The mentally healthy person is the productive and unalienated person, who relates himself to the world lovingly...who is in the process of being born as long as he is alive. -Eric Fromm, The Sane Society

  I moved to Tarpon Springs eight years ago. The town is halfway up the Florida peninsula, on the Gulf of Mexico. At the time, I made friends with a couple other outsiders, Gypsy and John Eden. Gypsy lived out of a motel room. Her large, looping earrings glinted against her gold hair in the candle light as she talked endlessly about world hypnosis. "People don't know it, but they are all under MASS HYPNOSIS," she said.
  My other friend, John Eden, lived out of an old, white limo. He gave up running his limousine service, years before, after his 'voices' told him to build pyramid beds. His theory? Sleep inside a pyramid and you will commune with the space gods.
  Why was I hanging out with these people? I wasn't a lot better off than they. Like them, I lived on Disability and had spent a number of years in asylums. I believed myself the new Messiah, often writing down God's instructions on how I should lead humanity.
  Eight years later, sometimes I see Gypsy walking along the streets in torn spandex pants, and threadbare top. She is obese and nearly toothless, talking aloud to herself, oblivious to all else. The other day I ran into John Eden at the Tarpon Diner.
  I was reading a book over my coffee, The Age of Reason, as John sat beside me and began rattling on about how he has discovered the Fountain of Youth, 2 blocks down at Spring Bayou. "You know, right now we're having coffee, man, on the site of the Garden!"
  Now for virtue of having discovered the Garden of Eden, John is declaring himself to be the new Messiah, not I. Why do I listen to this guy? I wake up anymore, insane with loneliness. I would much rather have a woman to join me over 2 eggs or a bagel, but I have John instead, waiting at Tarpon Diner to tell me the latest on the space gods, Atlantis, and now - Eden.
  Bearded and dressed like Indiana Jones, John is tragically wrinkled and obsessed with the Garden of Eden. Figure it.
  "You've got a publish this on the Internet, how I've found the original Eden, right here," he said.
  "I think not, dude."
  "But you can do it, you run an Internet company now!" he exclaimed, baring his teeth angrily, like a pit bull.
  "Sorry, but I can't help you there."
  He swore at me and left the diner. The waitress apologized for the episode as she topped my coffee. "Why do you put up with crazy people like that?" she asked.
  "Couldn't be that I can relate to them, now could it?"
  "I don't think so," she replied. "After all, you are one of the few voices of sanity in this town.
  I sipped my coffee. IF SHE ONLY KNEW. Yet I suppose I appear relatively sane. Often, I sit in the diner and observing the people around me, I wonder about THEM. The people come together to eat, but at the same time, most of the people look about them as though they were inmates, staring through bars.
  Lately, I've noticed that more people are united in their national feelings to protect America from the new arch-enemy, terrorism. No one dares to question the country's policies. Otherwise? The people discuss those things they'll buy when they cast off for the next stop, or they talk endlessly about other people. This is a town largely inhabited by Greeks, but so far I haven't heard anyone discussing Plato.
  John Eden does. He believes that Plato discovered Tarpon Springs long before Ponce de Leon purportedly did (according to him). In fact, Poseidon (a space god) had intercourse with a woman he formed out of the mud at the head of the Anclote River. From out of this fertile ground began the human race. Right here!
  John has a myth, which is more than I can say for most of us. Maybe in another time or place, people like John Eden, or Gypsy, would be leaders of the tribe. Storytellers. In this society, such people are not brought gifts and food, but are put away in insane asylums. Truth is, when such people get started on their QUEST to be truly productive, society collectively flips them the finger and they tend to withdraw until what began as an illumination, becomes a full-blown mental illness.
  Eight years ago, I decided that, rather than withdraw from society, I would CONFRONT it.
  From this position I began to see that so-called 'normal' people, working steady jobs and raising families, are often the most unhappy ones. Why? They wish to insulate themselves from pain.
  Rather than dealing with the larger problems of the world, many prefer to burrow in and say, "Well, why should I care, I mean, what can I do about any of it?" They wish to insulate themselves from pain. In so doing, they commit intellectual suicide. The spirit of inquiry which should arise from a free society, is freely exchanged for ignorance, and marketplace commodities.
  Few of these citizens are considered insane. Yet, I must ask, Cannot society, collectively be MAD? Modern socio-analysts like Eric From, call this the "normal" madness, or simply, alienation.
  Nothing new here. But as opposed to Marx's view, that a class struggle is the seat of alienation, I would argue that there are many other factors, as well. Scrap the big corporations, put everybody back on the bartering system, say, and we still would not have addressed the roots of alienation.
  So long as we no longer feel ourselves to be active participants in the Politik that is society, then, people will remain alienated. Only it's not getting any better. Take this quote from the Unabomber:

    In the future, social systems will not be adjusted
    to suit the needs of human beings. Instead,
    human beings will be adjusted to suit the needs
     of the system. -Theodore Kaczynski

  More and more, people are saying ENOUGH! Recently a reader, Gina Marie, wrote InterNation, saying, "I am really just an average person trying to make my way in the world. I can't believe how many things were going on right under my nose and didn't even know. That is why sites like yours should be supported, because the TRUTH shouldn't be buried under all the political, corporate rubble."  
  Those of us who find ourselves awakened, every day find ways to better relate ourselves "to the world lovingly...being born as long as we are alive."