That’s crazy! We say these words when we see something strange and amazing. The ball hit the right fielder in the head and bounced over the fence for a home run. That’s crazy! My neighbor’s dog can get onto the garage roof and often naps up there for hours. That’s crazy! Sometimes when we use the term “crazy,” we are describing something that is loco, foolish, and just plain nutty. If your cousin believes that she communicates with aliens, you might consider her to be crazy. Or if a friend told me the 1969 moon landing was staged, I would tell him he is crazy.
I am pretty sure you could make a long list of foolish, shocking, and nutty beliefs and behaviors you have witnessed. People believe many crazy things and behave in many crazy ways. Some people believe the government controls the weather or that the Earth is flat. Others practice polyamory, having several romantic partners at once. We have all heard heartbreaking stories about young people undergoing gender change surgeries. Some believe that prostitution is a valid occupation, while others believe an alternate history that Hitler was actually a good leader. Lunatic beliefs and behaviors abound. Many of them are not only illogical but also quite immoral and destructive.
The million-dollar question is, What is wrong with people? If you have asked this question before, here is a great book-length answer to it: Pandemic of Lunacy: How to Think Clearly When Everyone Around You Seems Crazy by J. Budziszewski. Budziszewski wrote this book to help people understand “our culture’s descent into lunacy” (xiv). Specifically, Pandemic of Lunacy (POL) focuses on how people think, leading them to believe crazy ideas and behave in crazy ways. As a long-time professor of courses on political philosophy, morality, and government at the University of Texas, Budziszewski has encountered a wide range of strange beliefs and behaviors. POL addresses many of them.
At the outset of the book, Budziszewski emphasizes that “the normalization of disorder and empowerment of lunacy are not to be taken lightly” (xvi). In other words, crazy beliefs and crazy behaviors are harmful to those who hold and practice them, as well as to others. In addition, when people believe crazy things, they often become disposed to believe other crazy things; it is a slippery slope (xix). POL was written to help people think more clearly and behave better by exposing the lunacy of various delusions around us. If you dig into illogical beliefs and behaviors and see their weaknesses, it can help lead you away from lunacy to the truth. Although POL is not specifically about nutty conspiracy theories or being brainwashed by a cult, it does indirectly relate to those topics.
POL has six sections that explain different delusions that people believe: (1) delusions about virtue and happiness, (2) delusions about politics and government, (3) delusions about family and sexuality, (4) delusions about what it means to be human, (5) delusions about what is real and unreal, and (6) delusions about God and religion. Each of these sections contains five brief chapters. The book is not necessarily meant to be read straight through. It is more like a collection of essays on these five major delusions. I took about two weeks to read this book because I wanted to digest some of the chapters before moving on.
One of my favorite chapters in this book is the one on lunacy number 3: “Sometimes we just have to do the wrong thing.” Many people today try to justify evil deeds by arguing that good can come from them. If you bomb an entire neighborhood to kill one terrorist, it is not evil because the terrorist was killed. If you take the life of one person and use his organs to save the lives of three other people, it is not evil because good comes from it. Those are the types of arguments people use today to justify evil. It is a lunacy indeed. “Once we justify intrinsically evil deeds, it is impossible to say, ‘Thus and no farther’…. To escape guilt, we seek scapegoats” (19).
Another fascinating chapter in POL addresses this crazy belief: “We can attain the common good without virtue” (41). Historically, it was understood that it is impossible to “maintain a decent political order without good moral character on the part of citizens and rulers” (41). Budziszewski agrees, arguing that without good character, the checks and balances in the United States government do not work properly. He also mentions that those who lack virtue often prefer rulers “as bad as or worse than themselves” (45). If a voter is asked about a president caught doing bad things, the voter is not usually appalled. In fact, in one case a voter was asked about a recent presidential scandal and asked, “Does that change your thinking about him?” The answer: “Yeah, it makes me like him more! ’Cause he’s just like me!” (45). Sadly, when virtue is lost in a culture, so is the ability to recognize bad people as bad people. Indeed, it is lunacy to think that we can have a common good without people being virtuous.
One last example of a modern crazy belief is lunacy number 13: “Marriage can be whatever we want it to be” (79). In this chapter, Budziszewski uses various studies to show that a monogamous marriage between a man and a woman has many advantages recognized throughout history and around the world. Despite the fact that around 50 percent of adults between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine say that open marriages are acceptable, studies show that open marriages fail at high rates and leave everyone involved worse off. This chapter also discusses the lunacy of believing that cohabitation is better than marriage. “The whole point of matrimony is to cement and formalize a commitment, but the whole point of not being married is to avoid commitment. How can not being committed to someone else be practice for committing to that person? We would do better to call cohabitation a practice for divorce” (84). This is a good argument. How can a lack of commitment in a relationship be good for men, women, children, or society? Lunacy indeed!
I will not list all the lunacies this book raises and refutes, but I will say they are all interesting, up-to-date, and relevant. Budziszewski approaches these lunacies with a level head and does not resort to name-calling or below-the-belt attacks against those who hold them. He does call a thing what it is, but he does so in a way that is tactful and logical. I should note that Budziszewski writes from a Catholic perspective. His arguments, however, are not specifically Catholic ones. Even though I am not at all sympathetic to Roman Catholicism, I found this book to be extremely helpful in various ways. I very much recommend Pandemic of Lunacy. In fact, even though I finished reading it a few weeks ago, I have already picked it up several times to reread parts when I ran across some crazy belief online. Do some people really believe that each person has his or her own reality? That’s crazy! (But yes, they do. And Budziszewski talks about it in the book.)
©Shane Lems. All Rights Reserved.
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Shane Lems
Shane Lems is a graduate of Westminster Seminary California and has a DMin from RTS Orlando. He has been a church planter and pastor in the URCNA. Since 2013 he’s been serving as pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Hammond, WI. He is married and has four children. Shane has written numerous articles for Modern Reformation, New Horizons, and other publications. He is also the author of Doctrines of Grace: Student Edition and manages a book blog, The Reformed Reader.
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