a rambling Usenet reply
The following is the main part of the message Hoki-aamrel the dragon (the firebreather whose typist I just happen to be) once sent to alt.fan.dragons, and it was a followup to a message someone wrote, so it starts from nowhere. The discussion was about "creative insanity", or do you have to be insane to be creative.
Warning, 2005-10-11: This was originally posted in 1997-08-13. As such, this is an Old and Crufty Article. Not that I don't agree with it as much as I did it back then...
Copyright © 1997 Urpo Lankinen.
Author E-mail:
wwwwolf@iki.fi
Author home page:
http://www.iki.fi/wwwwolf/
I didn't meant that one has to be a complete lunatic to be creative, and sincerest apologies to all who got offended. Sometimes, the complete lunatics are just as bad as the sane people (ever heard of "vandals"?)
The "sane" people just let the creating to someone else. "Sanity" is the norm - if you think of the term "sane", the best possibe definition is "normal". There is no such thing as completely normal people (also known as the Boring Clods), but most of people accept most of the norms, and thus can be called normal people.
The creative people, in other hand, dare to do things they want to do, do as they think they should, do something that "sane" persons will never think of. Insanity is a voluntary (or involuntary) state of mind, desire to be different from the norm, desire for your own personal freedom to create.
Just think of it: Do the "normal" people create? Is it normal to write a book? In "sane" point of view, writing a 500-page book is waste of time and money, and a risky thing to do - it may be the case that no one will read the book anyway, and the publisher will use it as a doorjam. So, what's the reason to write a book? There is no reason to do so. The world is full of books about everything.
The only reason for the book was that someone wanted to write it - the author or someone who helped him. He knew all things I listed, but he didn't cared - he just wanted to write the book. So, the author needed a small spark of insanity - the only thing in the world that made him not to consider the risks. He could write the book, so he did it.
The "creative insanity" is something like "No one will like this, but I am doing it anyway", the ultimate reason to not to think practically. Hey, that's the only reason for why my typist wanted to put up a website! He never thought of the practical uses of the website, he just did it, "in hope that soneone will find it useful" as he said.
Then there are gods who are creatively insane. The god, or whatever, created the world. No one knows why. Obviously there is no practical use for a universe like this - it just is here. Creative insanity is a great mystery of divine origin.
And again, this text is here just in case you feel like reading it. I had no intention to express my views of creative insanity publicly, making me look like a complete idiot. And I probably am.
And there is an old hacker saying: "A hacker does for love what others would not do for money." Works for me.