Project Vision 21

Francisco Miraval

The story is told about a man that one day, to his amazement, saw that everybody in his village became crazy after drinking contaminated water. He went and found pure water and only drank pure water. Eventually, he was the only sane person in the village. When that happened, he decided it was time for him to drink the contaminated water and join the madness.

The first time I read this story was in The Song of the Bird, by Anthony De Mello, who tells this and many other stories with unparalleled elegance. However, years passed between reading the story and understand it. After all, who in his/her right mind would be willing to lose his/her reason to join crazy people?

Let me answer with a couple of stories of my own, without the depth and teachings of De Mello’s stories.

In the decade of 1960, when I was a child, one of the highlights of the week was to watch (in black and white, and in Spanish) Star Trek, to see Captain Kirk guiding the Enterprise in the search for “new worlds and new civilizations.”

In one particular episode, Mr. Spock, the science officer, put a small, colorful square inside a slot in the computer and -to my amazement- he was able to extract tons of information for that plastic square.

I remember thinking that was totally ridiculous. There was no way to have so much information in just a little square. And, with so many books available, who would ever want to use “little squares” to read information?

Many years later, around the mid-1990s, one day I put a diskette inside my computer and the old Star Trek episode came to my mind. Suddenly, I realized I was doing the same thing I saw on television all those years earlier and I rejected as unfeasible and impossible. I have drunk from the water of madness and I was not even aware of that.

Then, quite a few years ago, I saw one of my neighbors exiting his house and going into his car. Once inside his car, he opened his cell phone and he began to talk. I remember asking myself who, in his/her right mind, would ever decide to talk on the phone while driving, when he/she can use the phone at his/her home or office.

I thought my neighbor was in a hurry or perhaps the call was very important. Of course, just a short time after seeing just a “crazy” behavior, I was doing the same thing. (I must say I try not to use the phone at all while driving.)

In short, I joined the madness and I didn’t even think about that.

I wonder what others expressions of craziness I know reject will be perfectly normal and acceptable in the near future. And I am not talking only about technological changes. Perhaps now we are sane and we were crazy before. Or perhaps there is no longer any difference between sanity and madness.