Italian sociologist of religion dislikes fellow sociologist's book which says most founders of religions were mentally disturbed

 Massimo Introvigne v. Stephen Kent, here.

Kent's book is Psychobiographies and Godly Visions: Disordered Minds and the Origins of Religiosity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025). 

Of course you wouldn't like such a book when your career involves defending religious liberty and someone comes along and almost says that the myriads of misguided followers of these religions all belong in the nuthouse. 

The review is as long on disappointment as the book apparently is on vituperation and makes little effort to engage with the substance of the claims, which in its own way is very amusing to those of us who have never granted that fields such as sociology and economics are real sciences.

Meanwhile, it would have been nice if this review had engaged the New Testament's statements, for example, that Jesus' family thought he was beside himself, or that Festus thought Paul's great learning had made him mad, but it didn't.

The topic is not illegitimate.

  

Interview with Religious Studies academic states right out of the box that many UFO experiencers learn from it that a bad end of the world is coming lol

Gee, where did they get that idea?

The possible answers to that are not seriously addressed in this more-ways-than-one frustrating podcast with Ross Douthat of The New York Times.

 

... Douthat: When people report having a telepathic connection, you said they get information from, or they feel like they’ve gotten information from, these experiences. What kind of information do they get? What does that mean when people report this?

Pasulka: A lot of the people would report the information as something that had to do with the future. They would have ideas of basically an apocalypse, a bad scenario for the future.

The people who I talked to at this conference were pretty convinced that we were going to face some type of cataclysm. So I talked to them a little bit about how people have thought that for about 2,000 years. [Chuckles.] ...

Pasulka: It appears to be a perennial thing. So there appears to be something that interfaces with humans and has been identified in the various traditional religions.

Douthat: Identified as what?

Pasulka: Well, I’m not going to name it, because in some traditional religions it’s named in different ways. So it could be bodhisattvas, angels, demons — things like that. ...

 

The whole thing is here in "What if the Government Believes in U.F.O.s More Than You Do?"

If you are looking for a religion scholar to say that the UFO cult is a human creation just like every other religion, you won't find that from Diana Walsh Pasulka, a practicing Catholic who wants to argue for the legitimacy of mystery and of people's experience of that mystery, even if they work for a government which cannot be trusted on UFOs.

It is telling that a member of a hierarchical religion which is imbued with deference to authority finds the belief in UFOs among government employees somehow more compelling than that belief among private individuals:

... they have various titles. They have quote-unquote “day jobs” as, say, a mission controller at Cape Canaveral, things like that. And almost all of them called it this: They said, “my hobby job.” They would call it their hobby.           

Elites also run in herds.  

This is most certainly true about the tattoo

 

Joe Biden was widely regarded as the clown of the U.S. Senate 1973-2009 for offensive antics like this, but America made him president anyhow

 

 Because whom the gods would destroy they first make insane.

 

President Joe Biden has enraged Catholic Church regulars with his latest show of approval for abortion, a Vatican red line.

On Tuesday in Florida, where he blasted the state’s impending six-week abortion ban, Biden blessed himself with the sign of the cross when the woman introducing him referenced Florida’s shorter window for abortion.

The group Catholic Vote blasted Biden’s actions on X.

More.

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad

They meet with darkness in the daytime, and grope in the noonday as in the night. 

-- Job 5:14

 Solar eclipse frenzy sweeps across North America • FRANCE 24 English:

 

A Hellenized Jew might well recognize in Paul's three descriptions of his conversion experience and of his life in general a man judged by God according to Greek Deuteronomy

The LORD shall smite thee with madness (παραπληξίᾳ, stunned confusion), and blindness (ἀορασίᾳ, sightlessness), and astonishment of heart (ἐκστάσει, being out of one's mind): And thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee. 

-- Deuteronomy 28:28f. 

Stunned confusion

And he [Saul] said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. 

-- Acts 9:5

And I answered, Who art thou, Lord? And he said unto me, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest.

-- Acts 22:8

And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. 

-- Acts 26:15

Sightlessness

And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw no man: but they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink. ... And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized.  

-- Acts 9:8f.,18

And when I could not see for the glory of that light, being led by the hand of them that were with me, I came into Damascus.  And one Ananias, a devout man according to the law, having a good report of all the Jews which dwelt there, Came unto me, and stood, and said unto me, Brother Saul, receive thy sight. And the same hour I looked up upon him.  

-- Acts 22:11ff.

Being out of one's mind

And [Saul] hath seen in a vision (ὁράματι) a man named Ananias coming in, and putting his hand on him, that he might receive his sight.  

-- Acts 9:12

And it came to pass, that, when I was come again to Jerusalem, even while I prayed in the temple, I was in a trance (ἐκστάσει);  

-- Acts 22:17

And there arose a great cry: and the scribes that were of the Pharisees' part arose, and strove, saying, We find no evil in this man: but if a spirit or an angel hath spoken to him, let us not fight against God.  

-- Acts 23:9

Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision (ὀπτασίᾳ):  

-- Acts 26:19

And as he thus spake for himself, Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself (Μαίνῃ); much learning doth make thee mad (μανίαν). But he said, I am not mad (μαίνομαι), most noble Festus; but speak forth the words of truth and soberness.  

-- Acts 26:24ff.

Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one--I am talking like a madman (παραφρονῶν)--with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I have received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned. Three times I have been shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brethren; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. 

 -- II Corinthians 11:23ff.

Then said Agrippa unto Festus, This man might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed unto Caesar.  

-- Acts 26:32

 

$13 trillion in new debt and climbing, and 7.2 million new illegal aliens in America and counting since Crazy Uncle Joe's inauguration in January 2021

But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee:

The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart:

The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low. He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail.  

-- Deuteronomy 28:15, 28, 43f.

Apparently she's experienced both things lol

 GOLDIE HAWN: An alien touched me and it felt like the finger of God...

At Christmas thoughts do not naturally turn to Mary's crazy, problem child of the Gospel of Mark

Bart Ehrman, December 2014, here:

Mark does not narrate an account of Jesus’ birth. Mark never says a word about Jesus’ mother being a virgin. Mark does not presuppose that Jesus had an unusual birth of any kind. And in Mark (you don’t find this story in Matthew and Luke!!), Jesus’ mother does not seem to know that he is a divinely born son of God. On the contrary, she thinks he has gone out of his mind. Mark not only lacks a virgin birth story; it seems to presuppose that they [sic] never could have been a virgin birth. Or Mary would understand who Jesus is. But she does not.

It’s no wonder that when Matthew and Luke took over so many of the stories of Mark, they decided, both of them, *not* to take over Mark 3:20-21. They had completely different view of Jesus’ mother and his birth.

LOL, Presbyterian David French is completely unfamiliar with the far-right road show in revolutionary America which repeatedly called the people to arms from Protestant pulpits

He's shocked, I tell you, shocked:

 If you think it’s remotely unusual that a truly extremist event (which included more than one person who’d called for hanging his political opponents) was held at a church, then you’re not familiar with far-right road shows that are stoking extremism in church after church at event after event. ... We know that fanatical religious subcultures can do an immense amount of damage to the body politic. ... what we face is an Christian subculture that is full of terrible religious purpose. The seeds of renewed political violence are being sown in churches across our land.

 More.

In 1776 the David French of 2022 would almost certainly have been a Loyalist, and the sworn enemy of the Presbyterian Rebellion condemned by George III.

Unlike today's fire-breathing right-wing lunatics, French is a proud proponent of "elite Evangelicalism" and "elite American culture" for whom "Christian nationalism" is an oxymoron. Those crazy Pentecostal patriots supporting Donald Trump come from the other side of the tracks, in case you needed reminding. David French is above all that, and stands for everything good, proper, and reasonable, you see. Like the Pharisees did. He is not like other men.

But his idea that a "new insurrection is being organized, in a sanctuary near you" is just as crazy as his idea that January 6th actually was one.

How a now de-Christianized America is suddenly going to embrace a bunch of religious fanatics with their hair on fire is not explained, but the "apocalyptic message" of "national doom" comes for us all, including for David French.

Is there a public Christian today who is more out of touch with the deeply political nature of the history of Protestant experience in America than he?

A psychology of the children of light . . .

. . . or why you became a religious fanatic, a band groupie, the Chicago Cubs' Number One Fan, a fill-in-the-blank junkie/obsessive-compulsive, a political radical, an activist, a racist, or maybe a workaholic, drug addict or alcoholic, got a tattoo or covered yourself in them, cut your ears, and maybe your tongue, nose, nipples or genitals, replete with jewelry, questioned your sexuality or gender, added or subtracted breasts, got a chopadickoffofme or an addadicktome, keep changing your hair color, or are otherwise consumed by your "identity".

Because you ain't heavy.

 

 

 

 

 

 Are Twitter trolls mentally ill? :

"diagnoses of the various kinds of personality disorder are very fuzzy — often people are in several categories, or don’t fit neatly into any of them." ...

"neurotypical people ... are heavy, it takes a lot to move you. So when something quite nice happens to a neurotypical person, it makes them slightly happier: the wind only moves them a little bit. When something quite unpleasant happens, it makes them slightly sadder. ... if you are cognitively light, then the same events will move you much further. ... think of it as someone being light, rather than heavy: being blown on the wind of events. [Light] people ... feel emotions much more strongly. But they also have difficulty forming a strong self-image, and often take on very visible identities, such as being a Goth or a fan of a particular band, dyeing their hair or getting tattoos, in order to give themselves something solid to cling to." ...

"we all grow more emotionally stable over the course of our lives (as children, we are very emotionally volatile, and settle down with age) and by middle age, most people ... are leading healthy and happy lives. One study followed up patients 27 years after diagnosis and found that 92% of them no longer met the diagnostic criteria." /end

The easy malleability of the human personality, its "light" nature, its instability, particularly of the child, is both a feature and a bug according to the New Testament.

Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.

-- Luke 18:17

The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit.

-- John 3:8

While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light.

-- John 12:36

Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. ... But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.  

-- I Thessalonians 5:5,8

That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; 

-- Ephesians 4:14

For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:

-- Ephesians 5:8

Timothy Dalrymple of Christianity Today calls on Christians to pay reparations to black people

Here.

It's absurd on its face, and for many reasons, the most interesting to me being the way Dalrymple falls into the trap of depersonalizing Jesus' call to individual repentance and restitution and mistaking it for a social program. 

This is the magazine, remember, which opposed the dropping of THE BOMB to end WWII.

You remember Tim, by the way. He thinks Mormons, who still give safe harbor to polygamists, excel at family values.

He's also been rather too curious about competitors' web traffic statistics. You might say he's seemed a little too interested in that, jealous even.

And now it's time for Christians, who've done nothing wrong, to pay black people, who were never wronged.

Tim doesn't tell you that Black Lives Matter wants more than reparations. It wants redistribution of wealth.

Maybe that doesn't bother Tim. Maybe he thinks that's what Jesus wanted. If he does he should come right out and say that Jesus was a communist.

I'm sure evangelicals everywhere would find that quite interesting.

At any rate, the Tim Dalrymples of the world are clueless. They sell this as if the mayhem will stop if we make just one more gesture, when what's needed is a firm, loud shout of NO!

Reparations won't stop the mayhem. They will only encourage more.

It's editorials like this which further cement my decision long ago to leave the fever swamp American Christianity has become.

Whatever I've become, at least I'm not nuts. 

 

Lutherans put the best construction on everything, including the president whom crazy Jihadists elected to Congress want to impeach

Luther's explanation of the eighth commandment "Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor": "We should fear and love God that we may not deceitfully belie, betray, slander nor defame our neighbor, but defend him, speak well of him, and put the best construction on everything."

Men only recover their senses slowly, one by one

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.

-- Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, 1841

Jesus' encounter with the Sadducees is pro-Pauline propaganda, not history

God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

-- Matthew 22:32

He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living.

-- Mark 12:27

For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him.

-- Luke 20:38

The idea that Jesus got into a dust-up with the Sadducees over the intermediate state and resurrection and basically ended up taking the position of the Pharisees for himself is absurd. This is evidence of the later Pauline consensus contaminating the tradition, at the expense of the eschatology of the historical Jesus.

Talk of an intermediate state, for example, between death and final judgment where the dead go to be with the Lord interjects a fatal pause to the present time, which for Jesus is pregnant with eschatological expectation. That pause necessarily would have undercut the present sense of urgency which informed the call to repent and escape what is surely coming.

With an intermediate state awaiting at death instead of judgment imminently confronting, one rationalizes away the extraordinary current moment in favor of the continuation of human history as it has always continued.

 

The need to leave all and follow Jesus evaporates (Matthew 4; Mark 10; Luke 5; Luke 18), replaced by less consequential belief.

 

The establishment of a settled life and therefore a church is made possible, which accomodates itself to time instead of revolting against it.

 

A Gentile mission, specifically ruled out by Jesus (Matthew 10), becomes possible in Athens where "in him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28) has more currency than "the kingdom of God is at hand" in Jerusalem (Mark 1:15). The kingdom focused on Jerusalem recedes from view, as does the God who is coming there soon to judge this generation's guilt for the blood of all the prophets!

The problem for historians is that there was never a sound proponent of Jesus' eschatology who followed him who could match the thoroughgoing Pauline theology. And why should have such a person arisen if his followers "after the flesh" had truly understood Jesus as they must have? Their expectation also would have continued to be for an imminent end, even despite the death and resurrection of their master: "Wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6). There was no impetus to document anything for posterity, since posterity would never come to exist. This means that the gospels must be viewed with great suspicion everywhere, for they are the products of the subsequent, already compromised, period. They are not of the Urzeit. Only out of respect for Jesus do they preserve any of the conflicting evidence from his teaching.

Consider that if an intermediate state is put forward in the mouth of Jesus, all sense of urgency about the imminent coming judgment he predicted would necessarily melt away with authority. Belief in the restyled message of atonement could more easily become the message, relieving everyone of the onerous original obligations of discipleship. The obvious failure of the kingdom's coming meant Paul's rationalizations were ready made for the occasion, and came as a relief. In he stepped and supplied the solution to the ongoing disappointment caused by the delay of the parousia, and the death of the disciples' generation simply made all this a fait accompli.

Jesus did not view himself as Paul viewed him. "Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more" (2 Corinthians 5:16). Jesus viewed himself as the people viewed him, as a prophet. Thinking himself destined for death as so many of the prophets before him were, Jesus is unique because he thought of himself as the final prophet. Even as he's about to die he can say that history as we know it is about to end, too:

"[Y]e shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven."

-- Mark 14:62

"From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation."

-- Luke 11:51

This is where Muhammad got his idea to style himself as the final prophet, but armed with a sword, centuries later! More than most New Testament critics of modern times, Muhammad long before sensed the inadequacy of the gospels' handling of Jesus' eschatological message. And if Paul of Tarsus could receive direct revelations from God and refound a movement, so much more the better. So could he!

There is no dying and rising as a sacrifice for sins in Jesus' mind, only prophets perishing unjustly in Jerusalem. The rising is added under the influence of hysterical women, and an unstable Pharisee, Paul.

The fanatical Benjaminite had recourse to the resurrected Jesus to make sense of his own personal conversion experience, which was really a mental breakdown if one is to be perfectly frank about it. After all, after a surprising, brief period of activity as a Jesus advocate instead of as the well known and feared Jesus persecutor he had recently been, Paul disappears for a period of ten years, if the chronology and the account are to be believed. This is hardly the behavior of a settled individual convinced by his experiences one way or another, but of a still-troubled person. It was during this time that Paul must have developed his ideas of Jesus' sacrificial death and resurrection under the influence of the direct, supernatural visions and revelations he claimed were the sole basis of his gospel: "For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ" (Galatians 1:12). What these really were is anyone's guess, but in his own time people already were calling him crazy. To be sure they are at the same time productive of ingenious solutions, as his letters testify. These solutions eventually supplied Paul with a ready escape from the offense of his own Jewish particularity, which he experienced as a Roman citizen in his Asian backwater, and at the same time validated the Pharisaic impulse, which he imbibed as a youth and to which he remained committed, to democratize Temple holiness by making proselytes and founding synagogues. His possession of the Roman franchise reinforced his ideas of human equality under God and their legitimacy.

The body of Jesus temporarily and hastily buried was missing on Easter morn because it was moved. The disciples to a man did not believe Jesus rose from the dead, only the women in their hysteria at discovering this did. (If one is looking for the incipient enthusiasm later displayed by early Christianity described in Acts, it is here). The gospels' portrayal of the general dim pall of ignorance of a predicted rising on the third day which hung over the movement despite all the supposed evidence to the contrary makes no sense if Jesus were in fact a resurrection preacher and intermediate state believer first and foremost. That "evidence" became part of the narrative ex post facto. The idea otherwise should not have been rejected so out of hand by his very own disciples as it was. The plainest explanation for their unbelief on the third day is that they had no prior knowledge of the idea of resurrection on the third day, and that because Jesus had never preached it.

Paul the Apostle is the true founder of Christianity. He co-opted the sectarian Jewish eschatological religion preached by Jesus. An enthusiast for Pharisaism to the end, Paul's personal ambition was to make Judaism safe as a universal religion, relegating present Jerusalem to the discarded past: "She is in slavery with her children" (Galatians 4:25). By turning Jesus into a Pharisee, he succeeded.

Nevertheless I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following; for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!

-- Luke 13:33f.

Larry Norman: Is Christ a myth? a madman's whim?

The happy whimsey you pursue,

Till you at length believe it true,

Caught by your own delusive art,

You fancy first, and then assert.

-- Matthew Prior

For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. 

-- Mark 11:23f.

 

Larry Norman - First Day In Church (Poem Spoken) - [Live]

This was that: Misinterpreting the past with the present

What are we to make of John Allen Chau, an American missionary murdered in India?:

I think his was authentically a Christian death. ... I believe he is indeed a martyr.

I believe this, one, because of all the laughter, because his sanity's been questioned. Some thought the same of Jesus, you see, some even from his own family. In early accounts of Christian martyrs, centuries ago, repeatedly, the scorn leveled against them was that they were crazy too, unbalanced, that they had a death wish. "Why do you rush towards death?" they asked Pionius, one of our early martyrs, a mouthy Christian priest crucified, the story goes, just like Christ. "I am not rushing towards death, but towards life," he said. It's a misunderstanding typical between those who believe and those who don't; one thinking the other one crazy, the other embracing life in death amid the ridicule of those playing it safe. It's why nothing of the laughter or of the disapproval of the agnostically sane persuades me to pass judgment. Because martyrs don't make sense, never have. But neither did Jesus, nor his Crucifixion.

Jesus wasn't thought crazy by his family because he had a death wish.

He was thought crazy because he renounced his family and his social responsibilities and took up the mantle of prophet, urging others to do just as he had done in order to escape the imminently coming judgment.

The death wish idea was imported ex post facto and superimposed on a narrative which remarkably resisted and survived.

The only thing worthy of scorn is Jesus' would-be followers' immemorial ignorance of why he believed Israel deserved the judgment he preached in the first place. 

Children of Linda Sarsour's beloved mentor, Imam Siraj, arrested in New Mexico for child abuse, allegedly training them to be school shooters

From the story here:

TAOS COUNTY, N.M. - What started out as a search for a young child taken by his non-custodial father in Georgia has turned into accusations of a homegrown terrorist camp in New Mexico.

Documents obtained by FOX 5 News give a better outline of the timeline of events from the reported abduction of then 3-year-old Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj to accusations the boy’s father, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, was training children for mass shootings at schools. ...

Also found was a firing range at the compound and a series of loaded firearms where children could easily reach them and. Those firearms included a Bushmaster AR-15 with 9 loaded magazines and sling, a Glock 26 .9mm with 3 loaded magazines, a Kimber .9mm with 3 loaded magazines, a Smith and Wesson .38, a Ruger .357, and a Springfield XD 40 with 2 loaded magazines. A green vest was also found.

Other than a few potatoes and a box of rice, there was little food in the compound and deputies believe the children had not eaten in days. Investigators also believe the children had no medical care. Authorities believe the group had lived in the compound for a least two months.

Wahhaj, 40, along with Morton, 40, and his wife Subhanah, 35, Jany Leveille, 35, Hujrah Wahhaj, 38, were all charged with 11 counts of abuse of a child.

Wahhaj was also booked on his no bond warrant for child abduction out of Clayton County. Morten was also charged with harboring a fugitive.

Aug. 7, Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe said they found the remains of a young boy the previous morning on the property. The sheriff said they turned the remains over to the Office of Medical Investigations for an autopsy and to determine the child's identity.

Despite the find, Clayton County Police remained hopeful that young Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj would be found alive.

The story here details Linda Sarsour's long relationship with the Imam. The Imam is reportedly saying the whole story about his son, daughters and grandchildren "sounds crazy".

Sarsour was one of the national co-chairs of The Women's March on Washington against President Trump on January 21, 2017.

The mad folks are too many for us

"The Butterfly Dream" by Chinese painter Lu Zhi, circa 1550

A fellow in a madhouse being asked how he came there? Why, says he, the mad folks abroad are too many for us, and so they have mastered all the sober people, and cooped them up here.

-- Roger L'Estrange

Once, Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering about, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know that he was Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou. But he didn't know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhuang Zhou. Between Zhuang Zhou and the butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.

-- Chuang tzu, circa 300 BC

People consumed by a passion for something, violating proportion, used to be considered kind of crazy

 

 

He that eagerly pursues any thing, is no better than a madman.

-- Roger L’Estrange (1616-1704)