Cause of insanity

Update on December 13th 2020: You don’t hear the term “mental illness” these days. It’s called “mental health issues”, and embraces every kind of grief, depression and general unhappiness, especially including effects of loneliness arising from precautions against the corona-virus pandemic

I’ve been wondering today what mental illness is. There’s a propaganda campaign going on in the UK. You are supposed to accept the term as a neutral one, without stigma, like a broken leg—could happen to anyone, what bad luck, get well soon, pity you don’t have your cranium in plaster because then we could write comic messages on it in ballpoint pen.

But obscurely the sense of stigma remains. Never mind political correctness, what does it mean to be insane, crazy, lunatic, off your head, psychotic, catatonic, manic, depressive? I’m no shrink but I cannot help thinking it is caused by trying to blot out unhappiness with numbness or self-delusion.

But there are so many ways to blot out unhappiness which don’t get you labelled insane: alcoholism, drug dependency, overwork, sexual misbehaviour, junk culture & other forms of escapism, acquisitiveness, fame-seeking, gambling, risky sports, following a cult, sacrificing yourself to a cause.

If this list makes you think it’s a description of what many “normal people” do to fill their lives, you’ve understood my point.

Meanwhile, even whilst blotting out the unhappiness as best we may, we have to carry on with the day to day business of surviving physically. I’m writing this from Plomer Hill, where you can see the panoramic townscape depicted above. From this distance, it doesn’t look dysfunctional at all: houses, roads, factories, parks, woodland, footpaths, churches and a mosque. Not like the newspaper today which shows 2 adjacent photos: a tank going through a devastated Saigon street in 1968 and a tank going through a devastated Baghdad street in 2006.

My point is that from moment to moment, a human being does what seems right at the time, whether creating hell in a city or in their own consciousness. To call acts evil or insane does not explain them. But there is always an explanation, whether it be fear, shame, anger or simply not having received enough human love and care to have any self-respect.

Nature is connected and balanced, cruel and beautiful. It has intricate complexity at every level. It looks after its own interests. We’re part of that. We can choose which parts to look at, because we can’t look at everything. But to be in denial – of anything, whether out there, or in me – is where all that mess, that Baghdad hell, that psychotic horror, begins.