If my memory does not fail me, I once read from a General Paper comprehension passage about how Stephen King theorizes that everyone is mad to a certain extent. Have you ever thought or imagined about cruel and malicious methods of murdering the person whom has in one way or another earned your hatred? Have you ever thought about doing absurd things in perfectly normal situations? Have you ever have fantasies or weird imaginations about a different kind of world we should have all lived in? Although one may not want to admit it, we are all masters at hiding all these fantasies, desires, wants and imaginations about our surrounding/people/environment. However, does that certify us as mad? Of course, we must ask ourselves first, how do you define the word ‘mad’? Flipping open my version of the Oxford advanced learners’ dictionary, the definition printed clearly states that ” Being mad is having a mind that does not work normally”. By this definition, are we not mad? Indeed, Stephen King may be right in declaring all of us as mad for we all have thoughts that are not normal and yet so well hidden. What is more significant in this revelation is that if we are mad, whatever we do and say are just plainly very well crafted ‘masks’ that hid a facade meant to deceive anyone who dares to lay their eyes on it.
One may fairly inquire that if all this is fake and so well fabricated and we are all indeed mad, why are we all not in mental institutes? My conclusion and answer to this question is that the degree of madness will decide whether you are in a mental institute or not. The second criteria to consider , definitely, is how well you can hide and control these madness. Once other people can identify that you have more of such fantasies and imagination and you cannot hide and control it, you will definitely be more likely thrown into a mental institute. In conclusion, as long as your actions and words are normal and does not cause any problems or chaos to the society, you will not be forcefully chucked into an institute for the mentally ill.
Consequently, this whole definition of madness raises another question: If madness is defined having a mind that does not work normally, then how do we define ‘normal’? Lets look at what dictionary.com defines it as. It clearly states that being normal is conforming to the common or standard type. What human traits need to conform to a “common or standard type” in order for us to be declared? I would name just the three most important. Intellectual, personality and emotional traits. Then again, can brains conform to a common or standard type? Are we capable of removing these unwanted non-standard/non-regular emotions totally from our domain? Can we standardize the varied personalities of millions of people? Absolutely not! To be able do so will be catastrophic. To be able do so will require such colossal effort. To be able to do so is as good as removing all the colors in this world except black and white. The primary reason is that all of us are unique and very different individuals.
Conclusively, I have proven that a person cannot conform and hence cannot be normal. This evidently allows us to safely deduce that all of us is mad and none of us is normal and that the reason that only certain handful group of people are only really considered ‘mad’ because they display a higher degree in madness and a greater deviation from “normalcy” which is largely due to their loss of ability to hide and control this madness.
I am sure that most of you people would agree with me that the things created and defined within the human domain are largely the work of humans. Okay fine! For the religious people, you may argue that God created us. Hence , the things created or molded by us are God’s creation. Well, lets try to keep God out of this whole issue, for if he is involved, this whole thing will only get more messy. Even if we concede that we never created anything at all, I am still convinced we affected and defined the things around us based on what we per. The things that we perceive, define and altered are all henceforth as per what Plato said mere illusions or replicas or tokens of the real thing for if we are all mad and we had a hand in deciding or determining the final outcome to the things around us, then the things around us remain to wholly incomplete and hence not real. Even the things I am writing now are but the idea of a mad lunatic and conclusively illogical for all these ideas may be wholly tainted by some random abnormal clutter which is ever more true.
