Sanity as the Adherence to Standard Reference Points

It's funny, the perception of insanity is often little more than the state of one's mind departing from standard reference points. We see this reflected in statements like "he's gone" "his mind is gone". But we need this ability to dare to depart from the standard reference points, or we'll never have anything but the same cycle of culture we have now. The echo chamber of the blind leading the blind, with no one truly leading. We'll never have genius. And what do they say about that, too? "There is a fine line between genius and insanity." Seems that's because it reflects this same departure. And even the phrase "mental abnormality" or "abnormal psychology" is of course literally nothing more than categorizing things by being uncommon. Yet this sometimes curiously equates in our human minds as suspect, defect. I mean, what does the word "Abnormal" conjure up in your mind? It makes you think of deformed people, the elephant-man, the idiot brain put in Frankenstein, I bet. Perhaps that has something to do with evolutionary programming. There is a stigma about following a path that leads away from the generally known paths, whether large or small. (Culture and "counter-culture") They don't have to be the most mainstream, but they're established and known.

But following a unique path, isn't that something we all sort of crave and wish we were brilliant and heroic enough to do? The fear of negative feedback from others is a powerful force, the social spectrum mercilessly controls us. We feel that if nobody else is doing something, then it's just not something we're supposed to do. And we feel this way despite desperately wanting to be unique or rebel. When someone sets the precedent for something new, usually many others quickly follow, but it takes a long time for that first person to act. They will often quickly be considered crazy, until others catch on.

One good example of this is combat: When you go to war as an individual against society, they call you a terrorist. When you go to war as a substantial group against society, they call you a revolutionary. When you go to war as an entire society against another society, they simply call it war. The perceptions of insanity of course characteristically decrease with each larger group.

It is as with guilt, as I have mentioned before. Guilt usually being a lot - far more based on feedback from others rather than a deeply internalized sense of the right and wrong.

One caveat I have about all of this is that, I feel, we hardly need more people superficially "acting weird" or "different" in society. We have more than enough of people experimenting with literally every new gimmicky thing they can possibly come up with to distinguish themselves, and it is by it's nature shallow and egoistic, and no substitute for real value and love. Culture's constant attempts at finding meaning through shallow experimentation just end up making society more hollow in the end, as such ego ventures only leave a trail of empty, used-up vanity behind. Everything that a person does should be motivated by the pursuit of real value rather than shallow value or ego value or "just trying to be different for the sake of being different". However, the principle remains that people should not feel bound by standard reference points.