The last few days I have been considering the idea of insanity. My old room mate was telling me that his neighbor is suffering from some mental disease, something like schizophrenia. He believes that he is being possessed by a demon, and had expressed this to James on one occasion. He was also consulting with priests as to how he could be exorcised. The following evening he had an episode, and was taken by ambulance to a psychiatric ward.

It is a frightful thing to witness someone lose their sanity. Even hearing third hand accounts can be disturbing. On one hand this this is caused by a historical notion of mental derangement, namely that of demonic possession. It's not merely that someone has lost touch with reality through some dysfunction or imbalance in their brain chemistry, but rather that their will has been subordinated to the devil. They now pose the possibility of great harm to us and themselves, imbued with a demonic power. For me, the idea of their radical unpredictability is a dreadful thing. It would be strange to think that in all our interactions we are in the process of predicting what others around us will do next- we enjoy a certain amount of passivity to the world. But to be cognizant of the fact that someone near you has possibly lost touch with all intellectual and social norms would be unsettling to say the least. At the same time, it is more than their simply losing the possibility of social contract. In some way they lose touch with part of their human soul.

At this point, I've used broad strokes to frame the idea of insanity. The current perspective could include a range of illnesses from Alzheimer's to bi-polar disorder to those who are in a blind rage after experiencing great loss. I have not distinguished between the legal, medical, and social aspects of such a condition. These reasons makes this sort of inspection largely unfruitful. I am talking about a topic I have a woeful inadequacy to handle. However, I want to get at a common notion of the idea. That is a loss of the self. It could be argued that someone undergoing the throes of mental aberration still have "themself", but I can't help but thinking such violence done to they way one thinks radically reshapes the psyche. The reason I am willing to engage this topic, is because I want to elicit the idea that we should have a reverence for the suffering of such a violence.

Today, we often cannot help but mock those we think are mentally ill. This woman who projects her derangement with an obsession for children, and gives birth to eight children she is wholly incapable of raising is the target of great maligning in the news. People can't wait to take a shot at her. We've developed a great sense of distrust and suspicion regarding these manners, no doubt in part because of our awareness of how insanity pleas are abused in the courts. We see people faking dementia as a way of absconding themselves from responsibility. However, given the circumstance when we confront someone who legitimately suffers such an affliction, it seems to require a great reordering of the way we think if we are to display the appropriate sympathy. You can't lure someone out of irrationality with syllogistic reasoning, and this is even more so when it is involuntary. Our actions must be characterized by an emotive touch, a sensitivity to the part of human soul the insane still has direct contact with- namely the sensitive part.

Going over this entry I'm afraid the looseness of what I have written obscures my intention. Rather than become overly apologetic, I will re-synthesize my thought. When those of us around us encounter such an experience, when they lose grips with the intellectual part of their soul, we should direct our care of them in such a way as to exhibit reverence for their loss. However, temporary it may or not be, I think if we come to terms with the evil (natural or moral) suffered, we are obligated to mourn more than the forfeiture of our personal comfort.