Aswad
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quote:
ORIGINAL: MuscleyandCute
Geniuses are insane because the more intelligent you are the closer this is to insanity.
I'd offer a slightly different approach to the argument you presented, and contend that it isn't about genious.
Intelligence combined with introspection and/or a seeker-mentality will tend to lead to full realization of certain irreducible truths in a sense that cannot be conveyed in words. These truths betray the lies that are the foundation upon which our minds, our lives, and our societies, along with virtually every concept of relevance to us, are based. In short, the worldview is irrevocably shattered.
This can cause an emotional and cognitive limbo, where the person is cast adrift in a world with no givens, no values, and no points of reference, just like the real world. When certain kinds of fantasy books deal with "magic", particularly in High Fantasy works, they sometimes speak of an awakening; an experience in which the "wizard" grasps reality on a fundamental level which cannot be expressed, and of the terrible price exacted by this knowledge, the forbidden truths not meant for man to know.
While there is certainly no magic in intelligence, and these things are dramatized for the purpose of making good reading, there is some element of truth to what they speak of. There comes a point where the entirety of perceivable reality has been sorted into the piles "null and void", "meaningless" and "pointless", and the arbitrariness of perception, consciousness and existence sinks in. That is the "awakening".
There are no "special education" classes to deal with this.
The foundations of the mind are swept aside, and there are no coping skills in place to deal with the resulting vacuum. Most quickly realize that they can put those foundations back in place, but that is either a delusion (in the true sense of the word), or a pretense that is known to be hollow. The former is a state of psychosis, literally. The latter is just similar to the core problem of borderline personality disorder. Insanity, indeed.
Alternately, one can accept the vacuum, which creates a fluid state that has the melded characteristics of several forms of mental illness, and can create a slide toward some of the darker forms of "insanity", reminiscent of some of the sidetracks towards the path to "awakening". The sidetracks being the ones you see on crime library and such; genious doesn't factor into the sidetracks at all, I think.
Even in the absence of guidance that could prepare one for these things and provide coping strategies, most eventually find some way or another to deal with it, but this will have its own problems. Regardless of the coping strategy chosen, these will almost invariably contain elements of "insanity", ranging from small behavioural quirks, to full loss of mental integrity. I'm only familiar with my own coping strategies, so I couldn't comment on those used by others, but I'm sure there are many variations.
I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I think it comes down to regaining a sense of direction, and finding a way to arbitrarily construct a worldview that is sufficiently congruent to that of society at large so as to avoid incarceration or hospitalization, all of it arranged as a coherent, internally consistent and harmonious whole. In short, what I think the orientals called "enlightenment".
Some who are open to the idea of the supernatural have also proposed that there may be a similar "breakthrough" into that realm, but I have no way to support such theories or even speculate as to what that might be like, or how that could work. While it is an interesting thought, it cannot IMO be a fruitful topic of discourse for anyone who has not "awakened" in a spiritual sense, though I'll say this appears to be what the Gnostic faiths have been thinking about with regard to breaking the soul free from its prison of flesh.
quote:
[...]was handed out some psychiatric drugs like sweets by an incompetant Doctor which sent me insane.
Now, that seems familiar. Such is what prompted me to master the parts of that field relevant to me.
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I have been inside mental hospitals a few times (3), not many intelligent people in there though nor geniuses, just lots of people of average intelligence who have been a bit too "enlightened" by illicit drugs.
I've never been inside as a patient, but I've spent a fair bit of time in them for other reasons.
We considered hospitalization for a while, when I was really, really messed up (for entirely different reasons than those mentioned above), but there was no viable way anyone could do so without completely screwing up my life to the point where there would be no pieces left to pick up upon release, by three pdoc's assessment and my own.
Such would have given a poor prognosis for treatment. And they got that same worried look that I wear on the inside when they started thinking about the interactions between having no life to go back to, and having no points of reference to "pin down" the mind in a stable state. The quick conclusion was to give me a direct line to the ward in question and continue intensive outpatient treatment. Turns out to have been a wise choice.
Anyway, just my 2 cents. Hope someone found it useful, interesting or entertaining.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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RE: So Why Are All The Genius's Insane? - 
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