Part I (I'm pacing myself)
Madmen: They always seem so wise. The reeking subway savage whips out a universal truth worthy of Dostoevsky in between invocations of satan, and its a thought that stays and resonates and comes back to you in the middle of a party that night. And if you think about it, all the great figures in literature were crazy: Macbeth, Hamlet, Don Quixote, the guy from Fight Club, the protagonist of most of Rilke and Kafka. What about Manson? Black Panthers? Weather Underground?
The reason we can empathize with them, the reason we hold them higher sometimes than normal people, is because their madness isnt nearly as important to us as their words and their actions. The fact that they come out and say whats on all the other cowards minds, the fact that they can act definitively in ways that might seem repulsive and wrong but are at bottom the only rational reactions to an irrational world: Its the words they speak and the actions they engage in that matter; the state of their minds is irrelevant.
And this works in reverse too. Lets take normal people who do crazy things: the steam-pressed, spanking clean trader whose mind might be average thoughts of his fiance and his golden retriever and his vacation in Costa Rica and making money, all pretty standard motivations, and yet his everyday words and actions contribute to the breaking of peoples backs all over the world, to the covering up of political brutality and environmental destruction, through direct participation in a free-market economy that ravages the earth and destroys the livelihoods of everyone enslaved to it.
Do I care that he doesnt think about his actions? That he doesnt think at all? No. Thats his problem, his conscience. No. I dont give a fuck what he thinks, how seemingly innocent his mind is . . I care only about what he openly says and does, which to me is mad. Crazy. Insane. Criminal.
Then there's the normal person who acts/dresses/talks crazy hoping someone's gonna buy his bullshit and think he's making some kind of profound sense. The fake madmen. Like, why? Does it get you laid? Signed? Noticed?
Madmen: They always seem so wise. The reeking subway savage whips out a universal truth worthy of Dostoevsky in between invocations of satan, and its a thought that stays and resonates and comes back to you in the middle of a party that night. And if you think about it, all the great figures in literature were crazy: Macbeth, Hamlet, Don Quixote, the guy from Fight Club, the protagonist of most of Rilke and Kafka. What about Manson? Black Panthers? Weather Underground?
The reason we can empathize with them, the reason we hold them higher sometimes than normal people, is because their madness isnt nearly as important to us as their words and their actions. The fact that they come out and say whats on all the other cowards minds, the fact that they can act definitively in ways that might seem repulsive and wrong but are at bottom the only rational reactions to an irrational world: Its the words they speak and the actions they engage in that matter; the state of their minds is irrelevant.
And this works in reverse too. Lets take normal people who do crazy things: the steam-pressed, spanking clean trader whose mind might be average thoughts of his fiance and his golden retriever and his vacation in Costa Rica and making money, all pretty standard motivations, and yet his everyday words and actions contribute to the breaking of peoples backs all over the world, to the covering up of political brutality and environmental destruction, through direct participation in a free-market economy that ravages the earth and destroys the livelihoods of everyone enslaved to it.
Do I care that he doesnt think about his actions? That he doesnt think at all? No. Thats his problem, his conscience. No. I dont give a fuck what he thinks, how seemingly innocent his mind is . . I care only about what he openly says and does, which to me is mad. Crazy. Insane. Criminal.
Then there's the normal person who acts/dresses/talks crazy hoping someone's gonna buy his bullshit and think he's making some kind of profound sense. The fake madmen. Like, why? Does it get you laid? Signed? Noticed?
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I never saw the trailer for Crash but dont doubt that it a veritable fondue of melodrama the black geezer co_producced, as in please take my $35million movie/art/heart on sleeve seriously. But rather they spend the cash on something vaguely rightous.
Hell its all contrived, such is the nature of the beast.
You might like to try one of my badges, just so that people know.