Deirdra Stockmann: In praise of folly

What do heliocentrism, the Galilean moons, representative government and women's suffrage have in common? All were once radical, even fantastical notions that now define the society in which we live today.

Few if any revolutionary ideas began as anything less than delusional fantasies.

Folie … deux is a psychological term. Its literal meaning in French is "the folly of two." The Oxford English Dictionary Online defines the term as "Madness, insanity, mania. Chiefly in various pathological terms." The history it lists includes: Folie … deux, communicated insanity.... In twins, as in other pairs of individuals who are emotionally close to each other, the condition known as folie … deux has been commonly observed. The two partners tend to develop shared delusions and symptoms.... A brilliantly observed clinical study of the folie … deux indulged in by a pair of chronic fantasists."

I am not a psychologist. I do not speak French. Neither has this column had much to do with either. Why use a variation of a such a term as a title?

By changing deux to nous, the phrase becomes more inclusive. Indeed, we all suffer from the "condition" -- it is "our folly." But how so? What are the symptoms?

In some, it is manifested in crazy actions like creating playgrounds, murals and gardens in the middle of the city. They think that colored walls and collard greens have the power to transform lives and communities.

Others find themselves among the cinderblock halls and crowded classrooms of public schools, teaching democracy through solving community problems. They think that empowering students to take control of their lives and communities might improve the conditions of cities. Many stay after school tutoring in reading for the same fantastical reasons -- the notion that power and progress are somehow related to knowledge.

Some suffer from the delusions that they can affect fundamental change even higher in the system, in the way universities, however steeped in bureaucratic politics, operate. Their work is often based on some radical, idealist premise that undergraduates have the qualifications and power to be agents of change in society.

Beware, as the label, folie … deux and folie … nous suggest, these are not single people with isolated delusions. These crazy notions are shared. Sure, most of these ideas are common discourse only among relatively limited populations. But is this not also the history of ideas like, say, government "of the people, for the people and by the people," intercontinental flight or inter-planetary?

Of course, there are many, perhaps still the majority, who do not see the world through the lens of possibility, progress and social change. But they too suffer from a condition of shared delusions -- perhaps of a more dangerous variety. People in such a state are imprisoned by their own excuses for non-engagement. So too is society trapped on account of their "folly."

Sufferers include those who believe that they do not have the power to change themselves and their world. It includes those who do not recognize their privileged position in society and their perhaps unique access to resources that may be shared to make everyone better off.

They are those in universities who refuse to accept their role as an integral part of their community and of democracy. They are the university officials who myopically see the land they lord over only as a venue for potential real estate development, ignoring the needs of the whole community. They are those faculty members who limit their contributions to lab-based research and disengaged lectures.

Those who view themselves as unable to affect change or as exempt from their duty as citizens to cultivate democratic society are limited by their state of folly. Furthermore, they limit society. But there are still those with crazy ideas about expanding the lab to include the garden, understanding the classroom as a part of the community and the moving the art studio to the abandoned lot and walls of apartment buildings with boarded windows. These people are empowered by their folly. It is this kind of folly that changes the world.

When the seeds of the "crazy" ideas are sown in the soil of peaceful revolution, cultivated by the local communities that share the delusions and nourished by the light of knowledge, global change is bound to sprout up.

In the Drew Elementary School garden, in urban gardens everywhere, it is planting season.

Deirdra Stockmann is a senior Politics, Philosophy, and Economics major from Oak Park, Il.

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