Mad Is the New Normal

I read this sentence on the internet, just today: “The reality is worse than anyone can imagine.”

I also subscribe to the saying: “In the end, reality always wins.”

You do the math …

This sentence about reality being in fact worse than anyone can imagine, it was under a video from one of those places that used to be called “third world.”

The video was a practical illustration of a possible incompatibility between Western technology, which derives from Western values, and cultures that lacked either—but wanted to avail themselves of both.

And I agreed: the reality is likely worse than anyone can imagine. And maybe describing it isn’t on the fringes of what is sayable anymore. It is way beyond. And trying to do it would make the authorities scratch their heads over whether to put you in jail or in the madhouse. Oh wait, I forgot: they don’t put people in the madhouse anymore. Mad is the new normal.

You wonder why they allow you to say things that were unsayable not long ago? Well, possibly because they have moved way beyond that.

I see two plus one ways to deal with what is—and what is coming.

One way is what the majority of people do, on the “left” and the “right,” a.k.a. “controlled opposition”: Deny what’s really happening.

The second way is: Delve into what’s really happening, and get either killed, jailed, economically destroyed… or go crazy. They are those who, according to Nietzsche, have stared into the abyss long enough for the abyss to stare back. I have seen an example of each category. It’s a sad sight.

Yet there is another way, a third option: Find a framework that lets you look at reality in all its gory details and still see beauty, and not go mad.

This “framework” is of course: Religion. Specifically, a religion that has zero qualms about confronting death and horror, but then also sets a message of hope and love against the horror.

In the words of Jesus:

These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you shall have distress. But have confidence. I have overcome the world.

– John 16:33