Insanity and Infinity

  

  "Insanity can be most defined by a complete lack of self-awareness." 

     The whole argument that "crazy people don't know they are crazy" has a lot of validity to it. People who are delusional or mentally detached often don't have any substantial or valid insight on their situation or mental state. If you find yourself questioning your sanity, asking an honest question of "am I losing my mind?" then you actually aren't in that bad of a position. 

     It's when you no longer have the ability to honestly ask that question to yourself that you have a problem.  

As far as infinity goes?  Well, believing in infinite things, or believing in an infinite God, is unprovable and unfalsifiable.  Of course finite beings can't prove or comprehend the existence of infinite systems, but believing in such systems and believing in the existence of such infinite powers and authorities is actually quite therapeutic.  It gives people an immense hope, an immense sense of purpose, and a great deal of things to puzzle over and meditate on.

     It acts as a quite powerful antidepressant. Thinking about infinity and believing in infinite systems stretches your imagination and stretches your mind and gives you a massive worldview and belief system.

      When it comes to insanity, believing in an infinite existence helps circumvent some of the pitfalls of the insanity label. If existence is truly infinite and unbounded/unlimited, then everything exists, just not in one point in space, one point in time, one realm of existence, and in one particular way or they can exist in ways we humans can't fully understand.  

       If that is the case, then our existence is so much more complex than we can comprehend, and what we label as insanity may just be mere complexity we don't understand, or someone being in an alternate reality we don't fully know how to evaluate, come to terms with, or comprehend.

       One of my professor friends and I here at MSU have regular talks about philosophy and the philosophy of infinity. He often brings up a mathematician named Georg Cantor.  Cantor was a mathematician who developed and expanded Set Theory, one of the major fields of mathematics. Much of his work was done on sets of infinity. He proved that you could have different sets of infinity with different values to each set, meaning one set of infinity could be greater than another.  

      Cantor, in all his brilliance, was believed by some people to drive himself mad trying to comprehend these complex understandings of the infinite, although this is disputed by some scholars. He was institutionalized multiple times and struggled with bouts of extreme depression. He operated in the 19th century in Europe, but many modern psychologists believe he suffered from some form of bipolar disorder.

     From my perspective, yes trying to comprehend infinity has its risks of affecting your mental health, but I believe that if you have an anchor or rope to pull yourself out of the rabbit hole (something like faith, great insight, and self awareness) you can go as deep as you want as long as you can pull yourself back up into the common, shallow end of existence.

      I believe comprehending almost anything you want to is within the realm of possibility as long as you know the time and place and as long as you are responsible with your thinking.