Erik Blaire
"In our age there is no such thing as “keeping out of politics.” All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia." —George Orwell, Politics and the English Language (1946) Imagine, if you would, an average American. We’ll call him “Ed.” Ed is in his mid-thirties, works in an office, and is currently standing at the paper shredder. He’s holding a stack of paper in one arm while feeding the paper shredder with his other. Suddenly, he drops the stack of paper all over the floor and just stands there, rigid, mouth hanging open and eyes as wide as silver dollars. Staring into nowhere in particular, he begins babbling faintly and incoherently to himself. He giggles slightly with a faint smile, and then he looks around with an intense expression of perplexed distress. Ed’s coworkers, who are standing all around him, have become quite concerned and a bit upset with what they are seeing and hearing. “What’s wrong with Ed?” they whisper to each other. “What’s wrong, Ed?” one of them asks him. Ed looks past his concerned coworker and babbles on, muttering something about “destroying” and “saving” the whole world. Because these are common themes found in the word-salad spouted by many a so-called “psychotic,” Ed’s coworkers quickly call a special kind of authority to have Ed taken away. And as expected, Ed puts up a fight, resisting, claiming that the “others” are conspiring against him as he’s taken away to be confined, labeled a “schizophrenic,” electro-shocked, and forced to “do drugs.” What was wrong with Ed? Can you blame his coworkers for having him confined? Would you have done anything differently? Is it just a matter of “common sense”? That is just the way you deal with people like that? Is it silly to ask such questions? Before you settle into your familiar and comfortable answer, first try to see it from Ed’s point of view. To do so we will need to consider two vital things, the first of which is two s
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