It's doing the same thing again and again but each time expecting a different result!
How many people do that on a daily basis?
How many drive the same route to the office only to get caught (unexpectedly?) in the same traffic jam?
How many get on the tube train the same time every morning and bitch and whine at how crowded it is?
"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got."
Yadda yadda yadda!
In other words....
If You Keep Doing The Same Thing Your Results Will NEVER Improve!
Is that insanity?
Is that normal behaviour?
Isn't it more likely that it's just the way some people are wired?
It's pretty harmless in the great scheme of things.
It appears to me that society is very quick to label someone 'mad' or 'insane'. It's a cop out.
But, here is a question for you dear reader: What is the definition of EVIL?
Some people, like the Brady's, Sutcliffe's and Breivik's of this world, are classified as evil.
Are they? Are they Evil? Or does 'Evil' sell more newspapers and get more attention than 'mad' or 'insane'? It's a tabloid headline.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you! What people like those three guys and others did is inhuman and totally wrong and they should be damned for eternity, and they shouldn't have playstations and tv's in their cells, they should be made to eat concrete and dirt, they should be whipped with barbed wire and giant flying dragons should crap molten lava on them forever and I know you would like ten minutes in a room with them to really show them something because you have children and it could have been them and if they were going to court you would be outside the old bailey banging on the side of the bus while waving your kids at the news cameras... but, are they evil?
Evil is a state of mind into which pretty much anybody could get. It's a label used socially to define a group of people as inhuman.
Every year in England and Wales there are about 700 murders. Only a third of those are thought to be murders that occur in the context of mental disorder.
There is nothing about killing someone or doing something violent that means you are mad. Research shows us that it appears to be something that all human beings can do in certain circumstances.
We tend to concentrate on the people who look and sound a bit strange - the person with the wild eyed stare or the too short trousers - rather than think the woman sitting next to you on the tube train, or the man you are sleeping with could kill you, in the right circumstances.
That a mentally ill person is dangerous and we all need protecting from them is a very powerful stereotype that goes back to Roman times. Truth is, the majority of the violence that is carried out in our society is carried out by well people and your chances of being killed by a mentally ill person is the same as you winning the lottery.
I know it sounds like a joke but how many times have you heard of someone who worked in the same job for thirty years, had a nice home, a loving wife and three kids, a mortgage that was always paid on time, bills that were always paid, a stable family, church goer, 2 holidays a year, never drinks or smokes or does drugs and then, one day, they get an axe and wipe out everybody? When the newscrews ask around the neighbourhood all you hear is 'He was a quiet man, a very quiet man!'
Sometimes the most obvious looking person is not the one you need to watch!
Nobody believes that their kid is going to develop schizophrenia or going to run amok and kill a load of students in Oslo and on an island in Utoya like the aforementioned Mr Breivik.
The strange thing about that case is that, in a murder, the defence argues that the defendant has a mental illness and the prosecution argue that the defendant is sane. This is the first case I have seen where the defence is saying their client is 'mentally well' and the prosecution is saying 'he's insane!'
And one more thing, spree killers usually kill themselves. It's a fascinating question why he didn't!
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