On Tue, 24 Mar 1998, hK _#E"K '~%PJ. wrote: > To repeat my self how would you treat a sane Malk? There's no such thing. There's not even such a thing as an ordinary human who is completely sane, let alone a sane vampire. Even this 'sane' Malk would have his share of neuroses just like everyone else, kindred and kine alike. I always viewed the Malkavians' main departure from the rest of the Kindred as this: We use our own insanity to our advantage, rather than burying it in the depths of our subconscious and trying to fool ourselves into believing that it doesn't exist. Are you going to sit there and tell me that powermongering, such as the Tremere and Ventrue do, is not an indication of at least one underlying disorder or complex of some kind? What in the fuck are they doing? Why do they feel it necessary to have complete control over everything? What are they so afraid of? Where did this obvious insecurity on their part stem from? Aye, insecurity. You don't powermonger unless you believe that you've either got something to prove, or that you'd be a helpless victim if you didn't. These attitudes are at least the beginnings of lots of derangements... meglomania, narcissism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, paranoia, and hell, we might as well throw Siggie's Anal Retentivity in there, too. And what about the bloody Toreador? Many spend their whole goddamn unlives primping and posturing. They aren't exactly sane, either... even the ones who don't have 'artistic temperaments'. Look at the stuff they come up with. God only knows what sort of shape a mind would have to be in to interpret that stuff the way they do, especially this 'modern art' bullshit that is an absolute eyesore. The only real use for those completely unidentifiable sculptures (aside from scrap metal) is that they are kind of a 3D Rorschach. What a person sees it as representing tells infinitely more about the person's own mental state than it does about the state of the creator's mind. (As to evidence that the creator of it is crackers as well, ask him why he made it and what it reminds him of. You'll get all the evidence you need.) The true artists amongst the Toreador, few though they may be and as much as this will make some people cringe, are just as insane as Malkavians. They have learned to harness the universal dementia which runs through us all to create. The poseurs... that's why they cannot truly create, only imitate. They haven't learned to utilize their own insanity yet... they are still fighting it. They all have dementia... they just don't know how to do anything but bury it. When we are born, as far as Paradigm goes, the universal dementia is all we have. As we grow up, people lay layer after layer of societally sanctioned bullshit on top of it. We are taught to make all the socially 'appropriate' noises at all the 'correct' times. We are taught that the universe is static, totally predictable, and finite. We are gradually taught that there are two kinds of reality... the reality that "everyone" goes by, and then, theres's the "fucked up nonreality" that "crazy" people go by. "People who are "crazy" don't have friends and get locked up. You want to have friends, don't you? You certainly don't want to be locked up for saying such strange things, do you? You're eight years old... far too old to still believe in all that little kid stuff, Johnny. You *are* a big boy, right?" There seems to be an unspoken agreement amongst adults that all very little kids are insane. If a four year old comes running to you in the middle of the night, very frightened, and adamantly insisting that there's a monster under his bed and another just outside his window, what are you most apt to do? If you've got an ounce of compassion, you are apt to take the child back to his room, show him underneath his bed and outside the window, tell him all the monsters are gone, and maybe give him a little trinket of some kind, telling him that it'll keep all the monsters away. Being reasonably intelligent, you know damn full well that insisting there's no such thing as monsters isn't going to allay his fears in the slightest... at most, it will only serve to shut him up as you become more and more loudly insistant and he fears angering you by further disagreement. If an adult comes running to you in the middle of the night, very frightened, and adamantly insisting that there's monsters in the bedroom, what are you apt to do? Most people would be apt to call the men in the white coats, is what they'd do. But here's one for you... What if there *are* monsters hiding in the bedroom? Can you prove there's not? Sure, you look now and don't see any. What if they heard you coming and quite sensibly chose to vanish until the search had been called off and the lights were out again? If I were a monster, such would be my reaction to someone hunting for me. It's perfectly reasonable. What then? I move that the things under the bed are *real*. They are every bit as real as the undealt-with inner demons of the person percieving them. (And we all have these inner demons. It's part of the universal dementia.) When you've dealt with the monster inside you, the ones under your bed leave you alone. This is not to say that the monster in you no longer exists... it certainly does. It's just weakened enough to where it can't readily victimize you anymore, or has perhaps realized that working with you rather than against you yields greater benefits for it. Sometimes I think that growing up is more a process of forgetting than of learning. Children instinctively know that there are a vast array of things out there which just don't play by the rules of what their parents think of as reality. What do we do to children? We suck out the things they instinctively know to be true and replace it with a codified system of beliefs that the neighbors will approve of. Does this cure the universal dementia? Much as they wish it to be otherwise, no. It doesn't at all... in fact, all it serves to do is turn that dementia to destructive ends. Rather than life being a journey of discovery, as I believe Nature intended it to be, it turns it into an oppressive, overcompensating, insecurity-on-legs version of a nightmare. That particular bit is only one version of the same overarching nightmare which occurs in those who are in the Borg Collective, rather than being individuals. It only serves to make the universal dementia destructive rather than creative... people carving on themselves... people putting their babies in ovens... women starving themselves to death... guys inadvertently killing themselves in some half-brained attempt to prove how macho they are... drive-by shootings... genocide... rape... domestic violence... the list goes on forever... Every single thing I'd wipe off the face of the planet, if only I could, and these are only the more dramatic manifestations of a universal dementia which has been oppressed almost into oblivion by excessively forceful socialization. And where does it come from? Where did these all stem from in the beginning? It came from being forced to conform to 'what is expected', and not having the innate willpower to successfully resist. There is nothing a person can concieve of which doesn't exist somewhere in the universe. There is no situation a person can imagine which didn't occur at at least one time somewhere in the universe. And it all repeats, you see, little circles on bigger circles on even bigger circles. In the boundaryless black I can see even now by looking out the window, there can be, and is, infinite possibility of existance. It's only a matter of looking hard enough. > If you think hate this > idea I want to hear it would you do every thing in your power to kill a > lucid one? No. I would not kill him, but I sure as hell would have neverending fun trying to psychoanalyze him. There is no such thing as a person without a derangement of some kind, because what is 'sane' is so narrowly defined. --Hazel