THE NATURAL SENSE OF "MADNESS" IN THE MODERN WORLD

Around 1895 Freud began publishing his ideas about psychotherapy and the unconscious mind. The idea that feelings and thoughts of which we are not aware determine so much of our lives was counter-intuitive. Eventually many educated people acknowledged the truth and importance of Freud’s insights into human nature. These were expanded upon by Jung and Reich, the latter emphasizing the importance of body as well as mind.  At the same time as psychotherapy upended the belief that the rational mind was in charge, we have had new developments in physics that revealed the world to be not what common sense tells us. Quantum theory and the uncertainty principle told us we can not simultaneously be precise about where something is and about how it’s moving. String theory tells us there’s not just one world - that there are likely many simultaneous “worlds” and that what we see is kind of an illusion. Then we have the developments of technology, so many changes in transportation, the ubiquity of computers, the internet’s astonishing growth over barely 30 years from 1% of telecommunication in 1993 to 97% by 2007! Culturally we have moved to recognize and remove all sorts of discriminations based on race, color, gender preference, religion, etc. With all these changes, resistance and disorientation is also natural.

In ancient times little changed over the course of 5,000 years.  As the psychotherapist, R.D. Laing noted, “There’s been fantastic changes in the mode of living in the space of even the last 50 years. I doubt if in ancient Egypt in the span of 5,000 years, the mode of living changed as much.”

Isn’t the “insane” pace of these changes totally out of step with the natural pace of evolution of bodies, minds, and cultures?  Isn’t “madness” a natural consequence in a world that changes so much, so fast that it is impossible to be in psychological or physiological harmony with it? So we see people around the whole world, getting and going “mad” - they cannot successfully existentially navigate it. Confusion with anger, grief, and fear underneath are epidemic as much or more so than the spread of Covid pathogens.

One way or another - the breakneck pace of world developments will be slowed - by pandemics, war, climate change, consequences of over-population, governmental incoherence, and corporate indifference to human, animal and ecological suffering.

As Laing says – “We have to reckon that we may have become very disorientated and dis-articulated from the biological and spiritual underpinning of our existence. Our society may have become out of joint with the cosmic pattern.”

Ironically with all these problems, the solutions are right in front of us.

Humans do seem to have the capacity to co-invent solutions alongside their problems.

We can calm the biological and physiological substrate of ourselves – through enlightened education, psychotherapy and the best insights and practices of the traditions of meditation in the East and West.  We can commit to doing everything possible to limit and reverse the effects of climate change. Corporations must commit to more equitably distribute wealth. Politicians and world-leaders must show allegiance to compassionate principles more than to monied-interests - to prioritize their fellow humans, this precious unique planet, and the natural world over profit.

We can and must re-articulate with the biological and spiritual underpinnings of our existence. Of course fundamental in all this is touch, that first and last sense, that underlies our whole spiritual and bodily lives, giving meaning, and playing an essential role in our feeling and being at home in our selves and in this beautiful and challenging world.

R.D. LAING