Einstein often asked himself “Am I or the others crazy?” I believe there is no correct answer. Critical analysis of one’s own behavior and actions can probably help in the compartmentalization of thoughts, which often leads to a strong belief towards a particular school of thought. However, the big question is how critical you are? Always believing that one is right may not necessarily imply that the course of action is indeed right. If that was the case there might be people with no regrets and if there are I haven’t found one. One might debate that right and wrong are relative terms and there is no absolute meaning. So that leaves the question unanswered.
Einstein was a great man and a brilliant thinker. He had amazed the world with his theories. People say that he was a determined person who believed in himself and when nobody believed in him he still went on. Just to ponder on the thought is that really the way to go? Where is the concept of cooperative development? May be he himself was not certain about what he believed and that is the reason he could not help others understand. May be that is the reason he contemplated “Am I or the others crazy?” One might say that others were too naive to understand what Einstein had to offer and now it seems about right but again going back to the world where theory of relativity does not exist what really made Einstein believe that he was right? I guess we have to ask Einstein himself. The point is although the earth below his legs was shaking with the ideas of others he decided to take the high road. The reason, I think, is intense self belief. The question again is how to build such a strong self belief? How to distinguish this self belief from vanity and narcissism? I guess answer to that question would answer “Am I or the other crazy?” However as I said there is no person without regret so self belief can be wrong sometimes.
I think there is always a probability associated when one is trying to find out the answer to the question and you can just increase the probability of an answer but it never reaches the absolute value.
