Notes on Madness Overrated

Questions by Sarah Aschenbach, Editor

How do you describe Madness Overrated?

The book is an honest, direct, and simple expression of the emotions and thoughts of a human being pressured by the mad world surrounding us all. It philosophically questions the consumption-based, growth-obsessed dynamics that shape our societies and lives around the world. I can call it a rebellion against a game that makes us forget about asking questions and thinking clearly, a global call to awareness and change. 

How and when did your writing journey start?

I have searched for meaning in everything I have done in life, but after becoming a mother I started questioning my own life and the world around me in a much more critical way.  A most extraordinary experience for me as a scientist was to observe a human being discovering life on earth and growing amazing skills each day. Witnessing how much intuition, knowledge, and intelligence newborns naturally possess made me realize how strenuously we adults work to make them adapt to our mad world; we do everything to disconnect them from their divine nature, just as was done to us. As I reconnected to my own divine nature with the help of my son and other inspirational people who wrote and talked about this process, the way things work in our mad world came to seem really absurd to me—and irrelevant. 

During that time, I read several motivational books and listened to inspirational talks. I admired most of the ideas, but there was something missing for me, something beyond what one could achieve on an individual level. Most of the books tell you that it’s all about you, that you have to change the way you think, act, and manifest and then you will have a great life. What if you are naturally positive, though? What if you are self-loving, confident, and hard-working—but somehow the world around you has gone out of control and turned into a big bully? What if there are no positive people around to raise your vibrations because everyone is conditioned by negativity and manipulated by fear? What if we are all being enslaved by those who can’t control their obsession for control and more? 

Is it enough, then, to just try to maintain your positivity? If we are all collectively bullied, is it really possible to be happy individually? 

Tell us about the Mad Man.

As I searched and read more about what might be going on behind the scenes, I developed a clear understanding that the majority of the human population in the world is subjected to heavy manipulation and control by a certain minority, a very crazy minority…and that’s how the Mad Man idea came about.

After I introduced the Mad Man as a symbol of the driving forces of our mad world, I started paying attention to everything around me that I thought was a part of the Mad Man’s manipulation game.

For me personally, the Mad Man was a symbol of everything that bothered me in my own life and in the world. When I combined all the characteristics that annoyed me in humans and loaded them onto one person, I ended up with the Mad Man. Initially I was upset with people who reminded me of the Mad Man. When I understood that all of us are manipulated into becoming mad men, however, I could not get upset with myself or anyone else, anymore. It was obvious: we are all catching a contagious disease and giving it to each other—and we are doing it just to survive. I was determined to understand the nature of this disease and find out how we can heal ourselves and the world. 

What is the Madness disease? 

We are all programmed to be mad for some reason. All those media authorities telling people what to do and what not to do…the idea that we have to consume more of what we don’t need so the corporations can grow more…that whole democracy joke and an ever-growing war industry around it…all those new laws and regulations taking our freedoms and privacy away…all that competition and fear continuously pumped into people’s minds to disconnect them from each other…. You don’t even have a choice; there is no running away from the madness. 

For example, you think you have isolated yourself from the harsh competition of the corporate environment, and then you find yourself having to compete with other families for your child’s education, having to compete in the Saturday traffic because that’s when everyone is supposed to shop, or having to fight for leisure activities because everyone has to relax at the same time when they are told to do so.

You also have to isolate yourself from the madness coming from the news media, from politicians, and from other people, madness derived from a system that suppresses the average human more and more by the day. I saw that madness was everywhere, diffusing into our cells through the foods we eat, the products we buy, the news we hear, and the conversations we have.

Once I saw that there was no running away from the madness, once I realized that it’s everywhere and increasing its intensity by the day, that I couldn’t really isolate myself from it anymore, I had to face it, understand what it was all about, and discover where it came from.  And maybe I could do something about it. 

Since I felt like a subject in someone’s experiment on humans, I decided to write my observations as a subject. What happens to a human who is exposed to such a degree of madness? The book would be the experiment’s results, written by one of the subjects. 

Writing created the space for me to detach myself from the madness and become an observer of it. I started by describing the madness disease—how it works, how it makes me feel, and how it shapes human lives and the world. You could say I took an X-ray of the situation that would evoke curiosity and encourage others to look critically at their own experiences, find data from their own lives, and connect the dots. 

Therefore, there are no cited documents or references given in this book if anyone is looking for that kind of content. Instead, the book is all about an exploration of the mind and emotions as a function of outside factors. 

What was your motivation to publish?

I thought there must be others who feel the same way about how things work.  It couldn’t be only me, because the Mad World is suppressing everyone around the globe in a similar way and engendering the same feelings of madness. That’s what gave me the desire to publish what I had written. It was a way to connect with those who were feeling the same way under the pressures of this mad world, and maybe together we could all do something about it. That gave me a feeling of being united with other souls and brought a significant awareness of our collective power. If our collective power made the world as crazy as it is, then our collective power could change everything and create a balanced version of the world. 

Describe your writing process.

In general, my thoughts are often quite scattered, so writing in a continuous manner is not usually the case for me. Thoughts come to my mind at different times, like scattered puzzle pieces. I collect those ideas, and then I start bringing them all together to create a continuous flow for the big picture. 

What was your biggest challenge?

My biggest challenge was being interrupted when I felt the desire to write. I procrastinate, and it takes me some time to concentrate on writing, so if I gain a good momentum, I like to roll with it. But, of course, I also have other responsibilities in life like everyone else. 

I wrote the first two parts of the book in six months. Then came a big pause due to some changes in my life. Those changes brought other experiences that pushed me to discover the Mad Man in me and prepared me for the latter part of the book.  

I felt stuck for a while. I kept reading the first two parts. I thought, okay, I observed the mad world and described the problems in detail—now what? How am I going to continue? Is it enough to do a failure analysis of the world? How can it change? Do I have any solutions?  Do I have any ideas for how we can heal ourselves and the world?  

I had a vision that the book was going to end in a positive way, that it was going to give people hope, and not just awareness…but how? You see, I thought that this madness was taking away people’s hope, making them feel that no matter what they do, it is not okay, it is not enough. If I ended the book with just those first two parts, I would be serving the same mad purpose. I concluded that all these ideas had to lead somewhere better, had to transform themselves into hope and courage in a third and final part.

It took me an entire year to digest the experiences that would allow me to write the last part of the book. I had to discover some deeper layers of my soul that I hadn’t met before. I had to discover the Mad Man in me, to understand that everything I was bothered by in the outside world was also there within me.

This was not an easy period. It was devastating to recognize that everything I was criticizing was actually a part of me. Everything that angered me about the Mad Man or anyone else was actually making me angry with myself for continuing to keep the madness in me, for not having the courage to change from within. What I was searching for outside was not the cure for my inner healing. After that realization, my personal transformation started, and I was able to come up with ideas for how the situation could change.  

The third part of the book took me longer to write, because it was the part I had not yet experienced—the remedy. I recognized our collective power. Since we are the driving power behind the Mad Man’s game, then we can be the ones who turn the game upside-down. We gave fuel to the madness, and now we can use our collective power to create the best version of this world, one in which we humans can live harmoniously. 

Finally, I presented my vision of how life could be after the transformation, what a balanced version of the world and human beings would look like, and how our lives could flow as participants in this amazing universe.

What is your favorite part of the book?

There is no specific part of the book that I would call my favorite. It’s when I think of it in its entirety that I consider it a good piece of work.

I was passionate about every single sentence in this book, but what I cared about the most was how to connect these different parts to create a perfect flow. I have to say that I am quite proud of the clarity and flow I created from the beginning to the end. 

Critical questioning is liberating and pushes people to see the magnitude of the power we have within us to transform our lives. From this point of view, I consider Madness Overrated a valuable book. It creates awareness and motivates readers to look behind the visible to understand the root cause of the issues that we humans are experiencing around the globe. Eventually, the book leaves the reader wondering, “How am I personally contributing to this madness, and what can I do to change it?”

You are a scientist by training. Do you think of yourself as a writer?

I never had a conscious thought about becoming a writer, and I still don’t necessarily want to label myself one way or the other. Writing is one way in which we humans can express our creativity but there are many ways. I really enjoy going into that trance state to bring thought and emotion into the physical.  

What else do you love about writing?

I love how much you can create with so very little. A blank page and a pen…or a blank page on a computer. It amazes me how many souls you can touch with what you create, how you can fit many years of life experiences into a few pages, how free you can feel by expressing your feelings. You might even be able to change the world. 

What is it like to change your chosen field?

It is not easy to put aside your accomplishments in another field, to admit that, no, you don’t want to walk on that path anymore. However when you continue on your life journey without attaching yourself to past experiences, you realize that every single experience you have had in the past serves a purpose on your journey. All experiences are parts of your learning of the physical world on the way to bringing your divinity to the fore when you have the courage to do so. 

You have guides and angels to help you. They sometimes appear in your life as friends who foster your connection to your soul, who inspire you to write and discover your life purpose.  

Then, you find an editor who lives oceans apart but she really understands you. Soon, you are searching for how to publish, and an old friend calls out of the blue for coffee to tell you about the independent publishing options that perfectly match the spirit of your book. Encouraging words from other angels around the world appear in your mailbox when you need them most. Finally, you find a narrator who connects with the book so strongly that he reads it just the way sounded in your head when you were writing it. 

You have those key people who share their light with you to push you in the direction of your own light—and that’s when you feel you are on the right path and should just keep going.