Notes on Madness Overrated

“Everyone around the globe is madly running all the time for the hope of having a good life one day. We are all obsessed with better and more, but becoming madder and lonelier by the day as we run more after the idea of more. As we adapt to everything that is offered to us in the name of progress and growth, we are turning into robots who are programmed to work, consume, and destroy. Loosing all our abilities and skills that make us humans, we are not able to live peacefully with each other but determined to run a big bully machine together.”

…and I was not comfortable with all that…

I would describe the book as an honest, direct, and simple expression of the emotions and thoughts of a human being under the pressure of the mad world surrounding us all. A philosophical questioning of the consumption-based, growth obsessed dynamics that shape our societies and lives around the world. I can call it a rebellion against a game that makes us forget about asking questions and thinking clearly. A global call to awareness and change.

How My Writing Journey Started

I have searched for meaning in everything I have done in life, but after becoming a mother I started questioning my own life and the world around me in a much more critical way. I was questioning what my life purpose was, what I should really be doing with my life. Especially after an experience like motherhood, you search for a comparable meaning and satisfaction in other areas of your life… similarly instinctive, similarly creative and similarly rewarding.

I was trained to be a scientist in a laboratory, but I was more interested in observing life itself. One of the most extraordinary experiences for me as a scientist was to observe a human being discover life on earth and grow amazing skills each day. Witnessing how much intuition, knowledge, and intelligence new borns have naturally, made me realize how hard we adults try to make them adapt to our mad world… how we do everything to disconnect them from their divine nature just like it was done to us. Connecting back to my own divine nature with the help of my son and other inspirational people who wrote and talked about it, the way things worked in our mad world seemed really absurd and irrelevant to me.

Motivation to Write

With those realizations, I had a hard time going back to one of the predefined roles in the society for me, I had the urge to discover my real self and create my own unique path. Then an old friend appeared in my life and gave me the inspiration and encouragement to write. Then I found myself spending 4-5 hours a day in front of the computer everyday, writing and trying to make sense of the thoughts and ideas I had accumulated over the years.

During that time, I was reading several motivational books and listening to inspirational talks. I admired the ideas that most of the motivational books suggested but there was something missing for me. Something beyond what one could achieve on an individual level. Most of the books tell you that it’s all about you, that you have to change the way you think, act, and manifest and then you will have a great life. What if you are positive, though? What if you are self-loving, confident, and hard-working—but somehow the world around you has just gone out of control and became a big bully? What if there are no positive people around to raise your vibrations because everyone is conditioned by negativity and manipulated by fear? What if we are all being enslaved by those who can’t control their obsession for control and more?

Is it enough just try to stay positive then? If we are all collectively bullied, is it really possible to be happy individually?

The Mad Man

As I started searching and reading about what might be going on behind the scenes, I developed a clear understanding that the majority of the human population in the world was under heavy manipulation and control of a certain minority, a very mad minority… That’s how the Mad Man idea came about…

I introduced the Mad Man as a symbol of the driving forces of our mad world. Then I started paying attention to everything around me that I thought was a part of the Mad Man’s manipulation game…

Personally the Mad Man for me was as a symbol of everything that bothered me in my own life and in the world. If I were to pick all the characteristics that annoyed me in people and load them onto one person, I would end up with the Mad Man. Initially I was getting upset with people who reminded me of the Mad Man but when I had a good understanding that we were all being manipulated into becoming mad mans ourselves, I could not get upset with myself or anyone else anymore. It was obvious to me that we were all catching a contagious disease and giving it to each other just to survive… So my desire was to understand the nature of this disease and find out how we could heal ourselves and the world.

Madness Disease - We Are All Made to be Mad

All those TV shows with authorities telling people what to do what not to do, the idea that we have to consume more of what we don’t need so the corporations can grow more, that whole democracy joke and an ever growing war industry around it.. all those new laws and regulations taking our freedoms and privacy away… all that competition and fear continuously pumped into people’s minds to disconnect them from each other… and you don’t even have a choice, there is no running away from the madness.. You think you isolate yourself from the harsh competition of the corporate environment for example by setting up a business on your own terms and pace, and then you find yourself having to compete for your child’s education with other families, having to compete in the Saturday traffic because that’s when everyone is supposed to shop, or having to fight for leisure activities because everyone has to relax at the same time when they are told to do so…

You have to also isolate yourself from the madness coming from the news and media, from politicians, from each other… from a system that suppresses the average human more and more by the day. Once I realized that it’s everywhere and increasing its intensity by the day, I understood that I can’t really isolate myself from it anymore and I have to do something about it…

The more experiences and observations I had about a system that suppresses the average human more the day, the clearer it became that madness was everywhere and it was diffusing into our cells through the foods we eat, products we buy, news we hear, or the conversations we hold… At that point I felt like I was one of the subjects in someone’s experiment on humans, and I decided to write my observations as one of the subjects in that experiment. What was happening to a human under the exposure of such degree of madness… experimental results, written by one of the subjects…

Since there was no running away from the madness, I had to face it, understand what it was all about, and where it came from. Then I started typing away in an effort to describe the madness disease - how it works and how it makes me feel.

Detaching myself from Madness and Becoming and Observer of It

Writing created the space for me where I could detach myself from the madness and become an observer of it.

At that point I was mentally able to detach myself from the madness and became an observer of it. I started writing how it makes me feel and how it shapes the human lives and the world. I kind of took a picture of the situation, but a picture that would evoke the curiosity of the readers and encourage them to find their own data from their own lives and connect the dots.

So there are no cited documents or references given in this book if anyone is looking for that kind of content. It is all about an exploration of the mind as a function of the outside factors.

Motivation to Publish

I thought there must be others who felt the same way about the way things worked, it couldn’t be only me. That’s when I had the desire to publish what I wrote. That way I could connect with those who were feeling the same way under the pressures of this mad world and maybe we could all do something about it..

At some point you feel like I am not the only one feeling this way, because the Mad World is suppressing everyone around the globe in a similar way and creating the same kind of mad feelings. Then that gives you a feeling of being united with the other souls and a significant awareness of your collective power. If our collective power made the world as mad as it is, then it’s again our collective power that can change everything and create a balanced version of the world.

Writing Process

I am a very distracted person and my thoughts are quite scattered most of the time. Writing in a continuous manner is not usually the case for me. I have different thoughts coming at different times to my mind, say like a puzzle that have pieces scattered all around… For a while I collect those ideas, then I start bringing them all together to create a continuous flow and a big picture.

Challenges

My biggest challenge was having to interrupt writing when I felt like writing. I procrastinate a lot and it takes me a long time to concentrate on writing, so if I gain a good momentum, I would like to roll with it… but of course I also have other responsibilities in life like everyone else.

I wrote the first two parts in 6 months. Then there was a big pause because of some changes in my life. Those changes made me have other experiences that pushed me to discover the Mad Man in me and prepared me for the latter part of the book.

I felt stuck for a while though. I kept reading the first two parts and said ok, I observed the mad world, described the problems in detail… Now what? How am I going to continue? Is it enough to do a failure analysis of the world? How does it change? Do I have any solutions? Do I have any ideas for how we can heal ourselves and the world?

I had this vision that this book was going to end in a positive way… It was going to give people hope, not only awareness.. but how? Because one thing that I thought madness was doing to people was taking away their hope and making them feel that no matter what they do, it is not ok.. and I thought if I left it with the first two parts, I would serve the same mad purpose.. all these ideas had to lead somewhere better, and transform themselves into hope and courage in the third part.

Then it took me a whole year to digest the experiences that would allow me to write the last part of the book… I had to discover some deeper layers of my personalty and soul that I hadn’t met before… discover the Mad Man in me, understand that everything that I was bothered with the outside world was also there within me…

This was not an easy period. It was devastating to know that everything I was criticizing was actually a part of me… all that I got angry about the Mad Man or anyone else was actually getting angry to myself for still keeping the madness in me, and not having the courage to change from within. What I was searching outside was not the cure to my inner healing… After that realization, my personal transformation started I think, and I was able to come up with ideas as to how it could all change which led me to write the third part of the book.

The latter part of the book took me a longer time because it was the part that I had not experienced yet.. in contrast to the first part… or maybe experienced but only in memories..

Then I started writing about the remedy, how the Mad Man’s game can be turned upside down with our collective power. (If we were the main driving power of the Mad Man’s game, then it should be us again who could turn the game upside down and create the best version of this world that we humans can be a harmonious part of).

Then I also wanted to dream and create a vision as to how it could be after the transformation.. what the balanced version of the world and humans would look like and how our lives flow as a part of the amazing part of the universe.

My Favorite Part of the Book

There is no specific part of the book that I would call my favorite… Because I consider it as a good piece of work when I think of it its entirety.

I think I was passionate about every single part in this book, but the most I cared about was how I could connect these different parts to each other for a perfect flow. I have to say that I am quite proud of the clarity and flow I created from the beginning to the end.

Critical questioning is liberating and pushes people to see the magnitude of power within towards transforming their lives. From this point of view I consider Madness Overrated as an important book. Because it creates awareness and motivates one to look behind the visible to understand the root cause of the issues that we humans are experiencing around the globe.. Eventually the book leaves the reader thinking “how am I personally contributing to this madness and what can I do to change it”

I never had a conscious thought about becoming a writer I think… and I still don’t necessarily want to label myself one way or the other.. Because I believe writing is a certain way which we can express our creativity and there are many ways that we humans can express our creativity..

However, I can say that it is the best way that I found to express my real self. Years ago, a friend of mine told me that I was normally a calm person, but when I was with other people I reflected their energy.. That comment made me think a lot about what belonged to me and what didn’t among the things I did in life. Then I discovered my empath nature and realized that only when I isolated myself from others I get to discover my real self. That discovery led me to find my unique way of expressing myself as a writer.

What I love about writing

What I love about writing is that how much you can create given how little you have physically. A blank page and a pen… or a blank page on a computer.. That really is what amazes me about it… how much you can create with how little you have… how many souls you can touch with what you create.. how you can fit many years of life experiences into a few pages… how free you can get expressing your feelings… you might even be able to change the world…

Changing my Path

It is not easy to put aside your accomplishments in another field and say no, I don’t want to walk on this path anymore.. However when you find your real path, you realize that all those experiences were there for a reason… a part of your learning of the physical world on the way to bringing your divinity when you have the courage to recreate yourself one day.

Then you have guides and angels that help you.. They sometimes appear in your life as friends who help you connect to your soul, inspire you to write and discover your life purpose… Your child becomes your biggest inspiration and your husband your biggest supporter on your journey. Then you find an editor with whom you are oceans apart but somehow she really understands you the most… then when you search for ideas as to how this work could be published, an old friend calls out of the blue for coffee and tell you all about the independent publishing options which perfectly matches to the spirit of your book… then other angels come as your readers who give you so much encouragement when you need the most.. and then you find a narrator who connects with the book so much that he reads the book just like how it sounded in your head when you were writing it… You have those key people who share their light with you to push you in the direction of your own light.. and that’s when you feel you are on the right path and you should keep going…

All my life I’ve been a believer of positive thinking.. but then no matter how much I tried to avoid negativity and stay positive, negativity has always found me. And at some point I realized that there was no running away from it, I had to face it, understand what it was all about, and where it comes from. This is how I started thinking and writing about madness.