This is a very good question, imo, and I hope you and your group success in running with it.

You raise the question of whether there is not a kind of “insanity” that is generally not recognized as such, by society and the general public. I think you’re quite right in questioning the essential “sanity” of those who have led our country in this war in Iraq.

The language used here is itself problematic, imo. Do we really “know,” or even “recognize,” what is insane? Do we really mean “irrational”? Is it “insane” to be irrational? Our war in Iraq is certainly irrational, as becomes clearer by the day and month. Is it insane? Quite arguably so, imo.

If our country’s neocon leaders are fundamentally irrational, what about our President and his core of advisors who followed their lead? And what about the Republicans and Democrats who followed our President on such flimsy grounds as were advanced back in 2002? And what about the almost 50% of voters, and members of the Supreme Court, who voted to elect someone as head of the most powerful country and army in the world who had no expertise (or even measurable interest) in foreign policy or international relations. As one high-level Iraqi diplomat said back in 2002, “how does an arrogant idiot become President of the United States”? Answer? We put him there, with our votes.

Which brings the question back home to “us”. Are we all, or at least a very large number of us, “irrational” in even very important parts of our lives? Or, put perhaps a more productive way, are we all only potentially rational, but not necessarily that way by our nature or even by our upbringing? And, if so, how and when, if ever, does one become rational? Or sane.

I think we need to distinguish, carefully, between one’s merely socially acceptable or socially admired, and what is not accepted or admired. If one appears strong or successful, we tend to admire him or her. If one appears weak or not successful, we don’t admire that person. But what if one is strong and but also irrational? Do we admire that? As in Hitler? Stalin? And how about in our case of President Bush? He appears strong to many voters; he also appears increasingly irrational to many voters (not guided by facts, not in touch with the larger reality outside his own narrow circle, unable to learn from his experience, etc.) Does might make right, even if it is insane?

Coming back to your mental health group or movement, I’m aware that, as once a mental health counselor, that people are often incorrectly labeled as mentally ill when their problem is not at all one of being “insane” but rather one of their being actually quite rational, in admitting to themselves, and to others, that they could use some help. Asking for help when you perceive you need it is a highly adaptive and rational behavior. Yet one risks being perceived as weak when asking for help.

Many professionals in the mental health field respond to such “healthy” behaviors by immediately rushing to “diagnose” some theoretically presumed “psychopathology” or “erroneous thinking” in the person asking for help. The theory they use to guide them in doing this is, meanwhile, often itself quite irrational and based on “erroneous thinking” in its own right. Sometimes it is even downright delusional, as in the case of Freudian-based theory.

So, who’s sane, and who isn’t? A good question. As a society, we have to come to do a better job at recognizing the difference between genuine sanity and what’s merely a destructive narcissism.

As a beginning, we certainly need to begin more to look upward in our social hierarchy, where a great deal of craziness and irrationality will be found, and not just downward, where we conventionally look.