Fine line of Insanity & Genius

Ditto what Libra said.
Also:
Having been at the top of my highschools "columbine list" a few years ago, I understand how frustrating it is to be suspected of that when it's not true. If you aren't troubled in that way then please don't take our concern as distrust or as yet another case of people seeing you as "a freak", because that's honestly not what it is. It's just we've recently seen one of our members who seemed to be at least a reasonably bright young man make a horrible mistake and take a few people with him, and we wouldn't want to see such a waste repeated by another friend.


As for the big to do over the demeanor of your posts so far, I'm not going to presume to get into your head too much. You could be coming from any of several points of view with the statements you've made, and I'm sure that however I labeled it you would feel that I was at least a little bit off-target.
Anyway, what I will say is that there's no need to be anything that you aren't. You can express yourself however you like. You can think what you want. Be whoever you'd like to be. The flip side of all that is that you don't have to be an outsider, eccentric, compulsive, or any of that stuff if thats not really you. If you cast yourself as an insane genius when you honestly think there's nothing wrong with you, all you would be doing then is all you're doing is allowing others to push you around in a way that they really have no ability to do without your cooperation.

Final answer: if you're as grave as you seem to be, just learn to laugh at people. Let them be the wierd ones. "Insanity" can be a self-fulfilling diagnosis. I prefer to think that I'm sane and everybody else is malfunctioning.

Everyones crazy in there own little way.

Does anyone else besides Libra know any insane geniuses?

Edit : Double post

[edit on 103030p://555 by LiquidationOfDiscrepancy]

The fine line between genius and insanity is drawn only by success.

Libra, I know you're just a young punk half my age, but I am in awe of you as it is.

I cannot conceive of what you're gonno be like when you're my age, but maybe my kid can get a job in your administration.

You have voted thelibra for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have two more votes this month.

[edit on 3-5-2005 by Off_The_Street]

I'm not sure what the difference is between genius and madman, but I do know what the difference is between madman and eccentric:

Ten million dollars.

Originally posted by LiquidationOfDiscrepancy
Can anyone point out any "insane geniuses" throughout history?

Here is my insane genius list:
Literary geniuses:
1) Edgar Allen Poe
2) William Shakespeare
3) Voltaire

Women:
1) Cleopatra
2) Marie Curie
3) Queen Elizabeth I
4) Catherine the Great

Scientists:
1) Nichola Tesla
2) Benjamin Franklin
3) Sir Isaac Newton
4) The Wright Brothers
5) Louie Pasteur
6) J. Robert Oppenheimer

Military:
1) Napoleon
2) Hitler
3) Ghengis Khan
4) Julius Caesar

Artists:
1) Van Gogh
2) Salvador Dahli
3) Picasso
5) Monet

Musicians:
1) Mozart
2) Beethoven
3) Richard Wagner

Perhaps genii are more likely to be percieved as insane, despite being quite well, due to the intensity of some thoughts or ideas which may seize one.

I am officially neither, yet I experience moments of both…....don’t we all?

Somewhere I recall Einstine saying that he had a lot of his greatest ideas in moments of complete insanity.

I question the given definition/label of insanity,
To me, insanity is listining to your dog tell you to kill people.

Sanity is the median/mean norm of thought the average guy on the street is capable of comprehending,

So I pose a new word, "OutSane" to be defined as those whose thought process are beyond/outside the normal paramiters of the average. Eg. out of the box thinking. Eg. Tesla and Leedskalnin

I'm not quite sure where to classify the guy running around in boxer shorts - wearing a firemans hat - that can not only recite shakespear, but accurately rattle off theoretical mathmatics (eg. the square root of -1 being i) and things of that nature for a lucid lecture running from 20 minutes to 3 days. as they would not fall under the label of savant.

Christopher Columbus was believed to be insane when he insisted that the world wasn't flat. What was considered insane then is now "normal". Insanity is defined by others and what they believe the norm to be. The reason that geniuses are believed to be "insane" is because their thinking is so advanced that the issues that they contemplate in their heads can not be conceived by others until they are proven facts. Once proven, that insane individual is no longer insane, but rather a genius with advanced thoughts

True, and Quite Sad....

Doesn't that mean that we should listen to the nuts and avoid the "norm"?

Look at Nikolai Tesla, he is coomonly protrayed as a mad scientist, but was in fact on of the leading geniuses of the early 1900's. So contriversial that i started a thread about it:

www.abovetopsecret.com...'

Originally posted by cw034
Christopher Columbus was believed to be insane when he insisted that the world wasn't flat.

Pardon my tangent, but that's one of the many lies we are typically indoctinated with in school, perhaps because its funny and sticks in kids mind. The shape of the earth was already proven. Columbus was actually gambling that the earth was about 1/3 of it's actual size and that therefore the ocean between Europe and Asia was traversible. He was completely wrong. He and his crew would have been lost at sea and never heard from again had he not happened across a new continent so much closer to Europe than his destination.
The rest of your point is sound enough though.

First of all, what is insanity? In the Salem witch trials, people were persecuted for being 'insane'. At other times, 'insane' people were subject to some of the most cruel as the 'evil spirits' were 'exorcised' from them. What do you think exorcism is? In more recent times, insanity has been used an excuse to lock people in mental insitutions, electro-shock them, and load them up on powerful mind-altering drugs.

What is the purpose of insanity, and who is consider insane? Those, who threaten an established order, are insane. Thus, kids, who don't conform to schools dictates are obviously crazy. Those who harbor delusions, not officially endorsed by authorities, threaten the established cults. Those, who are overly angry, might decide to attack the authorities.

Geniuses are those, who introduce new ideas. They see things, which most people don't see. They are able to think for themselves. Their illusions and beliefs don't conform to the official beliefs. Ordinary people just believe in the myths, which are sanctioned. The problem geniuses run into is that, when you don't do what 'ordinary' people are supposed to do, and believe what people are supposed to believe, you cannot functions in society as 'normal' people function. So, geniuses are a threat to the society, and hence insane.

Quote: "Geniuses are those who introduce new ideas. They see things which most people don't see. They are able to Think for themselves."

Yes, I Agree - hence the Persecution!

Originally posted by Eyeofhorus
Look at Nikolai Tesla, he is coomonly protrayed as a mad scientist, but was in fact on of the leading geniuses of the early 1900's. So contriversial that i started a thread about it:

www.abovetopsecret.com...'

Oh I never said Tesla wasn't a genius, he most certainly is, but that doesn't make him any less crazy. I think his psychological disorders actually were beneficial to him inventing.

My concern is how much humanity misses out on when many insane genuises have to force themselves to conform (as much as a mad genuis can) in order to avoid being homeless and broke.

What if these genuises had access to substantial resources with which to explore their unorthodox (and in many cases revolutionary) ideas??

Too bad our education system in the US usually punishes independant thought instead of recognizing it and rewarding it.

I hope to one day to create a soverign nation where such genuis is cultivated and utilized for the advancement of all mankind!



[edit on 10-5-2005 by TruthMagnet]

Should you start your Country, I would like to check it out. That basis should be one Ideal that all societies are based upon.

Are "crazy" people really insane at all?

People who have scizophrenia, bi-polar, or many other "mental diseases," simply see the world in a way that we cannot comprehend.

It is in fact our lack of medical and scientific knowledge that keeps these people imprisoned within thier minds. Maybe, just maybe they are the most misunderstood people in our culture, while at the same time, the most valuable. The brain is something that humans know very little about. And our treatments, like shock therapy, and medication regiments, are meant to surpress these "wild" thoughts. Modern medicine does no justice to the complexity of human thought, because it is easier to just call them crazy, and give them pills. Why not try to study how their brain works? Why not try to understand how they see the world?

[edit on 11-5-2005 by Eyeofhorus]