Beyond Reason

I’ve always been fascinated by the mind and memory, especially in terms the two no longer functioning correctly; a concept often better known as insanity (though not necessarily always). As a result, movies about the mind – such as ‘A Beautiful Mind’, ‘Memento’, ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ and ‘Fight Club’ – have always struck a cord with me.

This became doubly true through my own brush with insanity, about a year ago. For a few hours I, unfortunately, went almost completely out of my skull. In hindsight it was probably a panic attack and I was actually told as much at the time, but all I knew was that I was absolutely and completely losing it. I felt that, for all intended purposes, I was no longer in control of myself except for a teeny, tiny corner at the back of my mind.

The fear of loosing that tiny little corner was actually the entire force that was feeding back into the insanity that was trying to overwhelm me (yes, that is a convoluted sentence). The panic attack I had was basically a self replicating cycle. My fear of what was happening made what was happening worse and last longer, which, in turn, made me more afraid and in that way things just kept going around and around.

Those around me tried their best to help me, but ultimately they were (and felt) powerless. It was probably in many ways almost as fearful an experience for them as it was for me.

Since that time I’ve become far more appreciative of what it means to be insane and, though occasionally I still scare myself witless with the fear that it might come back, I still think that the experience was worth it. You see, insanity is not something that you can describe, it is only something you can experience.

I can appreciate how horrible it must be to be permanently and completely out of your mind. The thing is, when you hit that stage, logic no longer works. The only time that common sense is in anyway useful is when we’re of a sound enough mind to actually implement it.

For any reasoning to occur, you must be in control of your mental faculties.

We trust so greatly in logical deduction, argumentation and reasoning – as of course we must – but they all fall away the moment sanity does. It makes you wonder how true any of it really is.

I think there is a great deal we can learn from insanity, because – as many psychologists have already concluded – the second best way to study the norm is to consider those that are outside it. The best way, of course, is to step outside norm ourselves. Unfortunately, the few ways we have found to do that have been declared illegal.