This is a question I find myself asking me a lot, I know the most simple way to put it is 'not normal', but when you think about it, who is? So if we are all insane what makes us so? Are we born like that or is it something we grow up to be. I'm saying the formal because being unclosed and alone for so long (I know unborn babies are with their mothers, but do we really know that's where we are at the time? And a for twins and such then just out rule the alone part) could go be the first steps of human insanity. (I hope this makes seance(sp)) then after we're born everything we have to face adds to our insanity. To put it more simple, I don't think any one is born sane.
Sanity is the soundness of the mind, the control and balance it has. If your mind is in a constant flux of irrational ideas or behaviours, you are not of sound mind, so is called Insanity. Normality is just how much of a mainstream and sociably expected thoughts and behaviours are told to be. For example, incest these days is a crime, an unacceptable part of society. Back during the Ancient Romans, incest was part of the normality for the royals and upper class citizens. So from what would've been normal back then is not normal now. Or just the very fact the Everyone can become insane and sane again, it may last a brief period or a life time. Unless you are talking about mental illnesses you are born with, they can be suppressed or at least lessened over time, but never truly gone. Insane is slang, to class someone as improper in behaviour or thoughts, or how they express something fro people. It isn't as accurate as a proper diagnosis of course, but it can be a way to generalise that someone has something unsound about their mind. Something that can impede their health, social and daily life.
I' d rather put it as "imbalanced". Societal and cultural pressure make each and everyone of us grow our own specific eccentricities, true, but putting that aside there can be identifiable "flaws" or "bugs", so to speak, in one' s brain development. Possibilities are numerous : a specific genome, drugs or chemicals, traumatic events, illnesses etc ... Bit of both. The genes we inherit can give us or predispose us to specific imbalances, but genes do not determine our brain development entirely. Our experiences also play a crucial role in this, especially our very first experiences. Here' s two examples to illustrate : - If a baby born with perfectly functional eyes is left in the dark permanently, shortly after his birth, then his brain will barely develop any synaptic connections with the eyes' nerves, leaving the child blind for life. - Years ago in Eastern Europe, after a tragic incident, some nurses working in a hospital were left with numerous orphan babies to take care of . The hospital had all the equipment needed to take care of the babies and enough food to nourish them but they barely had time enough to feed them all. Half of them died. Those who survived developed psychological problems later on. This sad story allowed us to realize that babies need to be touched a lot for their brain to develop normally, feeding them isn' t enough. We also suspect that our early touch experiences or traumas play a key role in our predisposition to addictions. Sensory deprivation as a whole is psychologically devastating in our early years, our early experiences shape our brain as much as our genes, if not more. That' s why learning languages is easy as pie for babies while adults have a much harder time doing so. Also, experimenting with people having severe lesions in the part of the brain connecting the two hemispheres brought about some weirdly fascinating results : they can develop two distinct personalities at the same time, one hemisphere controls the mouth, the other the left hand. One can be atheist while the other believes in God. It has even been documented that some people with such lesions have been awakened in the middle of the night ... by their left hand trying to strangle them, to their own bewilderment ! Science has barely begun to uncover our brains' secrets, who knows what kind of beast lies buried in our psyche' s depths ? "In this world, there is no sanity or insanity. Here lie only the thousand faces of madness." ~ Desty Nova "Igor had to admit it. When it came to getting weird things done, sane beat mad hands down.†~ Terry Pratchett "Teppic realised that the high priest was, indeed, truly mad. It was the rare kind of madness caused by being yourself for so long that habits of sanity have etched themselves into the brain.†~ Terry Pratchett "His mind worked fast, flying in emergency supplies of common sense, as human minds do, to construct a huge anchor in sanity and prove that what happened hadn't really happened and, if it had happened, hadn't happened much." ~ Terry Pratchett
Ignoring the rest of this, we need to define some things. What is rational and what is irrational? At the most basic level, how do you tell the difference? The rest of your post is meaningless if we do not know what the defining line is. I would rather people not take these definitions for granted.
Speaking from personal experience after doing a placement In the ambulance emergency service, it is difficult and very narrow-minded to define someone who is in a state of mind that is not within capacity of following 'normal' perception or social behaviors to define a person as 'insane'. There are a number of factors that have to be taken into consideration in this case. What is 'insane' and how does one define it? Insanity may be manifested as a violation of societal norms, including a person becoming a danger to themselves or others. But to what extent? Does a person who is suffering depression and harms his or herself considered to be insane? It depends. It could be that person has been pushed to the edge that they either do not have the capabilities to properly deal with an issue or push themselves to harm others because they feel that they've been wronged; that it is not justified why they should suffer and others do not. You don't necessarily have to be 'insane' to harm someone, it's more of a case of ethics and morality being tossed out the window. Adding on from that, it must also be determined if a person's mental illness or 'insanity' interfered with their ability to distinguish right or wrong. That is, did the person know that the alleged behavior went against the law or against societal norms at the time their 'episode' occurred?
Examples of such irrationalities: Irrational thoughts - That the consumption of high amounts of cheese leads to the development of pedophillia Irrational beliefs - That there are space lizard overlords observing us and that your the one child they sent to earth in order to serve human beings. Irrational behaviour - Wandering onto the motorway, purposely to dodge high speed traffic or dancing in the street.
While those are examples, what makes them irrational? I asked for a defining line, not so much just a list of what is and is not. When confronted with a decision not on your list, how would you define how rational it is?
I thought those examples would be self explanatory. More so, why would such thoughts be rational? Is it rational to try dancing in or dodging high speed traffic for self enjoyment? Is it rational to believe you are a servant to any human being because of space lizards? Is it rational to believe there is a correlation between cheese consumption and developing paedophilia? How about the fact none are true and dangerous or at least provable to be true? It's not like you can rationalise such behaviour without talking about further irrational behaviour. Being irrational, as described by its definition is: An action or opinion given through inadequate reason, emotional distress, or cognitive deficiency.
Those are loaded terms. Inadequacy is subjective. You have asked me why something would be rational without telling me what the defining line is. I cannot tell you what rationality is as an answer to my own question. I asked you for a reason, I want to hear how you would determine a statement's rationality if it were up to you. Faced with a new situation, how do you prove that something is irrational?
