Taking a deep, deep, dive
I perceive people living in the streets, and for that matter all mad men, not as living a life of dissipation, but of having failed precipitously to have realized their full potential. They aimed too high and, failing to accurately estimate the aim, fell low, very low, of the mark. Lower than they would if they had not aimed so high in the first place.
They dared ponder the unanswered questions, the unanswerable questions, such as the enigma of existence itself, the Cosmic question, First Cause, Supreme Being, and others like, bringing their own downfall. When I write 'they' I mean all deep divers (myself included). That I do not say 'we,' is due to having put into perspective the cosmic question. Never again will I be so rash as to think I might think the deepest thoughts through to absolute knowledge.
The Age of Science is notable for its mad men, for its cases of complex delusions, subjects of scientific study in their own right. What apparently drew scientific attention was the rationality of their madness. "What we may have, here, is a scientific discovery." The mad men might have been famous scientists but for their madness. Their names would never have been recorded at all if not for progress in the science of psychology.
One such famous mad scientist, famous (to be precise) for his madness, was evidently made mad by the enigma of the pendulum. A clock maker of established reputation, when he showed increasing signs of disorientation, was committed to a psychiatric institution by his friends and relations. His curious case was made the subject of peer review by his attending psychologist, a famous scientist in his own right.
At about the same time, Foucault's famous pendulum exhibition proved the Earth's rotation. Pendulum clocks had been made since the 17th Century. The mad clock maker was familiar with such devices and their complex arrangement of pendulum swinging to the Earth's beat, ponderous counterweights, turning wheels and ticking escapement catch.
A frustrating limitation of the pendulum clock is the need for adjustment after no more than 7 days. Mysteriously, Foucault's dramatic colossal device continued to swing freely, without adjustment, seemingly forever. This observation gave rise to the widely-popular theory of perpetual motion. The mad clock maker's mind was unhinged, meantime, by the conundrum. Saner minds either grasped the science or, as the common folk did, shook their heads in amazement and moved on.
Because the mad clock maker was more intelligent than the typical Bedlam inmate he became a case study. He was allowed to continue his clock making activities, which typically resulted in the device being smashed and then, painstakingly, rebuilt. There was a certain method to it but, as Einstein said, madness is doing the same thing over and over, hoping for a different result. The theory of perpetual motion became a self-reinforcing hypothesis for the mad clock maker.
I'm no psychologist, but it seems to me that if the mad clock maker's mania had not been indulged, and instead, coaxed away from clock work, that he might have recovered normal functionality. Instead, he was held in the grip of fame -both his own, and that of his doctor. He was made an example, a moral for, the emerging rationalistic, scientific world, one that was deterministic, fatalistic, one which ran like clockwork, inhuman, there to be attended by the futile services of man.
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