I am saner in the sense that I know when I am insane, and other people don’t. Difference is, other people think they are sane, when they are clearly insane.
What if sanity just means having a well-functioning brain, and isn’t so noble or poetic as all this jazz?
Well functioning brain? Define.
I’m not a brain-scientist, so I’ll have to define through example. Take myself as the example. If I’m near somebody holding a hypodermic needle, I break out into a cold sweat, my heart races, and I can’t think about anything but getting away. It must be my brain doing it- what else would it be? I don’t like it, I don’t consider myself to have a ‘different perspective on life’, because my perspective is that needles are totally fine- but I have this reaction to them anyway. So, a well-functioning brain would be at least a brain that doesn’t do that. Now obviously, that doesn’t mean all well-functioning brains are the same, and all sane people must be alike. It just means there are a host of things we can point to as obviously not well-functioning, and insanity can be attributed to those.
Well, what’s the standard for a well functioning brain? What of that of an autistic brain with neurological disorders? Are they insane? What of a high functioning individual with a phobia of needles?
You haven’t even begun diagnosing the behaviors of this supposed insanity either.
Of course I haven’t, I’m not a psychologist. Why are you even asking anybody on this website if that’s the kind of detail you want?
What I am saying, though, is that there are clear irregularities in human behavior that are unwanted, damaging to a person’s life, and caused by the brain. An absence of those would be sanity, and a presence of those would be mental illness. Is there some subjectivity there? Sure. But just because there are corner cases (A a phobia of sharks unreasonable, or a survival mechanism?) doesn’t mean we have to doubt the obvious examples.
Well, in order to discuss what insanity is and isn’t it would be helpful to know what sanity is.
Yes, autism can certainly be damning on the individuals that have it. It’s a neurological illness of the mind much as liver disease is an illness of a stomach.
The problem lies where psychiatry fabricates mental illnesses for individuals that don’t socially conform that are physically healthy in every other regard.
Yeah, that happens too. And not just in psychology, it happens in real medicine as well- A 70 year old man not having the libido of a 19 year old is apparently now a ‘medical condition’ requiring treatment.
But in answer to your first point, I don’t think you’re ever going to get a definition of sanity beyond ‘an absence of crazy’. I don’t know what else it would possibly be beyond an observation that a person seems to be free from mental problems.
That is really a huge problem. Mental illnesses are fabriacted in an industrial complex of mentally ill brains.
That would be like trying to define a vacuum to those living in the center of the Sun. 
“Well, it is … emm … not this … I mean … Emm… it just isn’t any of this … it’s emmm… just not HERE!”
I think there are plenty of terms that are exactly like that. Isn’t good health just an absence of malady?
I think it is better not to think in a binary way. So I would answer no. YOu have someone who has no malady. They can walk and talk and do their work and so on and without the extra pain we associate with some maladies. But they have just enough energy for a not particularly challenging day. There is no spring in their step. (let’s say we are thinking of a 30 year old). They couldn’t lift anything heavy - choose some threshold that the average person of the same sex could fairly easily lift. So they are not sick, but not particularly healthy. Too much TV watching. Not very good food.
In traditional Chinese medicine they would likely be diagnosable. But in Western med, they are, yah, OK. Then you could have examples to either side of this guy, a little less health, a little more.
Note: I am not trying to create more categories to give drooling pharmaceutical companies areas for medication, nor am I trying to create categories for insurance companies or on the other side scams.
An absence of crazy? Well, how about that for being definitive? Talk about a vague and ambiguous statement. 
Yes, mental illnesses are fabricated every year. It’s all a very lucrative financial business don’t you know.
Psychiatry as an arm of the state is very important in curving down and controlling the masses or population also.
It’s used to reaffirm authority in people’s everyday life or existence. It’s not enough to control people physically as authority must ensure mental obedience as well.
But that Chinese diagnosis would still be a malady they would describe him as having, right? Some synonym for listlessness, or something about his energies or whatever they got going on? It still seems to me that if you want to define ‘healthy’ or ‘sane’ without reference to malady, you’re going to wind up with this long (infinite?) list of things like “His eyes work ok. His ears work ok. It doesn’t hurt when he pees. He’s not overweight.” and on and on and on. So when somebody says to me ‘define sane’, all I can think of is “imagine a list of all the mental disorders. Imagine a person that doesn’t have any of those. That’s sane”.
Yeah, it is vague and ambiguous, that’s why nobody does it. It’s much much easier to define ‘insane’ as having one or a variety of conditions we know about, and ‘sane’ as just being a general term meaning ‘you don’t show signs of those conditions’.
So which do you prefer, a state in which ‘crazy’ people are locked up ‘for their own good’ and all that entails, or a state in which ‘crazy’ people are released to fend for themselves (homeless, victimized or otherwise) and all that entails? I don’t have an answer.
Not necessarily. It might simply be considered a less than optimum health. Nothing that a Western doctor would go near. They might even seek to improve the condition of a runner, for example, using adaptogens or tonics that could help raise someone above normal.
I sympathize with the shorthand. One problem off the top of my head is nearly everyone would be considered disordered if they had to run through the gauntlet of the DSM5. But if I shift away from the political type issue that raises, I think one can be puttering along in a lackluster way, or even a pretty decent way, but still be under optimal health. Mental health included. Not that one should separate the two. I mean only James is completely free of delusions, for example. The rest of us are just puttering along in pretty decent or lackluster ways. But you and I, at least, are not insane, despite a dash of neurosis hear and a mild delusion about ourselves there.
Yes. It belongs to the same fleecing system .
Exactly.
It brings a lot of money, thus a lot of more power to them.
I would say rather that the state is an arm of the corporations. If the corporations can create a market somewhere then they get the state to privatize something or market the corporate solution or validate the corporate solution as the only solution. The DSM5 privitizes pathology. Your mind is now a market for products.
Both statements do not contradict each other. Psychiatry as an arm of the state, and the state as an arm of the multinational corporations and banks.