There is Madness—and then there is Insanity
Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
'Tis the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur, you're straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.
- Emily Dickinson, in LIFE,
XI
There is
madness and there is insanity. In my late twenties, I
spent a little over two years working in a
psychiatric hospital. Certainly no other job affected
me so much in so many ways. I learned more about
humanity (and myself) working with individuals who
were psychotic, neurotic, obsessive-compulsive,
bulimic, angry, tortured, raped and violated in ways
I’d never imagined possible.
Sometimes we (the hospital staff) could bring
individuals back from the brink of insanity. Other
times we failed. During my employment I never met a
patient who embraced his condition as form of divine
sense nor anyone who wished she could preserve her
stark madness. Then again, none of these people were
mad. They were insane, or close to it—and
fortunately, they formed a small minority of society.
The sort of madness that Emily Dickinson refers to is
perhaps more dangerous than insanity in that it has a
social dynamic at its heart, a kind of societal
disease that grows until it gets a grip on the
population. Think of fascism and communism in the
last century. There was a certain “sense” to both
programs and plenty of advocates who could make a
case for identifying outsiders and locking them in
chains. In this case, Dickinson was prescient. Her
prescience was based on the recognition that
divisions in society open the door to dangerous
liaisons.
All this begs the question: are we inhabiting a new
age of multiple divisions? Those with clean water,
those without. Those with oil, those without. Those
with health care, those without. Those with weapons,
those without.
If the answer is yes, then should we begin to prepare
for another age where the madness of crowds directs
our activity to war and conquest? Or should we begin
to mend the rifts and divisions that separate us?
History reveals that the first option—the path of the
warrior—is futile because it often leads to more war
and destruction. But the second choice—that of the
peace maker—is so challenging that it seems almost
impossible to achieve. Yet we’ve seen that
“consensual peace” can work: in the Suez crisis, in
Cypress for example.
More important, only the second choice will lead us
to social sanity. The fascinating benefit of bridging
the gap between those who have and those who do not,
is that it nourishes the individuals who reach out to
one another. This solution is social not racial,
humanist not militarist.
As the gaps and divisions widen in the months and
years ahead, we can consider Dickinson’s insight and
determine how to respond to it. Perhaps it’ll be the
most important decision we make, especially if we are
able to act upon it.