Insanity Romanticized

 Think for a moment of your favorite childhood fairy tale or story, a chronicle that perhaps influenced you throughout your younger years and continues to remain dear to you now. Most likely, the story you are thinking of contains characters that represent both good and evil. The hero represents morality, bravery, and a willingness to learn while the villain often portrays weaknesses such as jealousy, hatred, and wrath. Our hero is a tangible character because he desires that which is good, but also represents someone who must overcome natural hardships and personal weaknesses to triumph over evil. We admire the hero in his weaknesses because it is relatable to us as fallen humans, and we rejoice when our hero is able to overcome his weakness in order to send the story into the longed for happy ending. What do we do with the relationship between ourselves and the villain, though? While it may seem quite simple to claim we feel no connection to the villain in the story, we would likely admit, after some thought perhaps, that we at least pity if not somehow relate to the opposition of good in the story. In G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, he dedicates an entire chapter entitled The Maniac to this idea of relating to evil and even insanity. Throughout the chapter, Chesterton argues that our desire to connect with evil and/or insanity is because of the lack of responsibility it presents when considering morality, logic, and God, and the seeming presence of an ignorant bliss that is born from an either evil or less than fully stable and functioning mind.

Chesterton begins by defining what he refers to as the “maniac”. He describes such people as men who “believe most in themselves” and therefore should be in lunatic asylums (Chesterton 9). This “belief in oneself” exceeds what we would consider a healthy dosage of self-confidence and spirals into the realms of believing solely in oneself, never considering if they are logically or objectively right or wrong. Chesterton says that “Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness. Believing utterly in one’s self is a hysterical and superstitious belief…” (Chesterton 10). He points out several examples of people who might believe solely in themselves such as an actor who cannot act but continues to  pursue the stage, debtors who refuse to pay their debts, and a drunken poet, highlighting the idea that the lack of an objective mindset is truly debilitating because it causes one to see the world through only their specific point of view. The issue is, this point of view can range from severely flawed to entirely imaginary.

Chesterton transitions from the definition of the maniac into the reason why one might disintegrate into such a mindset. He attributes this disintegration to the wavering idea of sin which used to be viewed as solid fact, “a fact as practical as potatoes” (Chesterton 10). However, he says that modern philosophers and even theologists have begun to dispute the idea of original sin and even deny the idea that sin is fully existent. He illustrates this idea by saying that the easiest way for a man to skin a cat is to deny the very existence of the cat, alluding to the fact that if one can deny the existence of either God or sin, one can thus remove himself from the higher standard of morality that is required when either God or sin is acknowledged. Chesterton describes how this denial of God and sin therefore alters the process of logical thought. “I mean that as all thoughts and theories may be judged by whether they tended to make a man lose his soul, so for our present purpose all modern thoughts and theories may be judged by whether they tend to make a man lose his wits” (Chesterton 11). In short, what once was judged by an idea of central morality is now judged solely by whether or not a man may go insane.  Here readers see the possibility for the collapse of moral intellect which results in the inherent ability to escape from standards of morality. Such an idea may seem appealing at first due to the seeming freedom from standard that is offered, but it is an idea that only leads to further disintegration of intellect and a falling away from not just spiritual morality, but societal laws of common morality.

Chesterton next describes how insanity begins to become attractive. “It is true that some speak lightly and loosely of insanity as in itself attractive,” he writes, “But a moment’s thought will show that if disease is beautiful, it is generally some one else’s (Chesterton 11). He goes on to describe how a blind man may seem beautifully artistic, but points out that the only people who may think such are ones who are able to physically see the blind man. Similarly, if a poet writes a ballad of a mentally insane man, the only audience who is capable of enjoying it is a mentally sane one (Chesterton 11). Here, readers begin to see the idea of insanity, disease, and malfunction being romanticized because it is something unattainable to us that nonetheless remains wildly intriguing. From this idea stems our pity and perhaps even subconscious desire to be like the villain or insane character of the story. The insane, however, do not experience their insanity in the way the sane may believe they do. Chesterton writes that “ Oddities only strike the ordinary. Oddities do not strike odd people” (Chesterton 11). Further, he illustrates this claim with a man who thinks himself to be a chicken or a man who thinks he is a shard of shiny glass. He argues that to both of these men, because they are insane, they do not see their misrepresentation of themselves as odd, intriguing, or artistic. A man who thinks he is a chicken sees himself as no different than the ordinary man because to him, being a chicken is ordinary. Going back to his previous example of the blind man, Chesterton would argue that only a seeing man would view the blind man as intriguingly unusual, for the blind man himself only knows blindness and therefore experiences such as though it were completely normal. “It is only because we see the irony of his idea that we think him even amusing;” Chesterton states, “ It is only because he does not see the irony of his idea that he is put in [the insane asylum] at all (Chesterton 11). He concludes this section of the argument by writing that odd, evil, or insane people are constantly complaining about the dullness of life while the mentally sane are the only ones who are truly able to experience life in the fullest measure of its excitement, imagination, and opportunity (Chesterton 11).

This argument concerning the mentally insane effectively debunks the idea of romanticized insanity and a longing to therefore be insane. While it may offer what seems to be lowered expectations concerning morality and societal behavior, and an escape from reality, Chesterton adamantly assures readers that insanity and evil are nothing to be romanticized and that the sane man is truly a happier man in every respect.