31–05–2023
Stealing glances from people on the subway in Japan, the lone travelers all hold the same neutral expression. Relaxed eyes with heavy lids that shade their vision as they glance down at their mobile devices. Despite the shared public neutrality, I can generally recognize the facial inflections hidden behind drapes, curtains, and doorways.
The slightest shift in the brow, the tensed facial muscles, the elevation of the head tilt can define the subsequent plot that follows. Obviously, the easiest expressions hold a great majority of the common feelings: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. When mixed emotions come into play, I find it harder to distinguish, however, anger is the one that never falters to be identified.
I have a distaste for the infectious nature of emotions. And when anger is most easily identified, the response of fear and subsequent anger is almost guaranteed. It’s pitiful to sit in fear and anger, so, through years of experimentation, I have found that public neutrality is the only valid and effective countermeasure; except this time it is less public and just becomes general neutrality. It seems that happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust in response to the initial anger are synonymous with grass-type Pokemon in battle with fire types: general disadvantage. Additionally, when a power hierarchy is introduced, the analogy is furthered, with a wild level 10 Bulbasaur fighting Blue’s level 100 Charzard — a stats disadvantage and plot armour only means a guaranteed defeat.
Silence is a paramount feature of this strategy and the suppression of anything that is reflexive. For coping, this is highly effective, but there are certain byproducts that must be accepted: accepting immediate defeat in forfeiting at the start, accepting slander that may or may not be true, and accepting the emotional void and conditional vow of silence. For some, depending on their moral thresholds, the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages, but, here, morality is no longer in question and survival is the instinct at play. Just wait it out.
In reflection, a thought appeared: how much can a synthetic blackhole absorb? The only genuine concern that I would personally hold is losing control. It seems rather counterintuitive that the methodology used to gain full control might have the ability to accomplish the opposite, but according to the stories that I hear, people can just reach a breaking point. This could be fully fictional but is something to explore all the same.
I recently learned that the term “Mad Hatter” came into existence, historically, from the hat-making process that was used. To create the hat shapes that were popular, at the time, hatters would use mercury. Hatters used their hands to make these hats and, resultantly, the mercury would seep into their bodies through their hands slowly poisoning them and causing them to go “mad”. So essentially, going mad as a hatter was a physical external poisoning that would cause a shift in their behaviour.
I have an aunt that is in a mental health institution. From what I heard about it, it sounds like a more acceptable asylum. She is not allowed to do most things freely and visiting her or taking her out for food, from what I heard, sounded like the process that I would imagine visiting prison inmates are like. I do not know the specifics of her condition because there is a general feeling within the previous generation of my family that knowing less is better. I think this is just denial and ignorance to make them feel better about themselves regarding the vast contrast between her life to their own. All I have been able to glean and have been told is that she has a mental disorder that makes her the mental age of a teenager. She was not born this way and developed this in her life. I do not think she is insane, but the world sees differences as disorders.
Of course, given the breadth of mental health, the accompanying disorders are immensely vast and ungeneralizable. There are conditions that are more severe than others so having an opinion on this would not be valid. However, I wonder if the thoughts are seen as normal by those with the disorder. And I can’t imagine how frustrating it would be told that you are not normal even though every mental spark may feel just as “right” as what my mind is thinking at this moment. Living in a world that misunderstands you seems rather lonely.
I want to understand the mind of someone that is “insane”. Someone that is born into madness and someone that descends into it. Are people cognisant of the process or is it so subtle that you are unable to detect it? Or does your brain altogether work against you so that you are convinced there is nothing wrong?
Would you rather be born mad or become mad? I think this is similar to the question of whether you would rather be born blind or become blind later in life. For vision, there is the argument of having the experience of seeing, so there is understanding and memory post-vision. The counter-argument for being born with sight would be that you would experience a loss of something that you previously had — you are not able to miss something that you never had. Despite this, people can still mourn the loss of the idea of something all the same. I think that for cognitive thinking, things get a little bit more complex. If you were to descend into madness, would the brain be able to register that there was a mental shift and thus any loss at all? Without knowing there was a loss of anything personally, it becomes more of an issue of how the world would perceive you.
There is less pity that the world affords you if you were born with a disorder than if you had a “normal” life previously. The loss then becomes a public loss even though the main character may not recognize the loss. Some would like to call it empathy, but, given the assumed circumstances, the true nature is sympathy.
As a personally perceived sane person, I think I would rather be born mad. I would not want the world to mourn in my place for it’s not their loss to mourn. Without knowing the loss, would it be a loss? For this, my thoughts float to Alzheimer’s —it’s a disease that hurts the surroundings more than the one with the diagnosis. Like they say: “Ignorance is bliss”, “What you don’t know won’t hurt you”.
Lately, I have experienced, what I would imagine to be, a slow grazing over the edge. The potential cognition is a curse. It’s not a foreign metal that is seeping into my body, but I do feel like I am being poisoned all the same. The thing is that I can’t seem to see where the cliff is so I am unable to gauge how much more affordance I have. I may be just being dramatic but sometimes I think it wouldn’t be so bad to be fully bonkers.
