One of the things I have found interesting about INTP's is the number of people who have said something along the lines of, "I seriously thought I had mental illness..." I've been there too and often, and often too often. But I have begun to wonder what it is that I am afraid of and why I don't just quit wasting time and step off the edge and into the abyss that I am so sure is there. After all, if it's not there then I can quit worrying about being insane and start worrying again about world peace, hunger, and whether or not the Rolling Stones disprove everything I have ever heard about substance abuse. If, on the other hand, the abyss really is an abyss and I really do go mad then at least I can be happy in knowing that my fears were justified and I can go about my business believing that a rock I found in the road is an alien from the Galactic Empire come to tell me that I have been selected to rule the universe from a hostel in Southeast Los Angeles.
Of course, the things that pull me back constantly are all the responsibilities and important stuff that the world tells me I should be concerned about. Not unparadoxically these are the exact same items that keep pushing me to the edge. And so back and forth I go just exactly like a madman trying to decide if the automatic door at the supermarket is out to eat him. Ergo, I am already quite mad and probably (based not completely on, but fully confirmed by the above) a raving lunatic. Strangely enough, I think the rest of the world pretty much knows this and is waiting to find out if I am the kind of lunatic who turns out to be brilliant, the weird uncle, or the guy you see on continuous live news coverage.
The last one is clearly short-term thinking and just doesn't work out for an INTP. After all, if we're going to be that kind of crazy then we're going to do it right and go into politics. Otherwise at some point a person ends up being swarmed by people in tactical gear and the social pressures of so many people screaming and yelling at us and even touching us while telling us what to do would be pretty uncomfortable. Worse, should I survive, I would have to sleep in a concrete building with a few thousand people who inherently cannot leave other people alone. So it's either that or go to inauguration balls with people of exactly the same character, but slightly better taste in clothes and fewer scruples about who they sleep with. Either way, that whole type of crazy just isn't for me.
That leaves the other two options. Now, I already have various assorted nephews and nieces who all think of me as that strange guy who's supposed to be related to them, but that they know nothing about. I suppose I could just be happy with some such small achievement and start sending them copies of my combined analysis of Tolstoy, Dr. Seuss and Nitsche for Christmas, but it doesn't seem right to leave it at that (particularly since that list of authors doesn't include anyone from the southern hemisphere). No, I have decided that if I am going to go mad then I might as well go the whole way and become brilliantly mad.
And so that's where I am at a bit past 1:00 in the morning. It's not a pretty place to be, but apparently it's where I am so who are you to judge? If you haven't gone stark bonkers yet then you're just being all theoretical which might get you published in a journal or two, but never gain you any real respect amongst we the leaders of the Galactic Empire.
So what brought all this on? Earlier tonight I was catching a documentary on Henry Ford. Actually, I caught the last third of it last night, then the first third this afternoon and the second third tonight (ah the wonders of modern television). I was struck by the fact that Ford just bit the bullet and became completely what he was. Admittedly a lot of what he was turned out to be a vindictive jerk, but that's not the part I'm talking about. I'm talking about the single-minded obsession with making one type of thing and just making it better and better. The guy was badly embarrassed in court when he seemed to think the Revolutionary War was in 1812 rather than 1776. Newspaper editors called him a joke and then went home in their Model T's to houses that would just fit into Henry's bathroom. It would seem that Henry had the better way. He picked one thing that he did well, focused it on one thing he wanted to do, and then promptly ignored all the other stuff. I suppose that if he had failed to make an inexpensive automobile and thus change the world we would have called him mad.
Then there was another snippet of a travel show where some attractive girl is wandering around Vietnam and is talking about the last emperor of that country (who's burial place is unknown because the 300 people who buried him had their heads lifted so nobody could get to the dead guy's stuff that was buried with him). This guy knew what he liked and what he liked was having 50 different meals prepared for him every day from which to choose - and by different meals every day I mean he didn't want to see the same meal twice in a year. Seems eccentric, but on the other hand I am a glutton and I'm not so sure I wouldn't have set up a similar system if given the chance.
Also tonight I saw a portion of a really bad movie with an actress who got some awards (one for apparently being simultaneously fascinated and upset by a reference to fava beans in a show that was also mentioned in one of those non-reality tv shows I happened to watch last night). In this movie she's investigating some alien phenomenon or another which causes her to be simultaneously fascinated and upset (but not enough apparently to get an award). On the screen were shown some esoteric notes filled with scribbling that looked significant, but probably was just a set designer's high school algebra notes.
Suddenly it happened, all those disjointed concepts blended together and I thought, "Well, why not just go ahead and become mad?" What I mean is, why not just do what I do even if it seems insane to everyone else and even to myself? If that means going catatonic for a few hours then so be it. If it means that I finally outfit my pickup with a camper so I can take a nap at lunchtime while blasting Tchaikovsky then why not? If it means turning my backyard into a collection of small outbuildings each resembling a shed, but each with a different purpose then I might as well start buying wood and paint. If I want to fill a couple thousand notebooks with arcane scribbling that only I understand then dammit I have every right to do so!
As INTPs we are inherently different than the majority. People simply aren't going to get us. Unfortunately, we spend huge amounts of time trying to fix that by essentially trying to fix ourselves. Well, who's to say we are the ones that need to be fixed? How do we know that we aren't the right way up?
I think in the morning I might as well go mad. I've nothing better to do...
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