the.com/sanity
The agreed-upon hallucination we all pretend to share so nobody locks the door.
means The state of having a sound, rational mind — being mentally healthy and able to think and judge clearly.
from From Latin sanitas, 'health' or 'soundness,' built on sanus, 'healthy, whole.' The same sanus underlies 'sane,' 'sanitary,' and 'sanitation' — so cleaning your kitchen and keeping your wits share a Roman root. The phrase mens sana in corpore sano, 'a sound mind in a sound body,' carries the whole idea in miniature. English borrowed 'sanity' to mean bodily health first; the specifically mental sense came later as the word narrowed toward the mind.
- defined by majority
- It is statistical, not scientific — normal means common
- rosenhan study
- Healthy fakers got institutionalized, couldn't convince staff they were fine
- culturally relative
- Hearing voices is illness here, prophecy elsewhere
- legal fiction
- Courts judge it case-by-case, not doctors with tests
- thin margin
- Sleep loss alone induces hallucinations in days
the mcnaghten rules — 1843 uk legal test for insanity defense in criminal trials, still used in common law countries