I have a fascination with people who have extremely intricate, creative and often twisted minds. I gravitate towards writers like Hunter S Thompson and find beauty in songs and art that are deeply metaphorical and mysterious. I also have a deep fear towards these types of artists at the same time. I think I am one of those few post-Objectivists that are more curious than disgusted by the modern art movement and postmodernism in general. I empathize more with those who want to take risks and explore the flaws of being human, even when it often leads them to self destruction. I fear that self destruction more than anything.
I call people like this scrambled egg brains. They took their active minds and stimulated them in such a way that made them more connected with their thoughts and emotions than connected with reality. Philosophers like Nietzsche and Krishnamurti come to mind when I think of great people who have been inflicted with this condition. It is this condition, this kind of uncontrolled stream of data, with nuggets of genius, that lights me up.
I don’t show this part of me openly in my day-to-day, or at least I don’t think I do, but I consider myself as a carrier of this condition. I think this is where my fascination and fear of these people comes into play. I love to tap my own creativity and let myself spill out onto paper (or pixels) and get a tea leaf reading of who I really am as a person. That coupled with disconnection with reality, however, is what I have observed leading into self destruction with myself and others. I don’t think it’s a conscious self destruction by any means. I think it is in our programming from our childhoods. It is the illogic that was inflicted on us as children. Being told stories about hell and sin and then given no answer to a simple question, “Why?”
Many of us grew up with parents who were completely mind fucked from the hippy movement (aka Vietnam War), coupled with the superstitions and bigotries of the past. Even if our own parents didn’t do drugs themselves, they were still inflicted by the type of thinking.
Everytime I see someone else with scrambled egg brains, I feel deeply sad that they were unable to connect their beautiful creativity to reality. I feel joy in their self-expression through their art, but I also feel the pain in their utter confusion with the world.
Part of my personality wants to take me down to the end of that road. Down the road of letting down all barriers and letting my mind explode open into whatever form feels most natural. I fear that form will take on a self destructive quality because of the twisted thoughts that were inflicted upon me by my parents, teachers and other hurt people when I was a child.
I have been trying most of my life to develop a methodology to combat this unconscious desire to live in my own head and escape from reality through subjectivism. So far what has kept me grounded is the scientific method. I know that as humans we are pattern recognizing machines. That unfettered can lead to making connections that don’t really exist in reality. That in itself is not really a problem. That is what helps us to abstract and understand the world and our interaction with it. However, patterns can be created in our own minds that do not correspond with reality in any way. That is what leads to false-concepts such as god, the state and other self destructive thought processes. We can trust our senses, but only to the point that they are actually able to interpret reality. The rest we need to leave up to trial and error and leave conclusions aside until we can be sure enough to function in reality.
It’s a fine line I walk because I love deep thinking philosophy as I love deep feeling psychology. However, both left without a methodology will leave you disoriented, confused and ultimately destroyed. Worse than that, it’s a disease that can be passed onto your children. There’s nothing more self destructive than participating in the destruction of a young mind.
Here’s a video that helped me to understand the brain better:
And here are some videos from artists that I appreciate but also think have the momentum towards scrambled egg brains.
I’d love to hear others thoughts on this because I think it’s a topic that is close to the surface for most people but one that is hard to admit because letting people know you have that potential often makes them treat you like a time bomb. (I think because they feel that own potential in themselves and have that fear about themselves)
