Insanity vs. Sanity

What is the difference between sanity and insanity? Or is there any?

Let's start with asking the question what is insanity? If you look up into a typical law dictionary for its definition you will see something like this : "Insanity is defined as mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, cannot conduct her/his affairs due to psychosis, or is subject to uncontrollable impulsive behavior."

Let’s try to breakdown this definition part by part.

1. "cannot distinguish fantasy from reality"

In some deep corners of our mind this is a statement we all want to disagree. Let me share something with you. LSD is a very famous drug. It is believed that consumption of LSD causes "hallucinations" and hence is a "hallucinogen". But Indians (Native Americans) consider it as "de-hallucinogen". They believe that this world is an illusion or a fantasy and you can escape to reality by consuming LSD. They do have many such "mumbo-jumbo" beliefs. But this one has a scientific support. A scientific experiment showed that spiders fed LSD do not wander around doing purposeless things as one might expect a 'hallucination' would cause them to do, but instead spin an abnormally perfect, symmetrical web.

What is real and what is fantasy is still a large debate. We all have thought over this at some point of our life (especially as a child). Does this make us insane?

2. "cannot conduct her/his affairs due to psychosis"

As per dictionary, it is "a severe mental disorder in which thoughts and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality". Remember the time when you are deeply engrossed in T.V. or a movie? Enough said.

3. "uncontrollable impulsive behavior"

There is no one on  this earth who has at some point of his life showed an uncontrollable impulsive behavior. It might be anything from extreme anger or exhilarating happiness.

The argument over legal or technical can go on and on. It is nothing but mere waste of time. I can write a whole book to over this by taking religious, scientific and philosophical stand. There's is clearly no crisp and well-defined distinction between sanity and insanity. Also, it is more than obvious that the current distinction between these two things is wrong and objectionable. Here is an excerpt from Robert Pirsig's book Lila.

"Henri Poincare, who asked, 'Why is the reality most acceptable to science one that no small child can be expected to understand?'

Should reality be something that only a handful of the world's most advanced physicists understand? One would expect at least a majority of people to understand it. Should reality be expressible only in symbols that require university-level mathematics to manipulate? Should it be something that changes from year to year as new scientific theories are formulated? Should it be something about which different schools of physics can quarrel for years with no firm resolution on either side? If this is so then how is it fair to imprison a person in a mental hospital for life with no trial and no jury and no parole for 'failing to understand reality'? By this criterion shouldn't all but a handful of the world's most advanced physicists be locked up for life? Who is crazy here and who is sane?”

This will really tickle your brain for a while. Robert Pirsig had a nervous breakdown and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He was in mental asylum from 1961 to 1963. But he successfully came out of his so called "insanity" (unlike Friedrich Nietzche) and wrote two iconic one of the best-selling philosophical novels : Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila.

He lived a life in both worlds: sanity and insanity. Here's an extremely "useful" and thought-provoking excerpt from his book Lila about "how to get out of a mental asylum". This excerpt might be despised by many psychiatrists but we all agree with this deep down somewhere.

"Like police, who live in two worlds, the biological and the social, psychiatrists also live in two worlds, the social and the intellectual. Like cops, they are in absolute control of the lower order and are expected to be absolutely subservient to the upper order. A psychiatrist who condemns intellectuality would be like a cop who condemns society. Not the right stuff. You have as much chance convincing a psychiatrist that the intellectual order he enforces is rotten as you have of convincing a cop that the social order he supports is rotten. If they ever believed you they'd have to quit their jobs.

So ......... if you want to get out of an insane asylum the way to do it is not to try to persuade the psychiatrists that you may know more than they do about what is 'wrong' with you. That is hopeless. The way to get out is to persuade them that you fully understand that they know more than you do and that you are fully ready to accept their intellectual authority. That is how heretics keep from getting burned. They recant. You have to do a first-class acting job and not allow any little glances of resentment get in there. If you do they may catch you at it and you may be worse off than if you hadn't tried.If they ask you how you're feeling you can't say, 'Great!' That would be a symptom of delusion. But you can't say, 'Rotten!' either. They'll believe it and increase the tranquilizer dosage. You have to say, 'Well ... I think I may be improving a little bit ..." and do so with a little look of humility and pleading in your eyes. That brings the smiles."

Now you know why I called this excerpt "useful". That brings the smiles.