Isn't strange that a large percentage of people that the world has called "genius" it has also called insane? Edgar Allen Poe, Pablo Picasso, Beethoven, Emily Dickenson and so on. What makes a person insane? Has that person actually lost touch with reality or has that individual actually risen above what is accepted as "reality" and grasped the concepts of the unproven, uncomprehened and misunderstood that has been thrown aside by society and labeled as "unreal?"
Don't these people show though their literature, their music, and their art that they were very much in touch with their minds? Possibly so in touch that they may have tapped into the shockingly large percentage of out brains that most of humanity does not even untilize and thus, finding new levels of understanding, levels that since undiscovered by the rest of society are believed to be non-existant. But these advanced levels of thinking are prominant in the voiceless expressions of these individuals; in their music, their literature, their art.
We see, hear, and read their works and don't understand how they could have created such things, but we realize that they are so deeply true we must call them ingenius because we know that we could not have created them ourselves. Then we look upon the creators and call them insane because we don't understand how their minds work. Have they truely lost thier minds, or have they grasped true sanity and left a blind reality behind?
Maybe they were more sane than we are. Can the rest of humanity really be that sane...or just accepted in their ignorance?
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You know, there is a fine line between genius and insanity. Some cross it, some straddle it.
I'd say many of these genius' proficiencies originated from their obsessive focus. EG Isaac Newton, who could lock up in a room for period of time solving a single problem. Outside looking in, that's insane.
I wouldn't call them "insane" nor have I heard these people ever called "insane" (except for Poe that is). I think that maybe they had emotional problems/ distress in their life that they drew from to creat the art, literature, etc that they did. Van Gogh for example, drew from his emotional torment to create the style that he did. You're right, sometimes people are called 'insane' in their own time period but I don't think it's that insanity can tap into genius, so much as, sometimes it takes being a little crazy or going through emotional distress/hardship in life to have something to draw upon to create art. I mean, think about if someone had never suffered in their life? Would they have anything to draw upon? Sure, they'd have all that happiness maybe, but I personally find Picasso's Guernica a lot more interesting to look at, as full of agony as it is, than say, a landscape of a setting sun or a painting of fluffy lambs.