Extremes of madness

"Ma ma ma ma mad mad mad"

"Ma ma ma ma mad mad mad"

As Merriam Webster defines it, madness is either the state of being severely mentally ill or extremely foolish behavior. That in itself is too exaggerated. I mean madness can't be that bad. For me madness simply means unexplained behavior and/or haphazard emotions. All of us have had our phases of stupidity, irrelevant decision-making or what we term as "crazy stuff, man!" Those are just glimpses of what madness our brain can actually achieve. There are two extremities of madness. They are- the ‘psychiatrist’ and the ‘psychopath’. Before getting down into the dirt, let me give you Wikipedia definitions of each. Psychopathy is a personality trait or disorder characterized partly by enduring anti-social behavior, a diminished capacity for empathy or remorse, and poor behavioral controls. A psychiatrist specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders.

Too many definitions you say? Don't worry, that was just to setting the premise for the essay. Firstly let's take the side that you people are comfortable with. People with learned degrees in society with an eventful monotonous life are normally considered as model citizens. Psychiatrists are such people who I consider have better control of their emotions. Their study of human emotions makes them immune to the influences that normally emotions have on mankind. They learn about all the functionalities of the brain, which makes them scary and fascinating simultaneously. What's so scary you ask? Let me enlighten you. Good psychiatrists know how each emotion works. From various examples I've seen (though largely from a telly perspective) psychiatrists are capable of converting a feeling of simple infatuation into something like true love or amorous lust. The choice is completely theirs. Besides that, the first thing they learn in psychiatry is that each human is built differently and the same techniques may not work for two different individuals with the same disorder. That's why psychiatrists are always on the learning curve. Each patient of theirs is merely an experiment. And with the government laws as it is they will be exempt from any damage the patient causes unless they do a misdiagnosis which they rarely resort to. It is this power they have that makes them very scary. Due to their hold on emotions they take the Zero end of madness where there is no inexplicable behavior. Everything is calculated. On the surface, this absence of spontaneity may seem boring but for someone with megalomaniac tendencies this is the ultimate source of strength. I mean, to be able to manipulate emotions of others, this has to be the easiest obtainable super power. Period.

On the other hand we have the rejects of the society. The supposed lowlifes that the people think don't deserve to live in the society. The people who are not appreciated for the way their brain functions and instead discarded for their ghastly activities. It's not like they have an alternative option. Their brain initiates this uncontrollable desire that can only be quenched by surrendering to the will of its nefarious mind. This gives them immense relief. The more the desire is appeased the greater the desire grows. This uncontrollable desire can be quelled only by introduction of external forces; which are a rarity in itself. So, most of them end up on the wrong side of the execution chamber. But what interests me the most is how they handle emotions. Normal brains function in such a way that when you logically try to process that data you find so many redundancies and unnecessary emotions that which is not at all beneficial to your growth in any means. All it does is cloud your thinking and fragment your brain. Although time is the greatest defragmenter, it is too slow. In the case of psychopaths, all their emotions are sorted out. There is no wastage of processing power of the brain. All they feel are raw unbounded sentiments along with their crooked sense of righteousness. They exhibit no proof of having any true emotions, all they have is a spurious notion of free will [Don't we all?]. But this particular trait about them allows us to know the true sense of each emotion. Example gratia, we understand the true meaning of compassion only when we observe a psychopath bereft of it. We don't need a Shutter Island-ish secret base to pick each nerve in the human body to check what change that'll produce in the brain. All we have to do is find a psychopath with the right parameters and set him free and observe him. e.g.) a man bereft of sympathy, might most likely harm someone and feel no remorse, at the same time a man with an excessive empathy disorder might be able to relate to any murder victim and feel their last minutes of vivacity. This inexplicable flow of emotions puts them at the infinity end of madness.

Not everyone is lucky to be in the two extremes of madness I just described above. Mere humans like us fall somewhere in between; tangled in a prison of emotions, slaves to our own whims. Most of us can only "strive" to be in the two extremities. We ‘strive’ because that's where all the fun is; the former extremity much easier to achieve than the latter. Sigh!