If you've ever spent time locked up with crazy people, the first and foremost thing you have to know is: Never challenge their beliefs! On any level! Don't do it!
These people are at the end of their ropes - many scraping and licking the bottom of their cups, once filled with the milk of human kindness - Hell, most of 'em have been eating shit sandwiches too long to even remember the taste of human kindness.
Just nod your head, smile, and say, "Yes. You are so (something positive) ... right, wonderful, smart, funny, talented, wise ..." Always stay agreeable and you'll better skirt the pointless issues and incidents of their insanity. Otherwise, poke your fellow caged chimp with any perceived slight or conflict and things can turn ugly pretty fast ... and they have.
At one point of such a continued conflict with a fellow madman, who just didn't like the way I looked back at him I guess, I told him, "Listen, you're not my problem and I'm not yours. Let's keep it that way!" He grunted back, "Fuckin' Right!". As abrasive as it was, that one interchange seemed to lessen his need to strike Kung-Fu poses at me every time we passed in the hallway (posturing), or whenever he caught me looking in his general direction. Although he still continued to periodically demonstrate his martial arts abilities in what seemed spastic fits of rage, as if one or more imagined opponents were a fellow stooge, at least the fits were no longer aimed directly at me.
One day while doing my morning routine of calisthenics at the end of the hallway outside my room, which include a lot of stretching and balance exercises, I decided to demonstrate my Kung Fu skills to him, in the vein of reciprocity that we apes come to expect - one good chop deserves another. My choice of display was to balance in the form of the crane technique I learned from watching The Karate Kid. Lol (Yes, you fuck around a lot when you're bored in a cage).
I thought I pulled off some pretty convincing crane kicks. But he was not amused, and when I stopped to receive his appreciation he immediately crouched at the knees, in what I supposed was crouching tiger, moving then into hidden dragon, and he began what looked like scrambling something in a large bowl using his hands as beaters - what I've come to imagine as his, "pancakes for breakfast" technique.
When he was done I smiled at him and gave him a big thumbs up, to which he yelled, "Fuck you!" in my general direction down the long hallway. The attendants came and calmed him, as he was further heard to call me other derogatory words and complaints, and that to such a degree of agitation that I started to wonder about the effectiveness of my Hollywood influenced martial arts training.
Strange thing is, I've found it to be exactly the same on the outside too. Not, piss someone off with bad karate and maybe they'll whip you up an imaginary breakfast - No, more my former thought, that people simply want to be appeased and appreciated. Just nod and say yes, or at worst avert your gaze and mind your own way. Maybe we're all mentally ill, those of us all who need constant approval, and who cannot abide the inferred judgment we feel from others. I think a sane person is one who can interact with others and not take their "shit", the shit that they own, personally. It's not your job to notice it, comment on it, or even correct it. They, and they alone must own their own shit, and how they interact with others. It's really not your problem to solve.
We typically don't do very well in conflict with each other, sometimes even the slightest amount can set something off, so it's best if we keep our non-affirmative thoughts to ourselves most of the time.
I hate that, because it naturally plays to maintaining confirmation biases, and leans toward shallow and phony relations, but it's true. If you counter people's delusions, even with a good dose of positivism in equal measure, you only end up being perceived as someone overwhelmingly negative, since we recoil so strongly against the unagreeable and unaffirming. Most people are simply looking for the agreeable, as we are wired to do as hunter-gatherers.
So a huge "Thank You!" to all the crazy people I've met; you've really helped me understand the "sane" ones, and I'm learning not to challenge their goofy paradigms either ... well kinda.
Hi-Ya!
