Juan David's Newsletter - May 1, 2022

Are you crazy or "crazy"?

May 02, 2022

Hi there,

A friend sent me this quote:

“When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind.”
C.S. Lewis

Which is similar to what I say: In a world of crazy people, the sane ones are “crazy.”

Even Steve Jobs:

"Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes ... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things.
They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do."

We hear crazy and crazy and crazy. But what does crazy mean?

If you ask me today, I'd tell you is about not being an NPC (Non-player character) like the people in video games who are not “conscious” and their job is to help the system’s goal whether that is entertainjng users, or doing boring tasks.

But jokes aside, being crazy is being aware of the system and deciding your role either inside or outside. Steve Jobs famously said, "A system can only produce a system” and sometimes the system goes against our goals, desires, and aspirations.

But this isn't really crazy. This is thinking. We've been told to believe it's crazy but is it really? Would a crazy person call another crazy person, crazy? How about a “normal” one? Only the opposites can tell.

But I'll stop calling people you'd normally call “crazy,” and I'll start calling them normal. Think Steve Jobs, or people running away from the cliff.

What causes these people to think? To be normal? To say, “the people going down the hill are dumb, and I don't want to do that”?

I consider myself in this category so the best thing I could do is ask myself is how did I become aware? Maybe it's because I started reading books, or because I listened to a podcast, or Twitter, or who knows? Just kidding.

The moment was when I realized I could do more. I could have big dreams and I accomplish them. I became radically more ambitious. That ambition was the beginning but not the end, far from it. My ambition allowed to see what a life of goals, style, and uniqueness could be about. When you do your work in your own way for its own sake.

The moment you start living for yourself is not when you stop listening to what the system called society is telling you it's good, or valuable, or smart. But when you do the things you want for its own sake because for some reason your intuition is telling you to do it without knowing why or how but just a call to start.

Are there NPCs out there? Yes and it's a fairly scary number. I'm not sure if they're born like that or whether you can wake them up but what I'm sure about is that if you're awake, you need to stay wake by being true to yourself, being optimistic, and avoiding grouping.

The latter was what C.S. Lewis called Inner Rings, which is an idea, I have not stopped thinking about for years, and this is what next week's essay will be about.

Juan David’s Newsletter

Discussion about this post