Madness and Civilisation by Michel Faucault

We had better read "Madness and Civilisation" by Michel Faucault. It explains how the modern "society" has started discriminating those who are seen handicapped and mentally challenging. Faucault sometimes romanticises the past way too much and overestimate communism as a solution. However, he provided a productive scepticism about unconditionally accepting development and modernisation without questioning and he criticised not only capitalism but also socialism both of which discourage liberty of individuals and their free self-expression.

Mad and handicapped individuals used to be more accepted in the past as just different. They were even sometimes treated as useful because they have a unique ability of challenging something beyond capacity or being able to perceive something not perceivable. They are integrated into their community with the rest majority, and they found their own virtue of being parts of humans' activities. There was not any specific definition of distinguishing individuals between normal and abnormal/disabled/mad, and they naturally accepted the difference of characteristics.

But, the modern "society" started labeling them as "non-conforming" as a product like a cogwheel. Faucault successfully pointed out that individuality is rather forfeited in this modern world although it often puts emphasis on individuality. Individuals are allowed to enjoy benefits from the modernity as long as they are approved as conforming as the "products" contributing to functioning the apparatus called the modernity. By contrast, those who are labelled as nonconforming are treated as useless and/or inferior.

Human individuals nowadays live in a more materially better off but more complex world. The modernisation has brought a lot of benefits and developed human-individuals' intelligence by inventing a big and complex function of modern society. On the other hand, the big complex nature of this society requires an intensive conformity straining individuals to adjust themselves and contribute to its function as the cogwheel mobilising this apparatus of modern society. After having achieved a development of modernity, it has come to the point where individuals had better learn from the inclusive characteristics of pre-modernity to compensate for the stressful strain of modern society while maintaining the benefits of modernity.