truth and insanity

Insanity by x-your-suicide-rose

As everyone who has ever taken a philosophy class in their life probably knows, there is no set 'truth'. I guess it's been talked about again and again -- What is truth? How do we know what we believe is 'true'? Does the truth even exist? Do we influence reality or is reality independent of our perception? If it is dependent on our perception, how can anything be 'true'?

This then leads to my second thought... how can we tell if someone is insane? If there is no known truth, their perception of the world may very well be just as legitimate as ours. For example, take the person who hears voices. For all we know, they could actually be ghost whisperers, able to hear the voices of the dead. If this is so, is it not possible that the person's perception of the world is actually more accurate than the person who does not hear voices? They are able to perceive things that we cannot -- if there is a set reality and 'truth', independent of our perception of the world, it is very possible that they could be experiencing more of it than we are, right? After all, there is no scientific disproof of the existence of spirits. It's just one example, but it could be anything. Anyway, one example like this makes it possible for us to consider the possibilities...

We cannot prove who is right -- we only judge based on what is normal. But as we have learned from the past, what is accepted as true and 'normal' may turn out to be incorrect. Interestingly though, those who go against the norms always seem to be put down or regarded as foolish or indeed, insane. Take Galileo, the father of modern astronomy. When he first proposed that the earth revolved around the sun as opposed to Copernicus' accepted theory at the time that everything revolved around the earth, the church threw a fit and put him under house arrest for several years. Is it not possible then, that these 'insane' people with 'mental issues' that are placed in asylums today are seeing a greater truth? I'm not saying that they are, I'm just saying that the possibility exists.

Insanity is a strange subject actually. You can never really tell if you're insane, since a requirement is for you to fully believe everything you think -- it's not a label you decide for yourself, but a label others put on you if you are deemed to be too unique or different from the conventional way of thinking. You can never say that you ARE sane, because that just goes against you once everyone else is firmly set on the idea that you are insane. It seems to me that psychiatrists and psychologists work a lot with 'mentally unwell' people, but what's to say that it's a defect at all? Is it not slightly prejudiced to label those who have different thought patterns as insane? Who decides how our minds are supposed to be?

Having said that, many still don't regard psychology to be a real science. It's a developing study, and not a lot is known about the brain or how it works. This of course has led to many horror movies and games about mental asylums (try Asylum626. warning it's R18, you have to enter birthdate respectively. and it's only playable between 6pm and 6am.) No one really knows what goes on in asylums, and no one really knows what's going on inside an insane person's head. Is this just fear of the unknown?

Don't get me wrong, psychopathy is fucking scary from the perspective of the 'sane' man, probably due to its obvious clash with the moral codes ingrained in us (up to debate whether they are learnt and imposed on us by society or part of our being), but I just found myself wondering some things. Interesting to think about, I hope.

Yes I did watch Shutter Island recently btw.