Hypersanity is an uncommon and an unaccepted term. However, this is a term nonetheless. But what exactly is hypersanity? In his book, The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise (1967), R D Laing, a Scottish psychiatrist, presents “madness” as “a voyage of discovery that could open out onto a free state of higher consciousness, or hypersanity.”
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For Laing, the descent into madness could lead to a reckoning, to an awakening, to ‘break-through’ rather than ‘breakdown’.
The Laingian concept of hypersanity, though modern, has ancient roots. Once, upon being asked to name the most beautiful of all things, Diogenes the Cynic (412-323 BCE) replied parrhesia, which in Ancient Greek means something like ‘uninhibited thought’, ‘free speech’, or ‘full expression’. Diogenes used to stroll around Athens in broad daylight brandishing a lit lamp. Whenever curious people stopped to ask what he was doing, he would reply: ‘I am just looking for a human being’ – thereby insinuating that the people of Athens were not living up to, or even much aware of, their full human potential.
If hypersanity is a real thing, what does it imply? And if it is real, are they hypersane people out there? If there are, then who are those people? Find out the answers on Aeon.
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Source: neatorama