Free Thought and Mental Illness

     I try to be a free thinker. I try to maintain an open mind and an open heart. I try to think as deeply about reality as I possibly can. I am looking for freedom in the only place in my life where freedom can be exacted to an absolute; my mind. 

     Unfortunately, in this world, differentness of thought often equates to insanity to the layperson. Humans are often not very complex, and so when they encounter complexity in another human, it can be intimidating. Even frightening.  In an attempt to cope with something they don't understand, humans like to label. 

     Often times, they don't even understand the very label they attach to people who in turn they also don't understand.  Insanity's a loaded word. Oftentimes the person who wields it against another person doesn't even understand what they are saying.

       One of the worst things you can do to someone is to get them to question their own reality. It is a debilitating tactic, one that, unfortunately, can be quite effective in delegitimizing another human and rendering them impotent and stripping them of a status or opportunity.  

It can even dehumanize.

     Reality is a complex thing. Far more complex than the average person's mind. So when a human is born with a level of complexity that enables them to understand reality on a broader, more dynamic, more advanced level, to the average person, this often comes across as insanity. 

     There is a reason mental illness has such a stigma. People fear what they don't understand. When it comes to mental illness that is tied into immense intelligence, that fear can even be more potent and more pronounced. 

Coupled with envy, fearing differentness often leads to atrocities.

Some of the worst things ever done to me personally was out of a lack of understanding on the part of people and systems who had power over me.  There are few things more dangerous to an individual than someone in authority having a misguided, simplistic, and ignorant view of how to help you, and they impose it against your will. 

 The most atrocious things I have ever been involved in and ever had inflicted upon me were done out of fear and a blindness.  There may have even possibly been malevolent intent. 

      In this society, labels are weapons. If there is one tactic of oppression I have been exposed to that is particularly potent, it is the weaponization of the concept of insanity and the weaponization of labels. If you want to reduce someone to a state of poverty and cripple their futures and freedoms, just induce insanity, or label someone as such. 

     Few things are more effective in this place at crippling people, and it happens all the time.  

     I think complexly. Very complexly. I think that's obvious by now.  To a small minded person, big thoughts and big, complex ideas can be scary, and the easiest thing most humans do to cope with their fears and misunderstandings is to slap a label on someone or something that is often way too simplistic and creates more of an illusion of understanding than actual understanding. This process starts young. 

         Labeling and name-calling are a big part of childhood. Unfortunately it doesn't stop in adulthood. It just becomes different. Sometimes socially and economically crippling.

   Since I try to think independently and complexly, I have often had an insanity or "crazy" label thrown at me. I'm learning to cope with this better than I used to. I look at our culture. The money worship. The sex worship. The over-indulgence in pleasure, luxury, and abundance while much of the world suffers in poverty and oppression while this culture just bathes in indulgence, and I think to myself often, these people are the crazy ones. I'm kind of starting to consider it a badge of honor to have that label if its coming from these people.

       Everyone looks insane when they go their own way. When they deviate from social and cultural standards, and that's how those simplistic, blind people cope with another person's deviation; they just label it as insanity. 

     I think differently. Good. Maybe other people should to. 

 I think freely. Good. Maybe other people should to. It might lead them to a peace, joy, and purpose that makes all of the vanity and decadence of this culture obsolete and devalued.

  I've already been a victim of this society's ignorance and misunderstanding. I've already suffered at the hands of mentally blind people, who can do immense damage under the pretense of thinking they are helping someone.

   Because of this, as far as social liberty is concerned, I will always have a handicap, one that is brought about by both real mental problems and the labeling and weaponizing of those labels. As a result, certain liberties are hard to reach, others are out of reach, and I will always have a deprivation of certain opportunities and privileges. 

 I will always be "on a leash" so to speak, because of medications and obligations to a system I really want no part of.

     This deprivation leaves me with no other choice but to go into my mind for the maximal freedom possible that I can have.  Mental liberty is the highest liberty of humanity. 

 Unfortunately, to someone who has it, it often looks like insanity to the outside observer.

 That's my freedom.

My pure, perfect, Godly freedom will only be completely manifested after I am no longer confined to this world and to my body. 

Good night.