Where Does Sanity End and Insanity Begin?

Perhaps the headline for this article is too extreme, but really there is no way around it because it’s difficult to conceptualize, much less to describe, insanity and sanity as a spectrum, and so we cling to some definitive distinction, likely cause this dividing line is so central to the reliability of our own perceived reality. Yet, exempting various forms of hallucination — the direct, confirmable non-existence of something perceived — the line becomes quite blurry.

If we’re to say a person suffers from paranoid delusion because they think the CIA is watching their every move, we have to concede they’re only crazy if they’re wrong. What if the CIA had, on the basis of an error, monitored them once — monitoring people is, after all, something the CIA does. What if they saw technical glitches in some electronic device that are reminiscent of those that might accompany an attempt to hack into it? What amount of possible evidence justifies holding such a suspicion?

What of the political conspiracy theorists? It seems every day I encounter someone, in real life or on social media, that believes that Muslims or marxists or satanists are on their way to take over the world. I’ve heard from friends of friends that COVID-19 was made up to subjugate us. I’ve heard from members of my own family that the protests that followed George Floyd‘s death weren’t held by concerned citizens or racial justice activists, but rather by paid provocateurs and international socialists. It sounds crazy to me, and it’s backed up by evidence so scant I hesitate to call it “evidence.” Yet, I don’t think it quite meets the threshold for insanity.

I’ll use this final example to make my point: I’ve had conversations with a friend who believes the Earth is flat. Immediately, I felt it was a preposterous position to take, and while I don’t think I’ll ever be shaken in my belief of the Earth’s globular form, I did begin to question why I believe it. And I’ve realized that it’s not an overwhelming disparity in evidence between my friend and me that led us to believe the world we inhabit holds one shape or the other. It’s a difference in trust. This friend of mine can listen to the same scientists, be presented the same “proofs,” and walk away with a different conclusion.

If it’s not evidence, as the evidence is more or less the same for both of us — neither of us ever having travelled to space to look down on the shape of the Earth — what leads us to trust or distrust the word of those who have? It does seem like a lot of work, a mass conspiracy does, and to what end? Yet, it wouldn’t be the first time. Sponsored researchers have sought to misinform us on a variety of things: Perhaps most notably was the sugar lobby’s by and large successful efforts to lead the public towards believing sugar isn’t the real culprit behind coronary heart disease. I have personally lived through a mass paradigm shift in society, still in the works today, from one wherein a high fat diet will kill you to one wherein a high sugar diet will kill you. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for men and women in the United States — a handful of Americans will have died from it in the time it takes you to read this article (one every ~37 seconds). If institutions and professionals would lie to us about something as important as this, why would we trust them so easily? Mass manipulation is in no way bound to only life or death situations either, there is now proof that the CIA engaged in strenuous efforts to make American Abstract Expressionist painting “a thing“ (as proof of American creativity and culture during the Cold War), and in places like North Korea, people are told their leaders don’t defecate (though, it’s true, they’re certainly full of sh*t).

The degree to which implicit trust is essential to the functioning of our economy, both of ideas and of goods and services, cannot be overstated. I trust that someone somewhere has ensured the water I’ll drink today is free of toxins, the car I‘ll drive won’t malfunction in a dangerous way, and the house I’ll sleep in won’t collapse on top of me — I’ve gone so far as letting a complete stranger render me unconscious, so another one could cut me open and perform heart surgery on me, all because they held certifications granted to them by a number of other people whom I’ll never even meet. While my certainty that the roof over my head will stay where it is is supported by this implicit trust, many of my beliefs, actionable or otherwise, rest upon that trust as well. With breakfast, I take vitamins and minerals because doctors and scientists have told me it will make me live longer, though I’ve seen no evidence of this first hand, and I believe the trees in my backyard are putting out oxygen for me to breathe, though I’ve never seen that happen either. I believe Einstein proved that time is relative, though I can’t understand the math he used to prove it! History, medicine, engineering, physics, astronomy, archaeology — a hundred different fields — all serving to impart thousands of facts which have been woven into the tapestry of my beliefs, of my conception of reality, and all of it on the basis of implicit trust.

Surely, if, in the science books and shows I enjoyed as a child, they had told me that the world was flat, as they told me with such consistency that it was round, I’d have had no basis on which to disagree with them, and it would’ve developed into a deep-seated belief I’d have a very hard time being disabused of. Had I been alive at the time, would I have laughed off Copernicus when his was one of the first voices in support of heliocentrism, while my friend — prone as he is to embracing outlier opinions that seek to brazenly go against widely accepted beliefs — would have believed him?

Where does the line between paranoia and healthy skepticism lie? What about for reality and irreality? How about sanity and insanity? I wish I had an answer for you, but, alas, the nature of a singular, subjective existence is that objective truth is beyond our grasp. I choose to believe what seems most likely to me, and that involves relying on experts that have for the most part been an invaluable boon to society. At some level, I choose to trust just cause it seems so much easier — the alternative looks chaotic and unmoored. As for laughing at those who would believe seemingly outlandish things, well, I may be too much of a gullible fool myself for that.