Exploring how rebellion, madness, and nonconformity, embodied by thinkers like Nietzsche and Kahlil Gibran, serve as vital acts of enlightenment against societal norms
Madness is a rebellion adopted to register one’s resentment about the bogus social values and beliefs that are constructed to normalise abnormal social, political, religious and economic patterns and structures. Open wisdom and intellect won’t be endorsed to challenge social structures, as the wise and intellectuals are obliged to adhere to these structures to be recognised for their sanity.
Conformism is a stamp of being wise and intelligent, but to challenge concocted societal values, one needs to become a madman—to be free from the social norms and forces and to awaken people to what is actually happening around them and to them at the hands of authorities who propagate ideas of allegiance as the only sane and wise thing.
As for Albert Camus, rebellion is the only option to combat existential crises. Similarly, for Nietzsche and Kahlil Gibran, adopting madness is the only way to expose wrong beliefs and traditions of one’s society. Breaking the social norm has never been identified as a wise thing, and it has been contrasted with madness, which constitutes disobedience and violation of these norms. We all have been told that too much sanity plunges one into trouble, and it is so true because it is accepted only in the garb of madness.
The madman of Kahlil Gibran violates the conformist boundaries of his society and adopts madness to show his enlightenment regarding life. He wakes up one morning and finds all his covers and camouflages stolen, and he rushes to the market, cursing the thieves for stealing, but a bit later praises them for awakening him to a new dawn of knowledge and wisdom. He is like the madman of Nietzsche, who curses people for killing the values and principles of life and resorting to fictitious ideals of identity imposed on them by their society for the sake of conformism. Society does not acknowledge those ideals that stand against its existence and push it into anarchy.
Both madmen of Kahlil Gibran and Nietzsche attack and expose the false normalcy of a society bound together by dominating ideologies. They reprimand people and haul them to break these binding ideologies to understand things in crystal-clear light. Both madmen liberate themselves from the clutches of society and obtain the freedom of expression. Any person will be persecuted if they violate the social norm, except those who adopt madness as a shield to save themselves from it and to complete their mission of enlightening people.
Nietzsche’s madman would have been executed by the clergy and priests if he had not adopted madness to shatter the false social and religious fabric. Man had become crippled and helpless as he was preached to submit everything to God and sit with his hands folded. But Nietzsche’s madman shook this handicapping idea and struck man to create his own destiny by working hard on himself and on his own ideas and thoughts. He wanted to make man self-sufficient through the power that he gained after becoming awakened and enlightened.
Nietzsche’s madman does not mean that God is dead, but that the godly values and principles have died in our societies. We have become dishonest, cunning, greedy, selfish, hypocritical and manipulative. We wear false identities. We cherish hate, bias and rancour regarding our fellow beings. We have forgotten to be kind and sympathetic. We have stopped loving one another. Seeing such variations occurring in our social and religious systems, Nietzsche’s madman broke the silence and became vehement about challenging these things and striking everyone on the head with his warning of the godless world in which nothing holds us upright and where ransacking and ruining become our only job. He underwent self-realisation and self-discovery and witnessed the ills of his society, but it came to him at a heavy price. He had to be mad, antisocial, untouchable and ostracised. Awakening never comes gratis. It takes much from the awakened, but it is always greater than the loss. The pursuit of authenticity and originality comes after you remove your masks cast upon you by the society in which you live.
Both Kahlil Gibran and Nietzsche, through the characters of madmen, register their defiance against the prevailing constructed social values and challenge their validity and application. They urge us to have a profound comprehension of our society and re-evaluate its values and principles every time and set out to fix them. The madmen of these two writers are the sanest and wisest people who hold the mirror to their society and highlight what is not visible to other people—the cracks in the breakage of our moral and spiritual belief system.
Fida Hussain Bhat
az*********@***il.com