Crazy, Yes, Essentially Crazy!

I guess one of my fundamental beliefs about human beings is that we are "crazy:" - yes, full of cracks and flaws, crooked, askew, mad, insane, distracted with desire or excitement, absurdly fond, passionately preoccupied, etc. Crazy in all senses of the word.

I think we are crazy because we know we will die, and we don't want to, we know we will suffer, and we don't want to, we aren't really that important in the grander scheme, and we really, really want to be important. 

If you figure that human beings are essentially crazy, then everything that happens in the world is a little bit more understandable. All the blood and mayhem, and mindless consumption, and hurly burly of Pop Culture are just manifestations or symptoms that flow out from that essential madness.

Knowing this basic, essential craziness isn't necessarily reassuring - it just helps explain lots of the strange phenomena we generate. Admitting your own personal craziness, knowing that you and your fellow beings are a crazy, unmoored species that is progressively more and more dominant on this little blue planet, just puts the headlines and the hubbub in some kind of context.

And those of us clinging to science, logic and truth?  There's this from from a biography of John Nash as described in Sylvia Nasar's biography "A Beautiful Mind," -  a book about one of our "mad geniuses:" 

A Colleague asked: "How could you, a mathematician, a man devoted to reason and logical truth believe that extraterrestrials are sending you messages? How could you believe that you are being recruited by aliens from outer space to save the world?"

John Nash replied: "Because the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did. So I took them seriously."