Madman

[matrixmann]

What makes you a madman?
Does it make you one if you abandoned the hesitation to kill, to slit peoples' and animal throats, to survive, to have food or just to protect someone you hold dear?
Does it make you a madman if you feel no remorse, if you think that was right?
Does it make you a madman if you do that for money or on your own behalf?
Does it make you a madman if you call other humans "sheep"? If you dehumanize them and get your distance to judge them?
Does it make you a madman if you abandon emotions and if you regard everything through the lens of a rational mind?
Does it make you a madman if you decide to make decisions for others - what you think is best for them?
Does it make you a madman if you doubt the adulthood of the community?
Are you insane if you throw all that to their faces what they have suppressed just to buy a superficial hypocritical peace - that ends when all turn their backs on everyone?

Does it make you a madman if you cut the word "scum" into your arm and show it to the world like a trophy?
Does it make you a madman if you commit a crime while being intoxicated by psychosis and seeing stars?
Does it make you a madman if you kill someone while being in delusion and thinking you have seen Christ?
Does it make you a madman if you decide over the life of a few thousands through the wisp of a pen?
Does it make you a madman if you play with guns and feel joy with it?

Does it make you a madman if you jump off a skyscraper?
Does it make you a madman if you got blood on your hands and celebrate to not wash it away?
Does it make you a madman if you beat up the one who tortured you for your life?
Does it make you a madman if you know how to build explosives from simple household utensils?
Does it make you a madman if you consume culture and feel something totally different with it than the most?

Does it really need to be a butcher to be mad?
Does it really only need beastiality?
Does it really only need coldness and aloofness? Blood and guts?
Isn't it also madness if the mood of one can terrorize a whole area?

What qualifies you for the title?

Comments

[matrixmann]

It is a sort of play with what people regard as "being out of one's mind".
Lots of times it is connected to having a more releaxed relationship to blood and spilling blood.
All is just damned to be peaceful in human society, even if that's not possible, even if humans themselves don't behave this way from their own free will.
I find that thinking is pretty much twisted and one-sided.
There is no need for spilling blood just to do something inhuman.
A lot of today's cruel deeds actually are done on an office table. The execution in practive only then is a dirty one.
So that's then what leads me to comparing all these things...

[mandarinsun.livejournal.com]

Good point about things happening at an office table being worse than someone hitting someone else.

I think though that when a community, neighbors, or the authorities want to check to see whether you are mad or not, they are looking for you to admit that you know you are responsible for things and that up until now you have been somewhat lacking in some area and that you know you need to improve in someway.

That is what all the callers on the Dr. Laura show were told. That is what judges want to hear in court rooms. It is all of a piece. I can see why someone might say that it is a system of making people compliant and there might be more to it.

Michel Foucault, a French philosopher from the 1960s ad 70s, wrote a lot about the history of madness. I think he said that madness was acceptable up until a point in history when everything became much more organized. He pointed out that up until a certain point, people that heard voices were considered potentially divine like they were someone that might be hearing God's words, but then something substantially changed and that suddenly was an insane thing to think. What is odd though is the whole system is based on when initial people like Moses and Jesus did hear voices.

The Foucault book is called Madness and Civilization. Foucault loved Nietzsche a lot. You could just Google the book title and there will be lots of summaries of it.

[matrixmann]

Now that you name it... That was differently.
But also - you can say it was pretty ambivalent. You know, as they burned witches, people suspected of sorcery - in some parts of the world this still is a crime worth punishment! -, they may have also send people to death just because they were different from the average. And this may also include people who have a larger knowledge about something - obsession is a topic that people with mental deficits also have to deal with, depending on the person.
So - I don't know, it doesn't look that definite to me.