Thoughts on Active Reading and the Lure of Insanity

Reading by itself, I don’t think, is sufficient enough to build the vocabulary and expand the mind and the intellect and the mental processes, not even the active reading that Adler recommends in his book on reading. I think it takes not only active reading, but real participation, which is to say, writing and doing. Writing about the thoughts and ideas you’ve read about and doing things that would help you to further understand such ideas. In this writing and doing (this truly interactive form of reading) the vocabulary will increase as will the mind to new ideas, for ideas are all we bags of water and chemicals have to keep us from going insane during our journey from birth to death. Of course sometimes insanity grips the mind and, well, you give in and go with it and suffer until you die, or until the insanity frees its grip from your mind. Of course I wonder, is insanity all that bad? Would it not be wonderful to go completely mad and be put away in some comfortable white room; away from society, people, burdens, duties, taxes, relationships, marriage, holidays, parties, gift buying, gift wrapping, gift giving, forced courtesy and forced smiles? I sometimes think that this would be fine for a little while. Now, how does one make himself mad?