January 23, 2008
Discourse on Crazy
I’ve had several people ask me if I intend to change the name of this blog now that I’m back in America. This is based on the misconception that “Crazytown ” refers specifically to China, which was never my intention. Crazytown can be any place that inspires feelings of alienation and bewilderment. It’s more of a state of mind, really. On the other hand, there was also that lame band in the 90’s with the same name. So maybe I do need a new title.
Crazy is a word I throw around a lot in this blog, and like many overused words (”love,” “terrorism,” “100% all natural fruit flavor”) its usage has rendered it imprecise to the point that it could mean just about anything at any given time. I would like to therefore venture a definition, not of crazy as it is used by the vulgar masses, but of Crazy with a capital C, that free-floating force of nature that makes the world go round just as surely as Money and Love and Angular Momentum. The Crazy rears itself whenever the meaningless is treated as meaningful, the arbitrary as inevitable, the ludicrous as commonplace, the inexplicable as self-evident. It’s easier to recognize the Crazy in a place like China because its manifestations are so unfamiliar, but whoever you are wherever you are, the Crazy is all around you. Here are some examples of Crazy I’ve been noticing in my own life recently:
Teachers: Pretty much every teacher I had in high school was Crazy, and now that I’m a teacher myself, I think I understand why. Everyday, I have to go into a room full of people I don’t know very well and start bossing them around. Pulling this off requires a well-orchestrated act of Crazy. I must convince the group assembled before me that I possess certain secrets, certain valuable secrets that they can acquire only if they do as I say. The inevitable result of playing the teacher-student game every day is a Crazy and increasingly unshakable belief that not only do these secrets actually exist but that they are vital and can be accessed only through the prism of my arcane knowledge.
To make matters worse, while some subjects have a more concrete foundation to fall back on than others, nearly all teachers spend a certain amount of time indoctrinating students with the arbitrary rules and classifications that constitute their respective academic traditions. In this way, teachers are perpetuators of the Crazy, and no one has a greater stake in the Crazy than they do. For those of us who teach language, a rigid system of meaningless symbols and random nonsense under the best of circumstances, the Crazy practically flows through our veins. People in general spend a surprising amount of their time and energy insisting that senseless things are sensible, but I do it professionally.
Anyone over 30: I’ve still got a couple of years before I cross this threshold, but I can already feel the Crazy settling in. There might not be any one important milestone, but I definitely feel that you get Crazier as you get older. You get more set in your ways, and the preferences and habits and eccentricities that you’ve accrued begin to appear somehow inevitable. As people get older, their own bizarre behaviors start to seem increasingly normal and the bizarre behaviors of others seem increasingly alien. Thus, zany delusions like bigotry, nationalism and religion, though present at every age, establish the most intense hold over minds loaded down with years.
As always, I’ll keep my eyes peeled for new manifestations of the Crazy and share my observations with my readers as they occur. If anyone’s spotted any particularly delectable scraps of Crazy lately, please let us know.