The greatest danger
that always hovered over humanity
and still hovers over it is the eruption of madness
–which means the eruption of arbitrariness in feeling, seeing, and hearing,
the enjoyment of the mind’s lack of discipline,
the joy in human un-reason.

Not truth and certainty
are the opposite of the world of the madman,
but the universality and
the universal binding force of a faith…

…man’s greatest labor so far
has been to reach agreement…
to submit to a law of agreement
—regardless of whether
these things are true or false.

Continually this faith, as everybody’s faith,
arouses nausea and a new lust in subtler minds…
It is in these impatient spirits
that a veritable delight in madness erupts
because madness has such a cheerful tempo.

There actually are things to be said
in favor of the exception,

provided
that it never wants to become the rule.

–excerpt The Gay Science, Book 2, Section 76 by Friedrich Nietzsche

Confession:  I found myself flummoxed, and a little offended by video images of the NFL draft taking place in Kansas City, Missouri.  Today, Saturday happens to be the last day of the National Football League draft.  The three day event is the annual parceling out of this years cohort of college athletes aspiring to play for one of the professional football teams.  The draft seems, year by year, to resemble an inane festival of football fanatics, adults gathering to release their inner id, unrestrained public partying, especially before a televised audience.

The written words of Nietzsche describe the phenomenon, as well as my outside observer point-of-view. 

There is a suggestion: one can make room for joy in human un-reason,…  And the law of agreement, that binding force of faith has nothing to do with whether what is agreed upon is true or false.