All earlier people
found it much more likely that
wherever there is madness
there is also a grain of genius and wisdom
— something ‘divine’,

as one whispered to oneself.
Or rather: as one said aloud forcefully enough.
‘It is through madness that the greatest good things have come to Greece’,
Plato said, in concert with all ancient mankind.

Let us go a step further:
all superior men who were irresistibly drawn
to throw off the yoke of any kind of morality
and to frame new laws had, if they were not actually mad,
no alternative but to make themselves or pretend to be mad

– and this indeed applies to innovators in every domain
and not only in the domain of priestly and political dogma:
– even the innovator of poetical meter
had to establish his credentials
by madness.

…‘Ah, give me madness, you heavenly powers!
Madness, that I may at last believe in myself!

Give deliriums and convulsions, sudden lights and darkness,
terrify me with frost and fire
such as no mortal has ever felt,
with deafening din and prowling figures,
make me howl and whine and crawl like a beast:

so that I may only come to believe in myself!

Daybreak by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. R. G. Collingwood aphorism 14

Mental illness is not be taken lightly.  Anyone living with depression, or with schizophrenia knows there are no words adequate to communicate the hell of emotions, the disruption of reason attendant to these conditions.  Presently we tamp down symptoms with pharmaceuticals.  In our ancestor’s day madness meant that you lived with the torment, and your family and neighbors did what they could to avoid you or to support you.

Nietzsche was a troubled soul.  He wrote from first hand experience.  These lines portray the potential which madness entails, derived from resistance to the demons of the psyche one learns that one is a survivor, that psychic toughness comes from hanging on by one’s fingernails, that one’s POV has merit, that one has nothing to lose by speaking or by writing one’s truth.

For us Americans it is very ‘late in the day.’ Autocrat Putin is on the cusp of slaughtering many more in Ukraine and enslaving those who survive. When Ukraine is digested, which of the former Soviet colonies/nations will be next?

China is bulking up it’s military, openly aspiring to hegemony in Asia.  The CCP believes its time has come.  And Taiwan?

Here at home Americans are antagonistic, divided ideologically along regional lines. The Republican Party is in thrall to a home-grown autocrat, a byproduct of abuse, and of winner-takes-all capitalism. The Democratic Party flies the banner of the status quo, to keep everything in one piece, just as it is, to freeze change, to stave off things becoming worse…

It is very late.

Wanted: madmen and madwomen!