constant expression of dull

is the stain that appears on my soul

but underneath it is active

questioning and creative

unlike you batch no10 of hens

you who refer to yourself as men but are also women

who a behaviourist could fully account for

commodified, stamped and brought in store

your insides being sucked out

all on display for the right amount

but I have my stick on the bus with me

and I show more depth than the applied term of weirdanity.

By Ellese Elliott

Is madness more then a value judgement - By Tomas Moon

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

How to get mad with mathematical logic - ByMartin Prior

How to get mad with mathematical logic

Madness is nothing if it is not bad logic, so here is my crazy little flow-chart:

But also in all ‘walks of life’ we have to deal with a variety of factors beyond our experience, so:

(i)                 As we discussed in an earlier, re Faith and Science, when there are ‘fewer observations than variables’ we must have some reliance on faith: in many societies, and as I argued, ideally in socialist societies, this is a function of custom, or what I have called customary care.  But this scenario can be mucked up, not least when the authorities, or those with superiority want it so to be.  This I have previously discussed in connection with exploitation.

(ii)               The poor psychologists and psychiatrists: their task is not logic or mathematics but to look into the souls of individual patients, though occasionally mad professors, of philosophy  like Karl Popper, will tell them how to be ‘scientific’.

(iii)       We might say that if people make false deductions and this harms society, if they harm themselves it is madness, but if they benefit themselves it is greed.

[btw]  Who’s the chicken?

I was going to present a logically valid deduction as to why the Tories are institutionally mad.  I started to do this in the last issue when I argued that they think it’s not them but others are mad, specially those they want to exploit... oops welcome into the great family that is Eng... Britain, but I shall rest my case with a cartoo... nother diagram.

:]

By        Martin Prior

[Btw] - Who's the chicken?

Which is truly? - By Selim 'Selim' Talat

Which is truly?

Halt the flow of thoughts for a primitive second, and let the cycles of human life around us continue without us – we can perch upon the rafters of society as observers for the briefest time.

  Now we can ask: Which is truly insane?

The ones who could not fit the mass mould or...

...the ones for whom life is a series of numbers, gathered, defended and worshipped. For ones who make a very special effort to raise creatures in barns only to slay them for nothing more than simple satisfaction. For ones who build fanciful worlds and unrealistic dreams and mistake them for the course of nature. For ones whose learning centres are burial grounds of creativity. For ones who cannot cope with the inevitable reality of mortal flesh and commit themselves to ritual, pretending that bodies do not rot and decay when lain beneath the soil. For ones who laugh down genius, and then celebrate it a generation after she has died. For ones whose codes of law contain a myriad of injustices provided none of that harm is done to them – but some other poor sod beyond immediate perception. For ones who alternately call their wickedness 'natural' in one sentence and then themselves free agents in the next (a terrible contradiction).

Truly, the ones who did not fit the mould may carry all this madness and more, but let us not forget the mundane madness of people and of cities.

By Selim 'Selim' Talat