Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Why not be crazy?

I was reading a survey posted up on WCTV.com concerning the terribly exciting and ever present tea party movement. In my humble opinion the study was overtly biased, psychobabble. The end points were designed in advance to support their opinion that the tea partiers are right wing, whacko extremists.

I base that opinion on the inculcation of one word into the survey questions. " Are you of the opinion that the tea-partiers are crazy ?" Now I am not a scientist. I did, however, work for a science company for thirty years. I used to read and present materials from studies to very educated people. Your credibility was at risk if that study seemed biased in any fashion.

There is an entire branch of medicine that is dedicated to the determination of a person's mental health. I believe to become a psychiatrist you must have 4 years of college, followed by 4 years of medical school. I believe there is a 5 year residency following all that.

There is a 400 plus page textbook manual entitled the DSM-IV manual. It is a comprehensive listing of thousands of diagnosis codes related to mental illness. There is not one single code applied to the term crazy. Way too general. People can be bipolar, schizophrenic ( with or without delusion ), paranoid, obsessive, etc. etc. I am totally unqualified to diagnose or categorize.

However we as a society toss around the term crazy constantly. " Crazy, baby !" " Man you were crazy drunk last night." Hello, you crazy son-of-a-buck." " My friend is crazy about you. Do you want to go out with her? " " That guy driving that red Corvette is a crazy driver."

I think the more rational conclusion to draw is that we are all crazy in one vein or another. Is being a little crazy a bad thing? Have you ever been around someone so stiff and boring that you would like to inject them with a little crazy?

I don't know what conclusions you can draw from anything on this post. Trying to do so could drive you totally..............................CRAZY !!!!!!!

I will tell you something that truly is crazy. This real estate market we are in. It is the low point of the recovery ( what recovery?). I get lots of people asking me to explain it to them. I simply mutter something about "man it is crazy, I will get back to you."

I will try to help you figure it out in a sort of group therapy session. Visit me on my website at
http://elvass.com

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