Author: Jon Ronson Format: AudioBook
Reader: Jon Ronson
5 of 5 stars
What does it really mean to be crazy? Everyone likes to kick around these terms, casually mentioning that so and so's ex-partner is/was a "psycho" or that somebody's inlaws are "complete nutters". Often it is just a convenient label used to brand a particular stereotype or persona onto the perhaps unsuspecting party. Whether or not such branding is warranted is a completely different affair. It helps grease the wheels of conversation, and defuse awkward pauses. After all, we don't really want to believe that the kind taxidermist who runs the motel is an actual psycopath. It much easier to just say that he is a "strange boy", give a little chuckle and move on. No harm no foul .... right?
Ronson explores the strange mental tapestry that we all exist in, but have such a hard time understanding. When technologies such as the MRI came about, there was a lot of talk about how it could help unlock the inner workings of the human brain. Studies were done that showed normal adjusted people, when in the throes of intense anger, had brain scans that mimicked those of people diagnosed as clinically and violently insane. The difference was that in normal people, the chemical brain activity was temporary, whereas in the the deranged people, it tended to be persistent. It opens a scary Pandora's box that we all have the capacity to be insane, and in fact are from time to time. This is a scary, yet enticing enough concept that it continues to show up in our entertainment:
Noah Cross: You see, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they're capable of ANYTHING...
Mix in the fascination that we have with categorization and checklists, and there is the potential that in the pursuit of understanding what it is to be a psychopath, we will start to see the requisite traits in everyone we encounter, and in truth, even ourselves. Ronson confronts this issue head on, displaying both his easy succumbing to its siren song of power as well as the depressing realization of the role that media and journalism plays in the strange feedback loop of mental illness.
This was one of the more thought provoking books I have read in a very long time. Elements of what it tried to address are scattered throughout literature like so many puzzle pieces, except noone knows what the picture they create is even remotely supposed to look like. I have thought for a long time that characters and their caricatures are, fundamentally, attempts to reflect back to our consciousness data about what we are, in an attempt for us to better understand ourselves. It seems the greatest mysteries still lie within the undiscovered countries of our own minds.
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