Writers Journal 1/21

Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
'Tis the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur, -- you're straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.
-Emily Dickenson

The majority is who determines who is sane and who is not, and oftentimes this has been done by assessing the degree in which one assimilates themselves to cultural norms/mainstream attitudes of the day. The unstated problem/logical conclusion of this poem is that by condescendenly excluding voices of 'madness' from being heard we are denying possibility of acquiring the wisdom those voices may hold. These are probably overused/cliche, but they work: How mad was the guy who first said the earth was round? or the sun was at the universe's center?


Possibilities can only exist if there is some chance for them to become actualities--otherwise they 'aren't possible' and should be stored away in the category of 'idea' or at most 'fantasy'. While it is easy to fall into paranoia about the excessive transformation of irresponsible, different or 'mad' fantasies into reality we forget that it is good to be just as wary about shutting out divinest sense its easier to label as 'madness'.

That being said, possibilities can be endless--people can create new meaning for things, and there are certain things beyond average sense/logic that can come in as madness (ie-creativity, passion, divine experience) that really come from the realm of empirically unverifiable concepts that people have to use another kind of sense to explore the possibilities of the focus's actual existence.

To think that life ever stops bringing new lessons is limiting. What is the goal but to reach the limitless by use of any of the limited means we have available to use? Tasting the limitless can be invigorating or depressing, sometimes both--one feels (universal) Love and Eternity, and then the limited grabs one back to remind one that in this lifetime, on this plane, we are still trapped in our bodies, still on the physical plane--for a reason, presumably to some anyway--and by refusing to attach oneself from both the world's pleasures and also from too far retracting from the world one can avoid both extremes-one of mistakenly thinking material/pleasure-giving things make one happier & therefore excluding possibility that there can be something beyond the external that could be beneficial to ones development as a person and the other of mistakenly feeling superior because of attachment to austerities/formed never-re-questioned habits & therefore excluding possibilities of keeping in touch with this gift/curse of imperfect humanity that causes us to embrace unusual (to the participant) interest or experiences despite the fact that at times it may go against average logic, indeed we reshape logic over time to be more sympathetic to both sides of arguments and get free of preconcieved conception in favor of redefined or newly created ideas, and maybe one day we'll go back beyond strictly categorized words we want to have meaning and transform the world into something closer to being, just living.

And, back to Emily Dickinson, who lived somewhat more removed from the world, and my wondering if she ever considered, upon writing this the consequences if people hadn't over the years at least in some number, at some points, recognized the divinest sense in madness on a grander scale, instead putting 'dangerous' people on a chain, as her poem states (and the consequences of the witch-idea hunts/claims of heresy there have been...)