What is Insanity?

[IanEye]

if eye didn't care

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more than words can say

Few years ago, an idea germinated while reading The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. An idea not driven by the narrativity of the book, but by the traces and the aura invoked in it. That was it: an audible auratic journey trough the memories of a place lost in the heights of the swiss mountains.

A century after the events depicted in the book, we went where the story took place, trying to capture the remaining sounds that could have been heard at the time, and the ghosts who might have still wandered around.

Zauberberg is based on these captures, on recordings of the music played by Hans Castorp, on acoustic/electronic instrumentation and digital processing. The result is an evokation of time and duration, an exploration of what remains and what is lost, a meditation of the dissolution and persistence of the aura surrounding everything.

[Joe Hillshoist]

As I started reading this thread just now (from the op) John Lennon's mind games started playing on rage ( - a tv music video show. How 1980s.)

Then Black Sabbath's paranoid....

Seriously someone is taking the piss.

[Joe Hillshoist]

BTW Musos and athletes don't repeat the same thing - practice and training need variety and novelty.

But even we ignore that musos and athletes do the same thing but they don't expect a different result.

They expect the same result.

Improvement.

If training doesn't work you change it.

[Joe Hillshoist]

I think the Conrad quote does a superb job expressing the lonely nature of reality experienced most poignantly and painfully by those courting madness (or believed to be doing so). Separating oneself from the communal myths often is considered madness, and while the communal belief itself may be a delusion, abandoning the group delusion can be a gateway that leads to further separation and loneliness that I suspect is a playground for the more dangerous levels of insanity, especially when the resulting isolation is combined with a deep assurance of one's own correctness.! hope to add more to this line of thought soon. It deals with some personal stuff that will take me a while to properly express. Suffice to say, I think there is a reason for the phrase "descent into madness," as it involves going lower into the psychosphere, deeper into oneself and the dark part of existence, and perhaps correlates with the ideas of the underworld, demons and passages/invitations to such.

Have you ever heard that old story about the Russian sleep experiment?

[minime]

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

It follows that anyone who repeats this truism is clearly insane.

For example...

It is not possible to do the same thing twice.

It is not possible to do the same thing twice.

[backtoiam]

Joe Hillhoist wrote:

Have you ever heard that old story about the Russian sleep experiment?

Are you talking about the case where they gave some prisoners a gas that kept them awake until they died? Had them locked into a room together on gas until they died? If so that is one of the most utterly gruesome horrible things I have ever read. If the pictures I saw were real they are still almost too much to believe, unreal freaky. And the ending of that story sounds like a Steven King novel it is so damn strange. If that is the one you are talking about it freaked me out for several days after I read it.

[Joe Hillshoist]

You saw pictures!!!!!

[Joe Hillshoist]

Sorry.

I've read the story and just assumed it was bullshit.

But actual pictures? Were they for real? (Though how would we know?)

[Joe Hillshoist]

I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind
There was something so pleasant about that place.
Even your emotions had an echo
In so much space

And when you're out there
Without care,
Yeah, I was out of touch
But it wasn't because I didn't know enough
I just knew too much

[backtoiam]

Sorry.

I've read the story and just assumed it was bullshit.

But actual pictures? Were they for real? (Though how would we know?)

I don't know. As cruel as humans are there is no telling. This is a debate on the topic.

http://www.debate.org/opinions/could-th ... ly-be-real

[Harvey]

This is insanity.