d) I would be most happy to mentor you on crossing that border. I cannot guarantee that I will have the ability to guide you back over it, but I can guarantee two things: that you will have a great deal of fun; and that your family will not.

Nietzsche's quote is the fundamental truth about humans and society:

"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."

Which of his works is this from? I have only so far listened to part of Also Sprach Zarathustra.

I believe that human society is a super-organism (in the sense of E.O. Wilson's understanding of ant colonies) that reproduces asexually, much like primitive multicellular organisms reproduce by budding. Madness represents the point of this budding.

Like all reproductive processes, the biological program that triggers madness has no interest in the survival of the individual: any more than the millions of sperm that do not fertilize the egg are of any concern to the larger organism.

For every million madmen that are placed in psychoprisons and thereby, much of the time, destroyed, some few go on to found new movements intellectual or societal; and some others go on to found a new tribe, which tribe is made in the inverse image of the sicknesses in the tribe it budded off from. 

Of course industrial society has succeeded, to a greater extent than any civilization in history, in repressing the formation of new tribes: mostly, I do believe, by means of schools, psychiatry, and asylums, in that order. 

The fact that I speak the same English language spoken in the eighteenth century; that I can converse with someone on the other side of the world (e.g. someone from Australia) and speak the same language and even dialect: this is only possible because of empire and, specifically, colonial empires.

It was the Spanish that developed this technology, and the Spanish, of course, that developed the Inquisition to its fullest extent. To the best of my knowledge, the Inquisition began as a suppression of Catharism in the thirteenth century. The Inquisition has been medicalized, and lives on as psychiatry.

What the Spanish invented, the British perfected: the Spanish empire, at least in many places (principally Central America, Peru, and Ecuador, less so in Colombia, and not at all in Argentina and Chile) created a race of half-castes, a culture predominantly Spanish, but also partly hybrid. (Thus we should more properly say that societies reproduce by budding and by hybridization.) The British simply exterminated the Indians and imprisoned the remainder on reservations. Thus the bulk of Mexican society (though not the upper classes, which remain Criollo) is mestizo; there is no equivalent race of mestizos in America. An American half-caste is known as an Indian if he is at all visibly Indian; otherwise he is regarded as white (unless he is at all black).

All of my otherwise incomprehensible behaviors during intensevierung may, according to my hypothesis, be understood as a product of this biological program. In spending money on shiny objects such as jewelry, crystals, and art, I was converting currency (which only has value within a culture) into objects that had universal value. In making acquaintance with men on the margins----David Gonsalves, and the so-called King of Boston----I was gathering my future tribe. In conceiving a royal lineage for myself, I was, through speaking the universal language of power (kingship is a biological aspect of human society, in much the same way as an ant colony has a queen: thus, we note, democracy is artificial and unlikely to last without substantial and ongoing infusions of intellect), preparing to be the chief of this new tribe. In developing my irrational theories of physics, I was developing the mythology for this society. And finally, in finding eloquence, I was developing the persuasion needed to create such a new society.

What would be the name of the country that you will create when you go mad? Will it, perhaps, be called Deutschland?

Nikola.



On Sat, Dec 10, 2022 at 1:06 PM Ernst J Meyer <ernstmeyer@earthlink.net> wrote:


    December 10, 2022

    Dear Nikola,

    a) Thank you very much for your visit.
    b) I have found on my lap-top and tested the tone generator with the
    chromatic scale from 256 to 512, and when next you come, if you like,
    you can use that to tune the harpsichord, and then play to your heart's
    content.  I have a library of sheet music which Nathaniel can show you.
    c) These URL might interest you:
    https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/8-04-quantum-physics-i-spring-2016/pages/video-lectures/part-1/
    https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/professor?tid=562630
    Not included in the lecture notes is Prof. Zwiebach's assertion that
    both Einstein and Schrödinger "hated" Max Born's interpretation of of
    the wave function, but that Born was "correct".
    d) https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/genius-and-madness.html I've
    concluded that the only way I can fulfill my destiny is to cross the border.
    EJM