An Ode to Craziness

According to Deadpool, the movie is really a love story and there is actually a line worthy of the greatest love stories. Deadpool declares his love for his girlfriend Vanessa by telling her “Your crazy matches my crazy, big time”.

Most girls would probably have been put off by these words, but Vanessa seems to be much happier about it than any other declaration of love could have made her. And it’s not only Vanessa who resonates with this line: there are a lot of memes on the web and you can buy merchandise such as keyrings, T-shirts and gift cards with this line printed on.  Call me crazy, but this is one of the most romantic lines in a movie ever.

There are certainly more than 50 shades of crazy as documented by the hundreds of synonyms and expressions for crazy in the English languages (bonkers, mad as a hatter, zany, nuts, etc.). As if there weren’t already enough expressions in English, people love using ones from foreign languages too: loco, meshuggah, Crazy can refer to anything from having unconventional ideas to being schizophrenic. It is correlated with the Big Five Factor of Openness, which is just that: it can mean that a person is just unconventional and very high openness is correlated with a risk for schizophrenia.

People often associate crazy with threats, like in the Joker crazy or Harley Quinn crazy. While there is some truth to this (school shooters and many serial killers are often high in psychoticism), most crazy people are actually more harmless than the average Joe. It’s just that non-conformity is frequently perceived as a threat. In history, crazy people were in fact often associated with a special connection to supernatural beings and God. Shamans certainly show some signs of schizophrenia and so did the prophets of the Old Testament.

The Ukrainian word for crazy is божевільний (by the will of God - having special powers). The world-famous Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square is dedicated to Василий Блаженный. Basil the crazy (literally blessed by God).

Originally an apprentice shoemaker, he went to Moscow when he was sixteen. There he helped those who were ashamed to ask for alms but were in need of help. He adopted an eccentric lifestyle of shoplifting and giving to the poor to shame the miserly and help those in need. He went naked and weighed himself down with chains. He rebuked Ivan the Terrible for not paying attention in church. Basil was said to have the gift of prophecy.

In Ayurveda craziness is associated with vata, the air (ectomorph) body and personality type. It is said that even just a bit of vata can make a person crazy. The opposite stable or steadfast type is kapha - earth (endomorph). I have been arguing that the origin of these two opposites lie in farming (kapha) and foraging (vata). These types are also present in C.G. Jung’s intuitives (forager types) vs introverted sensing (farmer types). How could we possibly be relatively unmixed, though in modern times? Assortative mating exists for personality traits and concordance between spouses for psychiatric illness has also been consistently reported in numerous studies. In brief: crazy loves crazy. Deadpool and Vanessa are a perfect match. So are the Joker and Harley Quinn.

So, if you are a forager type living in a mostly farmer world, what is it like? Well, it’s pretty crazy. I will let other intuitives speak here:

Then there is a long list of musicians who express their craziness in songs:

No we're never gonna survive, unless we are a little crazy (Seal)

I'll love you with all the madness in my soul (Bruce Springsteen)

I'm going off the rails on a crazy train (Ozzy Ozborne)

Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun - Shine on you crazy diamond (Pink Floyd)

It’s not only intuitive types who find this world crazy. Pastoralist/pitta types (SP in MBTI) frequently chime in:

Do you ever feel like a misfit?

Everything inside you is dark and twisted

Oh, but it's okay to be different

'Cause baby, so am I

You're beautiful, but misunderstood

So why you tryna' be just like the neighborhood?

I can see it, I know what you're feelin'

So let me tell you 'bout my little secret

I'm a little crazy underneath this

(Ava Max)

And of course, the great ode to the crazy ones by Rob Siltanen:

Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes ... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. ... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things. ... They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

So, the takeaway? A little craziness is nothing but a different kind of normal. A lot of craziness is the damage these different kinds of normal people take in a world that’s too normal.