This journal entry is random.. so random, its crazy!

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I think I heard it best on a demotivation poster:

"Insanity doesn't always have to howl. Sometimes it's just that little voice at the back of your head that says, "Hmm... nice place... room for one more?" =P

Of course, the howling kind of insanity can be good too, especially for us furries. =P

Hmm, well, personally I think there's room enough in my head for one, maybe two more... *grins at you, and gestures for you to come closer* But then again, it could just be my stomach that has the room for one more in it...

There's sane. There's weird. There's crazy.

"Sane" is considered the absolute average and baseline for human thought/belief/behavior/thinking process at a given place and time. What's considered Sane in 2010 America is far from what's considered Sane in 1520 China, or 4,000BC Egypt, and visa versa. The problem is, no one lives at that baseline. No one is ever "Sane" as its collectively understood. Someone who managed to exist without any sort of mental quirk is, quite likely, screwy in ways most of us can barely imagine.

"Weird" covers all those mental quirks that make humans so endlessly facinating. Eating papers, wanting to have sex with a man with the face of a tiger, believing that Obama wants to kill you with Death Panels. None of these are "normal", but neither are they Crazy. Basically, if it doesn't count as Sane, and it's not covered by Crazy below, it's Weird. And all of us are weird in one way or another.

"Crazy". If you believe something, have a behavior, or have a thought process that actively harms you or those around you, you are crazy. If you have a social phobia so crippling you can barely leave the house, much less hold a job, you're crazy. If you believe that worms live in your veins and you need to bleed them out from time to time so they don't overrun you, you're crazy. If you believe that the only way to make your wife listen is with a slap across the face, you're crazy. If you believe that your true love is an orca, and the only way to be together is to strip naked and go swimming in its tank late at night, you're crazy.

It's a spectrum from Weird to Crazy. The end points are plain and easy to see. The person who always picks the green shirt over any other color is a little weird. The person who goes into screaming convulsions if they realize they forgot to wear anything green at all is crazy.

Crazy sets it when you start to hurt yourself or others. And what counts as hurting yourself and others varies from place to place, over time, and over age.

Usually, though, gnawing yourself till you bleed or pieces come off is Crazy. Drinking into a mild stupor is Weird.

I'm actually kind of surprised how much thought, insight and work you put into your answers to my more 'random' and 'weird' journal posts!
And your answers are usually pretty darned good.
I'm probably not the first to say this, but I dub thee Professor Beachfox!

Part of the fun thing about 'weird' people is the fact that it is so subjective just how 'weird' something is. Then again, 'normal' and 'crazy' are subjective too.
Fun to think that our notions of sanity and 'normalness' are social constructs that aren't as rock-solid as many would have you think.

*ahem* Sorry. This is just one of those topics that I muse upon when I'm idling about. What constitutes strange and dangerously strange, and how you can best map out a dividing line in the murky waters between the two.

I can't think about porn -all- the time. >.>

And no, our notions of Sanity and Normalness are most certainly not rock-solid. Women Libers were considered insane in the 1880s, and by my definition, they were. They had believes and modes of thinking that caused them immense pain and difficulty operating in reality. They were -right- (or, at least, our modern definition of sanity says they were right), but they were operating so far beyond the modern social thought-structures of the day that they were insane for all practical intents.

Sanity changes. Weirdness is eternal. :) Embrace the weirdness, because only the terrifyingly insane are absolutely normal.

heehee, oh I wasn't complaining at all, I was just commenting on how surprised I was you'd respond to my random journals with so much depth.
The best line between 'strange' and 'dangerously strange' though, is probably the line between when you stare at someone because they're kind of weird, and when you feel pretty disturbed if not in mortal danger due to their strangeness (though this is problematic too. It seems there's more than a few who find homosexuals "dangerously strange". But at least this line is a start)

And wut? You can't think of porn ALL the time?! Well that is just, strange! O.o

I like that phrase though, that weirdness is eternal. That's so right, and so fun to know! And also fun to know that only the terrifyingly normal are absolutely insane.