Are people crazy?

Another Something is asking if women are crazy.  For fear of causing an outburst (heh heh), and also because I think its not isolated to women I want to discuss it as 'Are people crazy?' The original blog raising the issue is talking about some things specific to western christian women's culture, and with reference to contemporary christian teaching, but anxiety is pretty universal, and comes up a lot in existentialism (kierkegaard, nietzsche, heidegger) and the existentialist psychologist Rollo May (Love and Will, The Meaning of Anxiety).

Anxiety is often described as fear of something you can't name, a pervasive sense that things are not what they seem, are not right, and maybe your place in the world is different from what you are assuming it is.  It is a fear of world collapse, and invalidation of what you've made yourself in response to it.  There are a lot of things that can provoke it, but the more specific the problem, the less the experience is anxiety.  The anxiety that your child may die when he is in perfect health is a 'Anything could happen and who will I be then?' fear.  This anxiety is inescapable if you are going to be aware, conscious, open to the possibilities of the future, and open to the possibilities of yourself. But this anxiety is also a terrible state to live in.  It produces physical stress that makes you sick and shortens your life.

What is the right way to respond to this?
Kierkegaard says its best to be the Knight of Faith - to face the future with such confidence that psychologically you enjoy total security in it.  His example is Abraham, obediently planning to sacrifice Isaac, and yet telling his servants 'I and the boy will come back to you.'

Heidegger talks about anticipatory resoluteness - about investing in a self (a stand on your own being) that can withstand the things life can throw at you and leave you satisfied. The idea is to spend yourself on a project (be a teacher, be a provider) that will give you an identity in the face of anything life throws at you, and to pursue it with resolve. Heidegger thinks the problem of death, the possibility, has to be faced every moment - you proceed through life in a state he names 'dying'.

Hajime Tanabe reckons repentance is the go - to look at your life and say 'I have ruined my life, I am sinful and weak, through and through' and then hear that silence of the void, the great compassion of the end of accusation, allowing you to live on through the grace of 'other power'.

Rollo May suggests anxiety can be understood and interpreted and responded to with identity, with a self understanding and acceptance (but that base levels of anxiety are set in childhood, reflecting how reliable our parents were in their words and actions, and this makes sense - these are our first world and where we learn about how well we do with worlds).

You get a sense, though, that they are all talking about the same things.

Is living with anxiety sinful?  No, in a sense it is essential, because we are finite, contingent, liable to suffering of all kinds - we have been 'putting it up every day of our lives' and we do well to recognize it.  Perhaps what is sinful might be letting the anxiety go on uninterrogated and unanswered by faith.