Head of a man with straw hat (1971) by Pablo Picasso

Time was, back in the day, when sanity was assumed to be a good thing. How times change! And just how have we arrived at this unpretty pass? And what to do?

The Victorian/Edwardian Age

The Edwardian Age wasn’t perfect. But it wasn’t all bad, either. (Was it?)

The picnics. The boating on the rivers. The striped coats and white pants. The white blouses, the boater hats, and the long khaki skirts. Charming children’s stories like Wind in the Willows. Peace among nations.

And there was a strong cultural hold-over from the Victorian Age (Victoria being the mother, and Edward being the son). Brilliant science and technology, like measuring the speed of light, or perfecting the telegraph. Powerful industry, like shipbuilding, and train networks. Robust economics. A thirst for adventure. A bold and positive vision of the future. (E.g., see Charles Emerson’s 1913: In Search of the World Before the Great War, and James Hamilton’s London Lights: The Minds That Moved the City That Shook the World.)

More subtly, but perhaps more importantly, what might be called classical culture carried a huge emphasis on character development (e.g., see Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help, and Character, and Jane Pettigrew’s An Edwardian Childhood). The observation, over many generations, was that character determined behavior. So, it appeared essential to consciously develop character in each generation, such that each cohort of new citizens would support a healthy culture, which would shape a healthy society, which would generate healthy behaviors . . . so all could thrive.

Key cultural pillars, character traits expected of all children, were: honesty, diligence, courtesy, respect for adults and other children, composure and self-regulation, loyalty, productive activity as well as games, wide reading and rational thinking, maintaining a cheerful, hopeful outlook, and taking personal responsibility for success in life. The template for everyday heroes.

Not bad. Reads like a wish-list of every parent, teacher, neighbor, business manager, and government official the world over. So, what happened?

The War to End War

Well, it’s complicated.

The Germans were becoming a force to be (or, a force which should have been) reckoned with. Fantastically strong science and technology, and excellent educational systems. Friedrich Froebel was a brilliant educational theorist; kindergarten (a German term, of course) was one of his ideas. The whole nation was shining up and sharpening a cutting-edge military, based on powerful Prussian principles (e.g., see Carl von Clausewitz’s On War). All of this was so thrilling, the Kaiser and his subjects were beginning to entertain eye-watering visions of vast European conquests.

Heavens! The Brits weren’t having any of that! This was, after all, Shakespeare’s Scepter’d Isle, the Empire on Which the Sun Never Set, and Victoria wasn’t just the Queen of Great Britain, she was the Empress of India! The Germans, not to put too fine a point on it, were rude bumpkins in leather shorts, scarfing Wiener schnitzel, and getting drunk on Bock beer, as they bumped into trees in dark forests, while getting lost in fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm and Edmund Husserl. Ha!

Logically . . . all the King’s men had to do was pounce on those lowly Huns, and—voila!—the war would be over in two weeks, and the British Bulldog could romp home, victorious, to splendid accolades. Speaking of the French—hey, c’mon, this is Napoleon country. The Emperor’s children weren’t going to have any trouble trouncing all those vainglorious German-speaking upstarts from the wrong side of the Rhine, Habsburg Empire or no. Same with the Russians—land of Tsars, Tchaikovsky, Tolstoy, and the Bolshoi Ballet. When Mother Russia mobilized, they were going to roll over their foolish Teutonic cousins like the giant Juggernaut over doomed pilgrims.

Of course, it didn’t work out that way. Germany was amazingly tough even to stop, let alone defeat. The First World War went on forever. Everyone involved could scarcely believe how industrialized militaries, with their machine guns and tanks, just chewed up a generation of brave, patriotic, idealistic young men, leaving whole nations, on both sides, to grieve profoundly, and to wonder what—or who—had dragged them into such a quixotic catastrophe.

The Butler Did It!

Unfortunately, when the combat nightmare finally ended, in 1918, a psychosocial misanalysis wasn’t far behind (e.g., see Linda Simon’s Lost Girls: The Invention of the Flapper). The interpretation of the problem generally bandied about was that WWI was enacted exactly because of all those darned classical character pillars!

If everyone involved, from those spiffy European leaders to their rabid followers, hadn’t been so obsessed with the ideals of loyalty, duty, and courage—the Great War never would have happened! All those young men wouldn’t have died, all those girls wouldn’t have been robbed of their boyfriends and husbands, the economies of Europe wouldn’t have been drained, previously glorious nations wouldn’t have been plunged into despair . . . and maybe the Tsar and Tsarina still would be dancing the waltz in the Alexander Palace.

In other words, all the misery was caused by the classical culture of clear thought, powerful organization, and generous heroism inherited from Rome and Greece. What to do?

The Modernist Solution

In parallel fashion to the postwar crisis of confidence, in a panic attack reality just about collapses in a freezing, dark rain of terror. The individual feels trapped by the situation and by the assembled personnel. The obvious solution is just to escape. To dump the whole system. The craving is for something completely new. The hypnotic, hysterical lure is . . . anarchy.

Ergo . . . Modernism.

Ergo . . . James Joyce takes a coherent classical hero’s pious journey homeward, Homer’s The Odyssey, and . . . fragments it . . . blows it up: “May I trespass on your valuable space. That doctrine of laissez faire which so often in our history. Our cattle trade. The way of all our old industries. Liverpool ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme. European conflagration.” A cavalcade of almost meaningless scenes and dialogs and relationships within a daily routine of crushing boredom within a near-pointless humiliating life of provinciality premised on the thinnest of mercantile reeds presented as a non-edifying . . . stream of consciousness. The modern Ulysses is a No-Man Nomad odysseying towards . . . Nowhere.

Ergo . . . Sergei Eisenstein nearly trashes the idea of coherent narrative. He introduces the cinematic concept of montage—scattered scenes jumbled together—to pound home the message of life’s indifference, cruelty, exploitation, meaninglessness, and uselessness, within an overarching sense of dangerous loss of control. A baby in a baby carriage bouncing wildly and lethally down a huge, dramatic set of steps in Battleship Potemkin is humanity panicking, and on the run . . . with nowhere to hide.

Ergo . . . that clever Eliot boy from St. Louis, who started a literary doctoral program in Massachusetts, then wandered away to end up working in the basement of a bank in England; who began as a loose Unitarian and ended up a strict Anglo-Catholic; who married a lovely English governess and writer, then abandoned her to an asylum, never to see her again; wrote, not too surprisingly, The Wasteland. “April is the cruelest month/Lilacs out of the dead land/Out of this stony rubbish/A heap of broken images/The dead tree gives no shelter/I will show you fear in a handful of dust”. That feast of disorienting depression was followed by “We are the hollow men/We are the stuffed men/Filled with straw/Our dried voices . . . meaningless/As wind in dry grass.”

(No reason to even pencil “Tom Eliot” onto your party list!)

And those three signature troubadours of Modernism (i.e., fashionable, desperate, panicking madness) were just the beginning! Picasso (seemingly an artist of exceptional talent) enthusiastically portrayed human beings as crushed and twisted, partial survivors of some kind of hyper-chromatic Armageddon. Critics and collectors, presumably fellow travelers (we’re looking at you, Gertrude Stein), canonized the madness. The Bauhaus stripped architecture of its classical power, its elevating romance and comforting beauty, reducing human habitation to something like hutches for rabbits with union cards. The Dada movement frankly wanted to reduce everything to nothing, to dada, to meaninglessness, with no apologies. Fauvism (wild beasts) elevated color over design, and emotion over rationality. Jazz consciously destroyed classical, rational forms of music in bursts of meandering improvisation. The Weimar Republic was a master class in disassembling a functioning (if misguided) society and transforming it into a dysfunctional shambles, ripe for the plucking. There is no way that the iconic, electrifying 1920 movie The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari can be considered any kind of inspiring hymn to human goodness and self-sacrifice, or even rationality. (Is there?)

The Jazz Age can be seen as a riot of fashionable insanity, and the Lost Generation as the Charlestoning pilots of a doomed zeppelin. The era’s mood captured, perhaps, in “Let’s Misbehave”, then “Anything Goes”. Bathtub gin, anyone? Speakeasys? Bribes? Support for organized crime? Foolish investments?
How about a stock market crash?

The Pendulum Swings

It seems like there’s only so much pandemonium people can tolerate before they, well, won’t tolerate it anymore. Post-WWI Germany is probably the poster child for the psychosocial pendulum swinging from barely-questioned royal domination, then over to inexplicable chaos, then back to rigid over-control, then back again, all the way over to . . . catastrophic collapse.

PANIC IN THE STREETS OF BERLIN! A post-Armistice inflation which defied credulity—almost impossible to find enough cash to buy a loaf of bread, let alone a bottle of schnapps. Vicious combat up and down the avenues, daily. It was hardly safe to step outside the front door. Paramilitaries roving hither and yon at will. If it wasn’t the communists killing the fascists, it was the fascists killing the communists. And the public was getting caught in the lethal, outrageous middle.

So, in all this dueling, self-righteous mayhem, where was the government?

Well, they were in the Reichstag, arguing endlessly over everything, and getting . . . nowhere.

Somewhere, in the transition from monarchy to democracy, the idea of intelligently debating an issue, then taking a fair vote, and then complying with the collective decision got lost! Instead, the presumption seemed to be that if there were no Kaiser in charge, everyone could fight for their own piece of turf, and if they lost the vote, they could just keep on fighting. No reason, apparently, for competing parties to accept decisions that didn’t favor themselves!

Modernism strikes again.

The result? Aggressive pandemonium. Near-zero control. A nation on the skids, frantically alarming the population as well as concerned observers. Some kind of radically authoritarian control, whether communism or fascism, was the ideological solution du jour (the shadow of the Kaiser).

Ergo . . . a clever, surprisingly well-organized, highly determined artist from Vienna saw his chance to craft the world according to his own preferences. Therefore, he took remarkably deft command, exerting exceedingly tight control over everything that moved (e.g., see Christer Jorgensen’s Spying for the Fuhrer: Hitler's Espionage Machine, and William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany).

That was the end of the proto-democratic chaos. But all that amounted to a different kind of madness—merciless totalitarianism, roaring down a self-aggrandizing highway towards a Götterdämmerung just over a flaming horizon of . . . complete loss of control.

Madness vs. Sanity

Okay, what is this thing called madness, anyway? Hey?

Well, it’s the opposite of sanity. I guess.

Fine. But then, what is sanity?

Nomenclature Chaos

The crisis in defining these staggeringly fundamental psychosocial terms is that definitions have political implications (e.g., see David Zarefsky’s Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning). Just imagine (if you dare) that madness is defined as voting liberal. Obviously, the liberals are going to vigorously protest that definition (however many conservatives might smugly agree). Or, imagine that madness is defined as voting conservative. Obviously, the conservatives are going to vigorously protest that definition (however many liberals might smugly agree).

The sanity-madness issue isn’t quite that much of a conceptual burlesque. But it’s close.

The underlying problem is that perception is basic, therefore most people can agree if something is of a certain color, blue or red. But most thinking almost immediately leaps beyond perception and enters the powerful netherworld of conception. For example, people might disagree as to whether the color blue, or red, is the better color, which is a conceptual issue.

People born poor, as another example, usually crave great wealth; but people born to great wealth often believe the simple life is best—very different conceptions of how to live. Or, liberals might believe that wealth should be widely distributed, even to those who haven’t really earned it. That would be, to them, sanity. Conservatives might see that as, well . . . madness (we hear you, Ayn Rand/John Galt). Or, someone commits a strange crime in the absence of an obvious motive, gets caught, and the defense team, desperate for loopholes in the law, declares the accused to be not guilty by reason of insanity. It goes on and on like that, across multiple theaters of life.

It’s like a conceptual shell game—the pea is in there, then it’s not. The truth is here, then it’s gone. Common sense is obvious, then it’s obscure. The meaning is captured, then it escapes.

But is the sanity-madness controversy really so confusing?

Working Definitions

As the distinguished jurist Cass Sunstein pointed out in Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict, irreconcilable differences of opinion often can be resolved by dropping down from high-level, excessively broad abstractions to narrower, more concrete and practical matters, about which agreement often can be found. The same may be true of the complex concepts of sanity and madness. Here are enumerated working definitions of these vague, frequently contested, but terribly important terms.

Sanity

• Sensible. Perceptions largely match reality as indicated by observation or objective tests. That is, what is reported as seen, or heard, can be validated. “Making sense” of the world.
• Factual. True events form the basis of beliefs, and beliefs can be tracked back to facts. Thinking is well-grounded in reality; thus, basic beliefs are valid.
• Reasonable. Thinking is logical—conclusions follow from premises. Reasoning is sound. Events are rationally matched with accepted standards—what should be happening. Expectations and decisions largely fall within manageable limits—living a “reasonable” life. Comfortably adapting to preferences and choices of others, adjusting to situations—a “reasonable” person.
• Correlational and Causal. Savvy—shrewdly attuned to co-occurrences. Understands that things which happen together are often related, and that those relationships might be important. Understands that causes have effects, and that effects follow causes—a solid, generative sense of how reality works. (Rather than conceiving of things happening by themselves, mysteriously, “for no reason”).
• Goal-Referenced. Observing, thinking, and behaving are normally aimed at accomplishing something relevant to needs and interests. Competent at linking means to ends. (Not, in other words, leading an aimless, wasteful life, ending up confused, impoverished, and dependent. Homeless.)
• Survival-Oriented. Decisions and actions are aimed consistently towards surviving and thriving. Sensible risk-taking. “Healthy” in outlook and lifestyle. (Negligible self-defeat.)
• Character. A smoothly integrated set of personal qualities which are highly admired by others (such as honesty), and which result in task competence and project success (such as hard work and follow-through). Of “good character”; having “strength of character”.
• Broad Compassion. Reasonably thoughtful consideration for the needs of others—family, as well as neighbors, the nation, the world. Caring. (Members of the human community have reciprocal effects on each other, thus broad compassion contributes to survival and prosperity, rather than generating interpersonal conflict, then loss, injury, or even death, and, potentially, mutual destruction.)
• Self-Regulation. Self-awareness and self-management. Maintaining emotions under good control, so that passions, however much appreciated, serve purposes and actions (rather than derailing them, or in some other way contributing to explosive, or corrosive, self-defeat).
• Coherence. The personality is unified; almost all elements are aligned with preferences and necessities within a focused and successful system. Abilities and interests are identified, then capably matched to available options. Effort is normally followed by satisfaction. The personality “works”. Any disorganization is merely a phase of creative development.
• Positive Outlook—Cheerful and Hopeful. Persistent tendency to look on the bright side of self and situations, and to generate the energy, discipline, and creativity necessary to survive and thrive within a broad range of shifting, demanding conditions. (Think Mary Poppins, or Paul McCartney, or even Falstaff . . . or what you will.)
• Sense of Humor. And finally . . . sometimes things just don’t go right, no matter what you do. So . . . you have to laugh. A sense of humor is the safety net under the high wire of life.

(Obviously, or otherwise, all the above characteristics are not necessary, in equal measure, to qualify for sanity. The concept of sanity forms a matrix of characteristics and degrees. Strengths in some areas can compensate for limitations in other areas. However, a sufficient number of lacunae does begin to segue personality into that infamous . . . Dark Side.)

Madness

• Senselessness. Perceptions, however colorful, or vividly convincing, are questionable, often amounting to hallucinations. To a surprising, and alarming, degree, individuals appear to have “taken leave of their senses”—their perception appears to have detached itself from reality. In other words, reality-contact is loose—catch-as-catch-can. Such people are like sailors in a small lifeboat in a large sea, seeking the nearby shore, while not seeing it.
• Facts Are Rather Irrelevant, Aren’t They? Facts are so boring. And it’s so much trouble to find them. What a burden it is to have to test ideas against observations! Much easier, and more appealing, are sheer wishes, and wild guesses. If it’s not quite true, so what? “Close enough for government work”, right?
• Reason Is Purely a Prison. Premises don’t have to lead anywhere, do they? And why do conclusions have to be based on valid premises? Aren’t opinions just floating in mid-air perfectly all right? Why does everything have to mean something? The great privilege of life is thinking which is unstructured—wildly detached from meaning. Why is it that concepts are “Born free and everywhere found in chains” (to paraphrase Rousseau)?
• Not Only Is Correlation Not Quite Causality, It’s Not Even Interesting. Things just happen, okay? There are lots of coincidences around, and that doesn’t mean a thing. Some events occur together—so what? You could spend your whole life trying to figure out what causes what, and never get anywhere, ending up, over and over, right back at Square One. Who wants that? Just breeze on through the information. Impressions are all you need.
• Goals Are for Pitiful Simpletons. Just live! That’s the secret. The destination is irrelevant. The journey is everything. And if you don’t end up anywhere, what of it? There was no place to go to begin with. Why not stay right where you are, doing nothing, forever?
• Survival Simply Arrives, or is Impossible. It’s not entirely clear how to survive, or thrive. It seems like they happen all by themselves, or they don’t—a coin toss, a roll of the dice. Perhaps if one understood causality better, grasped the link between means and ends, the way would be clearer. But it all seems so obscure. And maybe it’s not important anyway. Hmm.
• What a Character! People with “good character” are so boring. Do they ever get invited to parties? Are they wild? Do they have any pizzazz? Do they show up in bestsellers? Movies? Sure, they’re reliable, and trustworthy. But aren’t murderers and thieves much more interesting? (Hey, wait a minute . . . who took my wallet?)
• Compassion Is So Yesterday. As the bandit Calvera said, “If God didn’t want them sheared, He would not have made them sheep”. What life is about is seeing who can be taken advantage of. If they complain, just, uh . . . move them aside. (Of course, it depends on the odds. Wouldn’t do to try to take advantage of someone, you know, powerful and merciless.)
• Self-Regulation Is a Sickness. The only way to play life is fast and loose. If you have an impulse—act on it now! Sure, hindsight may show it was foolish and self-destructive. But who cares? Emotionally edgy is the best way to exist. What matters if you go over the edge?
• Incoherence Is Stylish. Everyone wants to be in step with the latest trends. And the latest craze is (don’t wait for it!)—completely pointless and disorganized lifestyles! If you prefer Michelangelo to Jackson Pollock, you need help. And if you take pride in following the rules, and doing the right thing, it may be too late for you already. Simply take all your assets and . . . scatter them to the wind!
• Look on the Dark Side of Life. What’s the further realm beyond happiness? Total misery! How cool! If you are happy, you obviously don’t understand life. You’re naïve and unsophisticated. You’re simply not spending enough time watching horror movies, checking the news, hating people who are different than you, sending death threats to politicians, or reading Dostoevsky. Godot is not coming today. Or ever.
• Go Ahead—Laugh at the Comedians. The Chinese aren’t laughing, and look how well they’re doing. Life is full of failure. If you don’t think so, just remember what you did last week. Life is, let’s face it, a trackless waste under a burning sky. Nothing funny about that. The only credible reaction to any disappointment is deep grief. Then fear. Then paralysis. Go for it.

The Parable of the Jokes

Rumor has it that the oracular philosopher Wittgenstein once said something to the effect that, “The deepest wisdom lies in jokes”. You have probably noticed that the above contrast between sanity and madness is a mirror of the contrast between the comedy duo of the straight-man (normally serious, totally plugged into reality) and the gag-man, (almost never serious, constantly in search of any shadow of feasible reality, which forever seems to be down a road which can’t be traveled, or around a corner which can’t be turned, or on the other side of a glittering open door, which ends up being a mirror).

For example, in the sitcom Seinfeld, Jerry normally plays the fair-minded, level-headed straight-man, living responsibly, and George almost always plays the narcissistic, histrionic, paranoid gag-man, looking for the easy, slick way to the top, discovering over and over that the funicular railcar he’s trying to ride hasn’t worked in years. It’s funny to watch, but we have no trouble understanding why Jerry has a job, a comfy apartment, and a parade of girlfriends, while George has . . . nothing.

An irony about George, relative to sanity, and partly what makes him so amusing in his sitcom, is that one of the things he doesn’t have is a sense of humor. Every molehill is a mountain. Anyone minding their own business is a potential assassin, just waiting for the right moment to strike. Every piece of bad luck is a near-death experience. Thus, he has no psychological buffer between disappointment and mood, which makes life hard.

The Media Paradox

Media could be defined broadly as all those sources of information, other than straight instructions and formal announcements, which purport to enlighten and entertain the public, for example—newspapers, news shows, magazines, novels, documentaries, movies, plays, video dramas, and comedy routines. It seems to be attitudinal coin of the realm within the public that, yes, the public exposes itself to media, but is not controlled by, or unduly influenced by, or, God forbid, shaped by the media. The public appears fond of the conceit that it makes up its own mind completely apart from the narratives in which it is immersed.

But is that so?

An immense tradition of behavioral research has shown convincingly that modeling (providing vivid examples) is typically the most powerful way to generate imitation. The media, in the most general sense, could be looked at as a vast, encompassing panorama of modeling, from the croissants and the dreadful news in the morning, to the sandwiches and dystopian novels at lunch, to the popcorn and the horror movies in the evening. And much of that information, if it may be so dignified, is essentially madness, in the sense of radically improbable, useless, and dangerous, but often, also, of course, quite colorful, electrifying, and fascinating (we’re looking at you, Jack the Ripper). One could argue, should one be so disposed, that the media largely derive their fortunes from madness.

Thus, the paradox of the media is that they purport to harmlessly entertain us, or usefully inform us, while lamenting the madness and violence they describe. Yet, conceivably, it is the media themselves, via modeling, which are generating the substantial cultural disorders, and the subsequent societal disturbances—the violent madness—which we see all around us.

Possibly . . . a subtle, world-wide tragedy.

Joseph Goebbels just doesn’t get the credit he deserves. Within a remarkably short time the information free-for-all that was the Weimar Republic became the real news blackout that was the pride of the Third Reich publicity machine. It’s an irony that Dr. Goebbels took his genius for marketing totalitarianism, and the personality cult of the leader, from the Land of the Free—from New York, from Madison Avenue, from the Mad Men, from the discoverer of the principle, and profession, of public relations, Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, ringmaster of the dark unconscious.

Thereby . . . flamboyantly trigger the deepest emotions of fear and desire until behavior is channeled in the preferred direction. Tolerate few to no problematic facts. Propagate propaganda. Fabricate your own truth, your own opera, your own world.

When the Allies rolled into Germany at the end of WWII, they incredulously asked the population why they allowed the horrible things to go on in the Third Reich which had occurred. The consistent answer was, “We didn’t know”.

Too, too close to what goes on today! (Isn’t it?) Not good for cultural health! (Is it?) Well, any shafts of light in the current doomsday scenario? Assuredly.

Sane Media

To all appearances, it’s a rare information maven who regularly reads the Singapore daily news, The Straits Times. Which is a shame. Because it might be the world’s best newspaper.

Happenstance? Perhaps.

But consider that the top spot in the PISA international rankings on tests of high school students’ mastery of mathematics, science, and reading consistently goes to Singapore. As the OECD remarked, “Singapore is one of the very few countries in PISA that shows consistent improvement over time; this is even more remarkable in light of the fact that Singapore is one of the highest-performing countries in PISA.”

The most intelligentpeople on the planet? Perhaps.

(After all, how many countries are smart enough to have a drink named after themselves? The cultural soul of Singapore is the storied Raffles Hotel, and the beating heart of Raffles is its Writers Bar. Few hotels canonize, so charmingly, such a sophisticated cadre as literary people. The very next time you’re in the Writers Bar, may you raise high a . . . Singapore Sling!)

In any case . . . The Straits Times is a master class in how to run a country, how to think, and how to report on national, regional, and world events. They know exactly how to do it, with boldness as well as prudence.

Perfectly aware, they are (as Yoda might say), that the media set the tone of what goes on in the streets, in the schools, in the corporations, in the government. The fascinating overall premise of the Strait’s Rebel Alliance, a deep principle of these Asian Jedi Knights, is that . . . the Singaporean public is in conscious control of the Singaporean social systems! The Straits Alliance is not the slave of any sort of Darth Vader Empire! That is . . . the public is master of its systems. The systems are not masters of the public.

Social Principles. Citizens’ primary identity should be as Singaporeans. And their primary allegiance should be to the nation as a whole. Subgroup identities, as drawn from ethnic, religious, and racial groups—which can be extremely problematic—should be secondary. Principles of governance which benefit all citizens should be endorsed by everyone. Therefore, small, wealthy pressure groups, or belligerent fanatics, should have negligible impact on government decisions. Interactions among citizens and politicians should remain respectful, to encourage open-ended thinking and goal-oriented dialog. Social harmony, and personal safety, are essential for national survival. To achieve that, all Singaporeans must willingly obey the laws of their land. They are, after all, the determiners of the laws.

An outstanding educational system, emphasizing logic and mathematics, and including AI, is the basis of national strength and security, and must be encouraged resolutely. Business, engineering, and international trade must be supported robustly. Government, business, and unions must cooperate towards everyone’s prosperity. In addition, money must be provided for festivals and cultural events, to make Singapore a beautiful and interesting place in which to live—a place, “Where the spirit thrives”, according to the prime minister.

Media Principles. News outlets should remain aware of national goals and priorities, and should accept as their chief responsibility keeping citizens appraised of problems and solutions in relation to national concerns. “The news” is thus linked to national goals. The media always should hold public officials accountable for measurable achievement in reaching broadly endorsed national goals. Campaign promises (and possible excuses) are only the beginning.

Singapore citizens, on their side, should not allow themselves to be distracted by flashy trivia, or temporary, emotionally-driven crises. Citizens are responsible for keeping informed about critical matters, for voting sensibly and helpfully, and for staying engaged with critical issues so they can support the politicians fighting on their behalf.

The watchman of the Lion City is wisdom (not madness). Good information guides good decision-making. Any aspect of the social system which is obviously not working . . . can be improved. The national handmaiden of dignified, intelligent socioeconomic goal-seeking and problem-solving is The Straits Times. Therefore, it is financially supported by the nation.

Singapore, the Lion City, and its newspaper, just might be a model for civilization.

The Mysterious Affair at Baskervilles

To some extent, critics today are mystified by the enduring popularity of the stately, procedural, conventional murder mysteries of Dame Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, where there is hardly a scream in the night or a drop of visible blood. Indeed, the murders usually occur off-stage. “Oh, Mr. Holmes, you must help me! I believe my father has been murdered!”—that sort of thing, which launches Holmes and Dr. Watson off on a twisted trail of clues stretching from 221b Baker Street, to a carriage, to a train, to a country manor house, and finally to a desolate, spooky moor, where a howling dog is heard, pointing towards one suspect, or a dog isn’t heard at all, pointing towards another suspect.

It’s possible that what the public likes, and has always liked, about these cozy British mysteries is exactly their air of resolute sanity—the idea that murder should be a rare and isolated affair, and that sincere individuals, dedicated to the welfare of all, employing little more than courtesy, patience, and reason (someone like ourselves), should be able to untangle the mystery, bringing the miscreant to well-deserved justice, and restoring the world to comfort and safety. That is . . . the best-selling murder mysteries in history are about systematic rationality returning society to sanity.

Sherlock Holmes—honest, brave, generous, meticulously observant, and brilliantly rational, the most esteemed character in all of fiction—could be seen as a model for a sane humanity.

The Freedom Conundrum

Freedom seems to be one of those terms, like love, or fresh air, which has no enemies, only friends, and is given a free pass, a persuasive carte blanche, wherever it shows up. Indeed, to question the sanctity of the concept of freedom is to raise ugly questions about one’s patriotism, or even one’s, well . . . sanity.

However, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, untrammeled freedom perhaps can be characterized as one of those dreaded . . . dualities. The usual meaning of freedom is justified autonomy—liberation from exploitive control, as well as assertion of the right to do as one wishes without interference.

So far, so good. Possibly.

Yet, even the scantiest of critical thinking quickly reveals the contradiction inherent in the concept. One person’s right to park where they want is a violation of another person’s right to not lose access to a paid parking space. One person’s right to drop out of high school is a violation of another person’s right to live in a society populated by competent, educated neighbors and employees. One person’s freedom to play music at full volume is a violation of another person’s right to a peaceful atmosphere, free from raucous, loud music (one person’s “That’s Amore” is another person’s . . . “Anvil Chorus”).

Freedom, thus, more often than many of its beneficiaries and advocates, its licensees, would like to admit, is a zero-sum game—one party’s gain is another party’s loss. That is a system phenomenon, and political freedom always exists in a social system. The relationship among components is reciprocal—a gain in one section of a system usually results in a loss in a corresponding section of the system. It’s like a budget—adding money to the police budget takes money away from the hospitals, or the schools. In other words, freedom is not the unalloyed benefit it purports to be . . . it’s a tradeoff.

Therefore, a sage and fair assessment of the concept of freedom requires a balanced review of needs and options, duties and rights, individuals and society, so that the freedoms allocated to one section of society are matched, more or less, by freedoms allocated to another section of society. Otherwise, unfettered freedom becomes a prescription for chaos—in the streets, in the neighborhoods, in the schools, in the government and international relations. That chaos invites, as Nietzsche pointed out, the seizing of control by the cleverest and most ruthless individuals (often society’s resentful outliers)—iron will rising to vengeful power.

The Sanity Framework

The madness inherent in the obsession with unrestricted freedom is that many, many systems function superbly exactly because of their principled consistency. To wit:

Sports have rules, and governing bodies. Players are expected to follow the rules, and teams are expected to respect the governing bodies. All players wear the same uniform, follow the same training regimen, do what the coach says, and try to win together. Does anything else make sense?

Imagine, by mad contrast, if on the first day of practice, a coach said, “People . . . you have the right to play just as you choose. Wear the clothing which best expresses your personality. Come late to practice, or don’t come at all. Curse me out if you don’t like what I say. Send me death threats. Blow up my car. After all . . . you’re completely free.”

A bit like the daily news, right? Wouldn’t work. Doesn’t work. Madness.

Commercial organizations operate under constraints similar to sports teams. Businesses operate on a schedule, and for them to function, employees must show up punctually, and work productively until quitting time. Grooming guidelines aim at pleasing customers, and creating a positive appearance for the organization, so violations are corrected. Employees are expected to get along with each other, and to follow supervisors’ directions. Performance is measured and compared to standards. High performers are promoted, and low performers are counseled, and may be dismissed. That’s how the organization survives, and profits. Commercial organizations, themselves, are perfectly sane.

Imagine, by mad contrast, if at the Monday morning meeting in the conference room, by the rubber plants, the coffee pot, and the cinnamon coffee cakes, a manager said, “People . . . Come to work when you feel like it, do what you want while you’re here, and leave when the mood strikes you. Board shorts, halter tops, whatever. If the customers think it’s unprofessional attire, the heck with them. Who wants to hear their complaints? And if you don’t like your coworkers, tell them off—get that anger off your chest. Now, I’m an authority, and I know how you feel about authorities—you hate them, and don’t trust them—so don’t listen to me.”

The searing irony here is that the public, on its own dime, is continuously encouraged to embrace and act out such madness. There are two spectacular reasons for that.

First, it’s what the public wants to hear! People love hearing that they can do whatever they please, and no one has a right to tell them any different. They will pay to hear that!

Second, the business world, which is the 800-pound gorilla of modern life, can make money—lots of money—by selling to the public this dodgy ideology via movies, shows, songs, books, and other mercantile products in what amounts to—dare one say it?—cultural brainwashing. Thereupon . . . not complying with legitimate systems and their appointed authorities almost becomes a societal badge of honor, a rite of passage from a self-indulgent childhood to a self-indulgent adulthood . . . a passport to nations going over the edge.

In court actions, dealing with byzantine explanations for bizarre behavior provided by individuals, families, attorneys, expert witnesses, or journalists, the incredulous, common-sense question in judges’ chambers is often: “How in heaven’s name did this person get this way?” Read on.

Encapsulation

Precise, cautiously phrased enumeration of category features, say, twelve of them, may be useful for those occasions in which you get embroiled in a sticky-wicket lunch-time debate over psychosocial definitions in the faculty lounge. But perhaps something a little loose, a little general, a little intuitive, and reasonably compact would be useful. So, here is an attempt at a conceptual summation of the sanity-madness issue:

Sanity. Essentially . . . grasping what reality is made of, how it works, and how to reliably meet needs in dealing with it. The practical wisdom which results in a sense of purpose, competence, confidence, a reasonably serene mood, and, thereby, adequate success in living.

Madness. Essentially . . . not maintaining a sufficient understanding of what reality is, or how it works, and thus, how to reliably meet needs. A severe compromise in sensibility can result in unmanageable problems in living—fearfulness, sadness, disorganization, conflicts, and dangerousness. In madness, out-of-control emotions and dysfunctional behaviors are justified on the basis of what are patently false perceptions and cognitions. Confused rationales lead to ineffective behaviors. Then social disorder. Then the strange fascination of . . . shared danger.

Sanity-Madness Boundary. Essentially . . . the point at which survival is clearly threatened due to insufficient reality-contact (poor information), and fallacious reasoning. (Global warming, anyone?)

Application

The seductive myth abounding in the zeitgeist is that a rational society is not only boring but crippling. The fantasy is that galvanizing, addictive magic will raise all boats, rescue all swimmers, call forth glorious sunshine, and generate blooming growth in everyone.

Not so.

When people look at art, for example, they typically entertain the illusion that it happens easily, almost by itself, especially if they watch a good sketch artist or painter at work, slashing a pencil or splashing colors here and there, then presto—a fabulous picture materializes! People are often stunned to discover that “art schools” not only exist (who knew?), but that becoming an artist calls for years and years of meticulous development, starting with the absolute most basic of issues, such as seeing colors, holding a pencil, or drawing a line.

That is, becoming an excellent artist is not magic, despite appearances.

It’s the same with skiing. Watch a great skier zigzag down the slopes and they make it look as easy as falling off a log. Almost everyone who tries it is shocked to put on skis, then immediately fall over. Then not be able to get up. What happened?

Welcome to reality

As with art, and skiing, and many other human skills, so it is with the brain. Gracious, attentive, composed, well-informed, successful people make it look easy, natural, as if they just got bigger every year, and, upon reaching majority, rolled effortlessly into some kind of social aristocracy, arriving at a high-paying niche through a lucky cast of the dice, via private, vaguely secret, incantations.

Of course . . . it doesn’t work that way.

For example, Canada’s Leonard Cohen was a highly accomplished, world-famous poet, novelist, songwriter, and singer. His long-term, bohemian love affair on the Greek island of Hydra with Marianne Ihlen, about whom he wrote “So Long, Marianne”, has become the stuff of legend. His epochal “Hallelujah” is one of the most recorded songs of all time.

Numerous stories about Cohen implied that he was poor, a drifter, really, and needed to make money. Therefore, he straightaway wrote some poetry books, then some novels, then some songs, and then decided to become a folk singer. Boom! Money poured in. A creative career not too different from stopping by Starbucks for a latte when the need arose?

Not quite.

Michael Posner’s biography, Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories: The Early Years, makes it clear that Cohen was always interested in writing, craved the status of writer, wrote poetry and stories from a very early age, learned the guitar when young, performed almost every chance he got for years, earned a BA in literature from Montreal’s esteemed McGill University, and spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours laboriously discussing poetry, writing, and songwriting with poets and professors. His distinguished career was absolutely the result of the most conscious, intensive, professional kind of dedication.

So it is with sanity. It’s a fantasy to think that it just happens, in the absence of a rational framework and a causal process, that being, normally—family affection, careful guidance, educational nurturance, healthy nutrition, exercise, plenty of sleep, and the conscious adoption of sound principles of thinking, feeling, and action.

Madness, too, tragically, has its rationales and its causal process—chaotic upbringing, neglect, abuse, poor education, poor nutrition, and subsequent immersion in self-destructive ideologies, impulsive companions, and lethal lifestyles in a fruitless search for connection, meaning, and satisfaction. It’s all too clear at this point, in the downward cultural arc, that individuals easily can become trapped in an echo chamber of false beliefs, unhappiness, rage, and paranoid aggression. That, then, can lead to violent collisions with societies, with the world.

Sanity vs. Madness Templates

I know what you’re saying: “So, what do we do?”

Well, as a working proposal for individuals, parents, teachers, as well as governments and media, should they be of a mind to shape sanity in the populace, the twelve items in the above sanity list can serve as goals to be achieved, and the twelve items in the above madness list can serve as dangers to be avoided. The technique is to look at the principle, consider it a guideline—to do (positive), or not to do (negative)—then follow the guideline.

For example, the first item on the sanity list is Sensible. The positive guideline, then, is, first, to carefully observe the world around you, and note perceptual features—shapes, colors, textures, sounds, and odors. That is, create for yourself a truthful, multi-sensory description of your environment. This anchors you, in a very fundamental way, to reality. Update it as you go along, so your image of your world remains accurate. These are the conditions of your life.

Second, validate statements (language) you come across by comparing them to sensory reality. Do they compute? Are they accurate? This is probably the keystone of sanity—soundly linking language to tangible objects, events, and people. Language is your main map of the conditions of your life, so you want to make sure linguistic descriptions are correct. (In legal parlance, this process goes by the name of tests, which check for evidence.)

By contrast, the first item on the madness list is Senselessness. The negative guideline—what not to do—is not to detach yourself from sensory reality, not just to dismiss tangible stimuli as irrelevant, or carelessly negotiable.

Staying “in touch” with what’s around us, with the “real world”, helps prevent us all from getting lost in some ideological and emotional chimera. Then going off the deep end of life . . . in a regrettable blaze of . . . unglory.

And Now, a Few Minutes with Aristotle

“I count him braver who overcomes his desires
Than him who conquers his enemies,
For the hardest victory is over self”
- Aristotle

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Steve Davidson is a clinical psychologist in Laguna Beach, California, and a contributing editor to The Montreal Review. He has developed a new theory of personality and psychotherapy called human operations. It conceives of people as goal-oriented systems aimed at surviving and thriving, as described in his book An Introduction to Human Operations Psychotherapy.

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