The versatility of madness

But the brilliance, the versatility of madness is akin to the resourcefulness of water seeping through, over and around a dike.

F. Scott Fitzgerald - Tender is the Night (1934)

There seems to be a division between people who are comfortable with viewpoints which are merely conventional social formulae and those who prefer more nuanced views and have a tendency to see many conventional formulae as misleading or at least questionable.

Familiar enough and hardly surprising because we need conventional formulae as shortcuts to social cohesion. We can’t keep inventing the wheel of ideas. The problem is complexity because social formulae have to be very widely adoptable which inevitably means that they cannot easily evolve the nuances and adaptability demanded by a complex world. Adoptable is not adaptable.

It is tempting to see many current social trends as akin to madness, but madness may be a feature here, not an aberration. What could we have done to avoid the madness? Nothing – there is no formula for avoiding the madness. One solution appears to be the widespread adoption of a formula which may be somewhat crazy but it works, it holds societies together and causes more good than harm. A religion for example.

However, as Christian religions fade away as useful if obviously patchy social formulae we seem to be adopting a monolithic political formula, a totalitarian form of sentimental environmental socialism. This is quite obviously not a formula for avoiding confusion, nonsense and outright madness. It is far too simple, sentimental and too suspicious of reason and analysis.

Again – there is no formula for avoiding madness. If there were it would not be a formula. Socially we may blunder into madness but not out of it. That requires more of an involuntary upheaval such as a revolution, which of course is another form of madness.