Manu Joseph: The world is in the grip of some fierce delusions

The film probably triggered a mass googling of ‘Folie à Deux,’ which means ‘madness of two,’ a phenomenon that is more formally known as shared delusion. 

So, what was an unspoken flaw in the first Joker is spelt out more clearly in the sequel. The flaw is that it portrays its central character as crazy. Great stories never do that, even though they are all about madness.

The madness of the mad looks like madness; the madness of the ‘sane’ is heroic. And infectious. From the propensity of the world to be infected by what doesn’t look like madness come our enduring abstractions.

Folie à Deux is a phenomenon in which a person with a powerful delusion transfers it to another person, who then begins to see a version of the delusion. The relationship is not equal (assuming that there really are ‘equal’ relationships). 

Usually, the person who transmits the delusion (‘the primary’) is severely delusional and the receiver is someone with the potential to receive delusions upon contact with a ‘primary.’

Then, together they believe in the same vision and corroborate it for each other. In the film, the Joker passes on his delusion to a woman who then amplifies it.

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Shared delusion is all around us. A person begins to hear voices and a family member then begins to hear the same. A man believes a politician is an incarnation of divinity and someone else, or even the whole family, begins to believe in that. Most instances of shared delusion are so common and ordinary that they are categorized as human nature. Some ideologies, for instance.

There is also ‘folie à plusieurs,’ or the ‘madness of many,’ where a single person infects many. But this too is common; we have to only think of ancient irrational ideas that have endured and still hold sway over the world. 

Anyone can see the ‘madness of many,’ except in the case of his own beliefs. Sanity is simply not the majority condition of the world. Mostly, the infection is very mild. But sometimes we get to see how powerful a shared delusion can be.

In 2018, a man in Delhi convinced 11 members of his prosperous household to hang themselves along with him. Until that day, they were known to their neighbours and friends as just a regular family. The dead belonged to a wide age group—there were teens, the young, the middle-aged and a very old woman. 

The primary influencer was the head of the family—somehow, he persuaded his family to stand on stools with nooses around their necks and hands bound. 

Maybe they were led to believe that if they merely stood this way, they would experience something supernatural after which they could just step down from the stools. 

But they would dangle like the veins of a banyan tree, which was the specific stated objective of ‘the primary.’ (Only 10 died by hanging. The old woman probably could not get on a stool, so she was helpfully strangled in another room.) This is a world where it is hard to sell a Netflix subscription. Yet, a man could convince his entire household to hang themselves.

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Instances of mass hysteria too may emerge from the same phenomenon, with a single source. Usually, because of the sheer number of people who are infected, which could be in hundreds, the primary source is hard to identify. 

As it happened in Haryana in 2017, when hundreds of women across the state believed that someone had chopped their hair when they woke up from sleep or after a blackout.

Joker: Folie à Deux is not only about the shared delusion between a man and a woman, but also his influence on society. A type of people who are primed to receive a convenient or fantastic delusion begin to see what ‘the primary’ sees. 

These are probably people in poor mental health, whose condition is made worse by traumas and failures. And they begin to see in a madman a revolutionary. As we can guess from the history of the real world, they are never really saved. They then move on to another delusional hero.

How is it that a vast number of people claim to ‘understand’ a madman? They don’t. They, in fact, misunderstand. Madmen, by nature, are never clear. 

They leave enough ambiguity for people to impose their own ideas on another person. And what we are all in love with is our own ideas, even if they are projected on another person.

This is why good scientists almost never become mass heroes, while actors do. There are, of course, some exceptions like Albert Einstein, but he was rare. Scientists are very clear about their ideas, so there is very little room for misinterpretation. 

On the other hand, many superstar actors, including those who are not identified as actors, are fluid. They are not what people think they are. This is not a deceit. It is just the way they are; that is their real talent. 

People see what they want to see in them. It appears that even when ‘the primary’ is not delusional, he can transmit a delusion to a wide range of people.

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In comparison, sanity has no influence. The world does make it look as though its beliefs have come from deep debate, that we took all arguments into account and weighed each angle to arrive at our beliefs, In fact, the inverse is true. People believe what they want to believe and then look for proof. Often, they find it in a person who says ambiguous things.

The world has always been in the fierce grip of the madness of two. Most of the world’s Jokers are revered.