We are all familiar with Alfred E. Neuman, the smiling unhinged mascot of Mad Magazine. His world-view is encapsulated in the rhetorical question, "What, me worry?" And he clearly doesn't worry, his goofy lopsided face is always beaming with a kind of beatific serenity. Is madness the key to Mr. Neuman's happiness?
Or take Curly Howard of "The Three Stooges." Easily the dumbest of the trio, his charm lies in being a classic case of arrested development: a child's mind operating in the body of a grown man. He is always upbeat and of good cheer. No disaster, no pummeling by Moe, can keep Curly down. Like a cartoon character he bounces back and is ready for anything.
Ditto Harpo Marx. Groucho was rapier-sharp, Chico was the devilishly clever immigrant, Zeppo was vanilla, but Harpo was the child; the fool; the mad--and mute--genius (The Fool on the Hill/the jester).
Jesus said "Except you become as little children you will not enter the kingdom of heaven." A child is open to learning because they know they do not know. A child is willing to act like a fool because they have no rigid self-image to protect. The golden key is humility...and you can't be any humbler than nuts.
I'll leave this with one of my favorite quotes, from The Laws of Form, by G. Spencer Brown:
Discoveries of any great moment in mathematics and other disciplines, once they are discovered, are seen to be extremely simple and obvious, and make everybody, including their discoverer, appear foolish for not having discovered them before. It is all too often forgotten that the ancient symbol for the prenascence of the world is a fool, and that foolishness, being a divine state, is not a condition to be either proud or ashamed of.
Unfortunately, we find systems of education today which have departed so far from the plain truth, that they now teach us to be proud of what we know and ashamed of ignorance. This is doubly corrupt. It is corrupt not only because pride is in itself a mortal sin, but also because to teach pride in knowledge is to put up an effective barrier against any advance upon what is already known, since it makes one ashamed to look beyond the bonds imposed by one's ignorance.
To any person prepared to enter with respect into the realm of his great and universal ignorance, the secrets of being will eventually unfold, and they will do so in measure according to his freedom from natural and indoctrinated shame in his respect of their revelation.
In the face of the strong, and indeed violent, social pressures against it, few people have been prepared to take this simple and satisfying course towards sanity. And in a society where a prominent psychiatrist can advertise that given the chance, he would have treated Newton to electric shock therapy, who can blame any person for being afraid to do so?
To arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced, requires years of contemplation. Not activity. Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behaviour of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is one needs to know. And yet those with the courage to tread this path to real discovery are not only offered practically no guidance on how to do so, they are actively discouraged and have to set about it in secret, pretending meanwhile to be diligently engaged in the frantic diversions and to conform with the deadening personal opinions which are being continually thrust upon them.
In these circumstances, the discoveries that any person is able to undertake represent the places where, in the face of induced psychosis, he has by his own faltering and unaided efforts, returned to sanity. Painfully, and even dangerously, maybe. But nonetheless returned, however furtively.
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