This is the first chapter of the manuscript version of We Are ALL Innocent by Reason of Insanity, by Kathleen Brugger.
Thomas Jefferson is revered in the United States, in part for his inspiring language in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Noble words, but ones which reveal an astonishing cognitive dissonance in the mind of the man who wrote them. Thomas Jefferson is infamous for being a slave owner. Clearly he could believe in the ideal of liberty and equality for “all men,” yet simultaneously believe that some men could be enslaved and treated unequally because of their skin color.
Today we congratulate ourselves that we’re beyond this kind of confused thinking on race, but most of us still believe in the concept of race itself. We think there really are “Caucasian” and “Asian” and “Black” humans. But, according to the majority of anthropologists, the concept of race exists entirely in our minds; there is only one race, the human race.
Yet this mind-generated reality of separate races has caused enormous suffering for millions of humans through our history, and continues today. People are still killed, imprisoned, and discriminated against because of a completely illusory “reality” that racial categories exist.
Most of us think we perceive reality directly and accurately. That is not true at all. Each of us creates, and lives in, our own individual reality.
A friend of mine shaved off half his moustache one morning, and then walked around all day enjoying people’s reactions. He couldn’t believe how long it took most people to become aware of his half-moustache.
People “saw” him with his moustache intact—entirely missing the reality that half of it was gone—because they were seeing a mind-generated reality, not the objective reality in front of them. When they finally noticed that half his moustache was missing their faces always registered shock (realizing how out of touch with reality they were) before dissolving into laughter.
When I was a teenager my favorite book was “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter,” by Carson McCullers. Not long after I met Arthur, my husband of over thirty years, I went to his apartment and this was one of three books on his desk. But I was surprised when I heard him talk about it, because it sounded like he was describing a completely different book. I told the story of a young girl whose dreams of a creative life were squashed by economic realities. Arthur told the story of a deaf-mute and the people who found in him an outlet to express their frustrations and dreams. One book, but two very separate realities.
Think of the most basic element of any argument: “You’re wrong,” “No, you’re wrong.” From a couple arguing about who forgot to mail the rent check to two nations fighting a war over a disputed boundary, disagreements arise from separate realities in the minds of the participants.
Psychologists tell us that we build mental models of reality which we use to navigate the world. We do not see actual reality, whatever that might be. We see only our mind-generated version of reality, and we erroneously conclude that our model of reality is reality.
What do we call someone who confuses their model of reality with reality itself? We call them delusional. Delusional is just another word for insane.
What better explanation for the human condition than delusional insanity? What better way to explain why loneliness, fear, and hatred are so familiar and love so rare? Why bigotry and war are still so common? Why peace and cooperation elude us? Why so many people need to use alcohol and drugs just to get through another day, seeking a satisfaction not available in sobriety? Why more than one in ten Americans take anti-depressants just so they can function? Why billions of human beings live in desperate poverty and ignorance while a tiny few live lives of wasteful luxury and self-indulgence? Why the human race totters on the brink of the supreme folly of self-extinction, via environmental collapse or thermonuclear disaster?
Of course there are other explanations for this list of human ills. Judeo-Christian theology, a world-view that has exerted tremendous influence on western culture, says that humans are cursed with something called “original sin” and are, therefore, inherently evil. In addition, God gave humans free will and we choose evil because we are evil.
Many non-religious people also believe in free will and come to basically the same conclusion: humans are free to choose their actions, and the woes of humankind are the sad result of humanity’s propensity to choose actions that hurt others.
One of Gary Larson’s Far Side cartoons shows a plump young man stretched out on a psychiatrist’s couch, his mouth gaping wide in self-absorbed monologue, while the bearded shrink is quietly writing on his pad, “Just plain nuts.”
Which is the better explanation for the chronic human ills listed above: “humans are just plain nuts”—evolving apes understandably deluded about the nature of reality and necessarily making mistakes out of their confusion and ignorance; or “humans are just plain evil”—stubborn wicked creatures who sadistically (or masochistically) use their free will to choose pain, suffering, and wrongdoing when they know better? Which explanation offers us hope for a different future? If we are just plain nuts then we have some hope of finding sanity. If we are just plain evil what is there to do? How does one overcome intrinsic evil?
If universal human insanity is the cause of the human condition, we can immediately begin to envision the possibility of a cure; we can begin to imagine the possibilities for humankind when we are liberated from our delusions. Imagine realizing that all our crimes and misdemeanors, our mistakes, and our embarrassing blunders are simply products of our delusional thinking and not willful wrongdoing! Imagine realizing that punishing ourselves and others for wrongdoing is literally as absurd (and counterproductive) as punishing the inmates of a lunatic asylum for misbehaving.
The idea that we operate from a mind-generated reality seems strange because it feels like we experience the physical world directly and perceive it accurately. For example, when I want to pick my shoe up off the floor I can accurately locate the physical object—the shoe is here on the floor, not over there on the dining table—and I can precisely move my hand to its location and pick it up. Surely this means I’m experiencing the physical world the way it is!
The disquieting truth is I’m not.
Just for starters, we have blind spots in both of our eyes. In the middle of the retina, where the optical nerve attaches, there are no light receptor cells. We literally cannot see part of the visual field before us. Yet our mental image of reality does not match what our eyes actually see; the picture in our mind doesn’t include large black holes in the center. Our minds fill in the blanks with what they think should be there, built from our expectations of reality, the information surrounding the blind spot, and our experience of how the world works.
Optical illusions are amusing and shocking because they let us see that we do not perceive reality accurately.
For example, in the illustration below the center bar is the same shade of grey all the way across, yet our perception is that it’s lighter on the right.
Clearly there is some mental processing going on that interprets perceptual information before it gets to our awareness.
We have to learn to see and hear. As infants we learn how to process sensory information to create a mental picture of reality in our brain. We are taught first by our parents and then by everyone around us how to interpret the input of our senses.
We look with our eyes but see with our brains.
A friend of mine described how, for most of his life, he had never paid much attention to pregnant women. But when he learned he was going to become a father, “Suddenly large numbers of pregnant women started popping out of the landscape. I found myself noticing them and observing them with intense interest. After the birth of my daughter this legion of pregnant females receded back into the mists of my indifference.”
Of course there weren’t more pregnant women than normal; it was just because of his personal interest that he saw them. And they didn’t suddenly disappear after the birth of his daughter; he was just no longer paying attention to pregnant women and so from his point of view they ceased to exist.
Our brains take the sensory stimuli generated by actual reality (whatever that may be) and create virtual models in our minds. We only see the mental representation of a thing, not the thing itself.
This means we all live in our own individual virtual reality. We do not see actual reality; we see our mind-generated virtual reality projected on an internal screen of awareness.
Our mind-generated reality is more than just a model of physical reality; it includes abstract, subjective perceptions also.
Psychology textbooks are filled with long lists of common errors in our subjective perception of reality. For example, there’s the famous “Lake Wobegon effect”: most people think they’re above average (a statistical impossibility). There’s wishful thinking: “I’m not really as fat as this outfit makes me look.” Denial: “I’m not an alcoholic—I just like to drink every night, and I’ve been doing it all my life without any problem.” Or, “I’m not in an unhappy marriage—we never fight!” (Because we never talk to each other…) Rationalization: “It’s okay that I steal paperclips from work because they’ll never miss them.”
These thinking errors can all be summed up in this line from the song “The Boxer” by Paul Simon: “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”
Our mind-generated virtual reality is a construct built of preconceptions, beliefs, and assumptions that cause us to see our world and ourselves in a rigid and unchanging way. We are boxed in by our beliefs about reality.
Someone (the source is disputed) said, “We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.”
Comedians make us laugh because they break open our individual reality-box: they challenge our fixed beliefs and force us to see life from an alternative point of view. They literally crack us up!
We like puns because they expose how our minds make assumptions based on the meaning of words. When it’s revealed that our assumption of a word’s meaning was incorrect, it turns our understanding of the joke upside down. Groucho Marx provides a great example: “Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”
At first blush the idea that we’re insane sounds like a horrible thing, but actually there’s great news here. Realizing our insanity can empower us by freeing us from the delusion that we’re in control. Because we’re insane we can’t be blamed and shamed for all those misdeeds and wrongs that haunt us—we’re innocent by reason of insanity. In addition, when we realize that everyone is insane, we have the key to compassion. We understand why people (including ourselves) do mean or hurtful things: we know not what we do.
Being innocent by reason of insanity is in no way a blank check or license to kill. It doesn’t mean it’s okay to do mean and hurtful things; it means we understand that those actions are motivated by insanity, not willful choice. We can still put people in prison if we can’t figure out any other way to prevent them from hurting others. But we will think differently about who they are: they’re not evil monsters, they’re sick.
Innocent has two meanings. The first is “not guilty.” Most of us believe that we are guilty—by reason of sanity. Happily, as we shall see, this is not the truth. When we recognize our insanity we realize that we are innocent of all the charges we have levied against ourselves.
The other meaning of innocent is “virtuous, flawless, without sin or moral wrong.” By realizing our insanity, we can experience this meaning of innocent; what I will call innocence: we are without sin by reason of insanity.
Innocence means to be filled with wonder, curiosity, and awe at the marvelous perfection and ever-changing complexity of the mystery of existence. The opposite of innocence is the jaded adult cynicism most of us are all too familiar with: life on autopilot, steeped in boredom, routine, and faked enthusiasm. Innocence means to be liberated from our false imitations of knowledge, from the fatal presumption that we know anything or anyone (including ourselves) absolutely. Innocence means to become as a child and see every moment as new and interesting.
To experience innocence is to be freed from the constraints that our beliefs about reality impose upon the ever-fresh present. To experience innocence is to be empowered to see creative possibilities in every moment. To experience innocence is to know humility, to be aware of the extent of our limitations. To experience innocence is to be, comparatively, sane.
After spending a lifetime convinced that we’re sane, the idea that we’re all insane is guaranteed to meet with some resistance. I know from experience how difficult facing this truth is, but I also know how liberating it can be.
Not only do I intend to show that insanity is universal; I intend to show that there is absolutely nothing wrong with it: the universe is unfolding perfectly and without flaw. The pageant of evolution must include the epoch of insanity. Evolving apes encumbered with analytical thought are bound to go bananas...before they work the problem out.
Thomas Jefferson is revered in the United States, in part for his inspiring language in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Noble words, but ones which reveal an astonishing cognitive dissonance in the mind of the man who wrote them. Thomas Jefferson is infamous for being a slave owner. Clearly he could believe in the ideal of liberty and equality for “all men,” yet simultaneously believe that some men could be enslaved and treated unequally because of their skin color.
Today we congratulate ourselves that we’re beyond this kind of confused thinking on race, but most of us still believe in the concept of race itself. We think there really are “Caucasian” and “Asian” and “Black” humans. But, according to the majority of anthropologists, the concept of race exists entirely in our minds; there is only one race, the human race.
Yet this mind-generated reality of separate races has caused enormous suffering for millions of humans through our history, and continues today. People are still killed, imprisoned, and discriminated against because of a completely illusory “reality” that racial categories exist.
Most of us think we perceive reality directly and accurately. That is not true at all. Each of us creates, and lives in, our own individual reality.
A friend of mine shaved off half his moustache one morning, and then walked around all day enjoying people’s reactions. He couldn’t believe how long it took most people to become aware of his half-moustache.
People “saw” him with his moustache intact—entirely missing the reality that half of it was gone—because they were seeing a mind-generated reality, not the objective reality in front of them. When they finally noticed that half his moustache was missing their faces always registered shock (realizing how out of touch with reality they were) before dissolving into laughter.
When I was a teenager my favorite book was “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter,” by Carson McCullers. Not long after I met Arthur, my husband of over thirty years, I went to his apartment and this was one of three books on his desk. But I was surprised when I heard him talk about it, because it sounded like he was describing a completely different book. I told the story of a young girl whose dreams of a creative life were squashed by economic realities. Arthur told the story of a deaf-mute and the people who found in him an outlet to express their frustrations and dreams. One book, but two very separate realities.
Think of the most basic element of any argument: “You’re wrong,” “No, you’re wrong.” From a couple arguing about who forgot to mail the rent check to two nations fighting a war over a disputed boundary, disagreements arise from separate realities in the minds of the participants.
Psychologists tell us that we build mental models of reality which we use to navigate the world. We do not see actual reality, whatever that might be. We see only our mind-generated version of reality, and we erroneously conclude that our model of reality is reality.
What do we call someone who confuses their model of reality with reality itself? We call them delusional. Delusional is just another word for insane.
What better explanation for the human condition than delusional insanity? What better way to explain why loneliness, fear, and hatred are so familiar and love so rare? Why bigotry and war are still so common? Why peace and cooperation elude us? Why so many people need to use alcohol and drugs just to get through another day, seeking a satisfaction not available in sobriety? Why more than one in ten Americans take anti-depressants just so they can function? Why billions of human beings live in desperate poverty and ignorance while a tiny few live lives of wasteful luxury and self-indulgence? Why the human race totters on the brink of the supreme folly of self-extinction, via environmental collapse or thermonuclear disaster?
Of course there are other explanations for this list of human ills. Judeo-Christian theology, a world-view that has exerted tremendous influence on western culture, says that humans are cursed with something called “original sin” and are, therefore, inherently evil. In addition, God gave humans free will and we choose evil because we are evil.
Many non-religious people also believe in free will and come to basically the same conclusion: humans are free to choose their actions, and the woes of humankind are the sad result of humanity’s propensity to choose actions that hurt others.
One of Gary Larson’s Far Side cartoons shows a plump young man stretched out on a psychiatrist’s couch, his mouth gaping wide in self-absorbed monologue, while the bearded shrink is quietly writing on his pad, “Just plain nuts.”
Which is the better explanation for the chronic human ills listed above: “humans are just plain nuts”—evolving apes understandably deluded about the nature of reality and necessarily making mistakes out of their confusion and ignorance; or “humans are just plain evil”—stubborn wicked creatures who sadistically (or masochistically) use their free will to choose pain, suffering, and wrongdoing when they know better? Which explanation offers us hope for a different future? If we are just plain nuts then we have some hope of finding sanity. If we are just plain evil what is there to do? How does one overcome intrinsic evil?
If universal human insanity is the cause of the human condition, we can immediately begin to envision the possibility of a cure; we can begin to imagine the possibilities for humankind when we are liberated from our delusions. Imagine realizing that all our crimes and misdemeanors, our mistakes, and our embarrassing blunders are simply products of our delusional thinking and not willful wrongdoing! Imagine realizing that punishing ourselves and others for wrongdoing is literally as absurd (and counterproductive) as punishing the inmates of a lunatic asylum for misbehaving.
The idea that we operate from a mind-generated reality seems strange because it feels like we experience the physical world directly and perceive it accurately. For example, when I want to pick my shoe up off the floor I can accurately locate the physical object—the shoe is here on the floor, not over there on the dining table—and I can precisely move my hand to its location and pick it up. Surely this means I’m experiencing the physical world the way it is!
The disquieting truth is I’m not.
Just for starters, we have blind spots in both of our eyes. In the middle of the retina, where the optical nerve attaches, there are no light receptor cells. We literally cannot see part of the visual field before us. Yet our mental image of reality does not match what our eyes actually see; the picture in our mind doesn’t include large black holes in the center. Our minds fill in the blanks with what they think should be there, built from our expectations of reality, the information surrounding the blind spot, and our experience of how the world works.
Optical illusions are amusing and shocking because they let us see that we do not perceive reality accurately.
For example, in the illustration below the center bar is the same shade of grey all the way across, yet our perception is that it’s lighter on the right.
We have to learn to see and hear. As infants we learn how to process sensory information to create a mental picture of reality in our brain. We are taught first by our parents and then by everyone around us how to interpret the input of our senses.
We look with our eyes but see with our brains.
A friend of mine described how, for most of his life, he had never paid much attention to pregnant women. But when he learned he was going to become a father, “Suddenly large numbers of pregnant women started popping out of the landscape. I found myself noticing them and observing them with intense interest. After the birth of my daughter this legion of pregnant females receded back into the mists of my indifference.”
Of course there weren’t more pregnant women than normal; it was just because of his personal interest that he saw them. And they didn’t suddenly disappear after the birth of his daughter; he was just no longer paying attention to pregnant women and so from his point of view they ceased to exist.
Our brains take the sensory stimuli generated by actual reality (whatever that may be) and create virtual models in our minds. We only see the mental representation of a thing, not the thing itself.
This means we all live in our own individual virtual reality. We do not see actual reality; we see our mind-generated virtual reality projected on an internal screen of awareness.
Our mind-generated reality is more than just a model of physical reality; it includes abstract, subjective perceptions also.
Psychology textbooks are filled with long lists of common errors in our subjective perception of reality. For example, there’s the famous “Lake Wobegon effect”: most people think they’re above average (a statistical impossibility). There’s wishful thinking: “I’m not really as fat as this outfit makes me look.” Denial: “I’m not an alcoholic—I just like to drink every night, and I’ve been doing it all my life without any problem.” Or, “I’m not in an unhappy marriage—we never fight!” (Because we never talk to each other…) Rationalization: “It’s okay that I steal paperclips from work because they’ll never miss them.”
These thinking errors can all be summed up in this line from the song “The Boxer” by Paul Simon: “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”
Our mind-generated virtual reality is a construct built of preconceptions, beliefs, and assumptions that cause us to see our world and ourselves in a rigid and unchanging way. We are boxed in by our beliefs about reality.
Someone (the source is disputed) said, “We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.”
Comedians make us laugh because they break open our individual reality-box: they challenge our fixed beliefs and force us to see life from an alternative point of view. They literally crack us up!
We like puns because they expose how our minds make assumptions based on the meaning of words. When it’s revealed that our assumption of a word’s meaning was incorrect, it turns our understanding of the joke upside down. Groucho Marx provides a great example: “Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”
At first blush the idea that we’re insane sounds like a horrible thing, but actually there’s great news here. Realizing our insanity can empower us by freeing us from the delusion that we’re in control. Because we’re insane we can’t be blamed and shamed for all those misdeeds and wrongs that haunt us—we’re innocent by reason of insanity. In addition, when we realize that everyone is insane, we have the key to compassion. We understand why people (including ourselves) do mean or hurtful things: we know not what we do.
Being innocent by reason of insanity is in no way a blank check or license to kill. It doesn’t mean it’s okay to do mean and hurtful things; it means we understand that those actions are motivated by insanity, not willful choice. We can still put people in prison if we can’t figure out any other way to prevent them from hurting others. But we will think differently about who they are: they’re not evil monsters, they’re sick.
Innocent has two meanings. The first is “not guilty.” Most of us believe that we are guilty—by reason of sanity. Happily, as we shall see, this is not the truth. When we recognize our insanity we realize that we are innocent of all the charges we have levied against ourselves.
The other meaning of innocent is “virtuous, flawless, without sin or moral wrong.” By realizing our insanity, we can experience this meaning of innocent; what I will call innocence: we are without sin by reason of insanity.
Innocence means to be filled with wonder, curiosity, and awe at the marvelous perfection and ever-changing complexity of the mystery of existence. The opposite of innocence is the jaded adult cynicism most of us are all too familiar with: life on autopilot, steeped in boredom, routine, and faked enthusiasm. Innocence means to be liberated from our false imitations of knowledge, from the fatal presumption that we know anything or anyone (including ourselves) absolutely. Innocence means to become as a child and see every moment as new and interesting.
To experience innocence is to be freed from the constraints that our beliefs about reality impose upon the ever-fresh present. To experience innocence is to be empowered to see creative possibilities in every moment. To experience innocence is to know humility, to be aware of the extent of our limitations. To experience innocence is to be, comparatively, sane.
After spending a lifetime convinced that we’re sane, the idea that we’re all insane is guaranteed to meet with some resistance. I know from experience how difficult facing this truth is, but I also know how liberating it can be.
Not only do I intend to show that insanity is universal; I intend to show that there is absolutely nothing wrong with it: the universe is unfolding perfectly and without flaw. The pageant of evolution must include the epoch of insanity. Evolving apes encumbered with analytical thought are bound to go bananas...before they work the problem out.
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