Editing Genius The Transgression/Chapter One: The Cosmos (section)

===Types of Insanity===
''I'm Not Mad!''

''"Involvement with Bizarro transcends words producible by mere tongue, teeth and lips. If my lumbar ganglia could talk, maybe you'd have your answer, Barry. As for my 'position,' well, I'm not sure if such simplistic polarities as hither and yon obtain in our peculiar quadrant of hypospace. But the address of my bungalow is somewhere on the opposite side of Bizarroville from Speculative Boulevard, and diametrically across from Irreal Avenue. Sometimes late at night they sneak across the tracks, infiltrate my neighborhood, and make unusual mouth noises outside my window. It's taxing emotionally."

''-Tom Bradley''

A genius should get used to being called mad. Most that don't crack in their first few months learn to take it in stride, for unlike regular researchers, many mad scientists know exactly how insane they are. But a genius can slip and fall to true madness. These become the unmada. 
Too much Maniacal activity, too fast, can result in the genius cracking as Inspiration overrides parts of her thinking mind. When this happens, the genius becomes an unmada: the raw energy of Mania echoes her own thoughts, confirming her prejudices and beliefs. Those beliefs then reinforce her Inspiration, which produces more bent Mania, producing a hall-of-mirrors or echo-chamber effect where the genius' own subconscious continually validates her opinions while wiping away contradictory data. Some geniuses escape this fate; others revel in it.

The term "maniac" (as a slang term for the unmada) is thrown around rather casually in mad society, but it has a very specific meaning for the Peerage, and there are three sorts of unmada that generally concern the Inspired.

The first are the independent unmada, sometimes called echo doctors. Most are lonesomes or isolated rogues, vulnerable to the phantasms generated by their own Mania because they lack a model to explain their wonders. Others belong to the Peerage and are tolerated despite their eccentricities. These lone madmen are often pitied by the Peerage, and attempts are made to reach and rehabilitate them.

The most common unmada are the Lemurians, who insist that they are quite sane, thank you. But Lemuria is based on the idea that a genius' own Inspiration provides a totally accurate view of the world―that everyone else is peering through their scanners darkly, not the genius. Lemurians rationalize the obvious contradictions in different members' interpretations of the world by invoking the Archweltanschaaung of Lemuria, which states that each Lemurian's worldview really is true, but that a "higher" truth maintains them all...or perhaps will maintain them all at some future point, when the Lemurians' work is completed. The details of the Archweltanschaaung are unclear to all but devoted students of Lemurian epistemology.

Many Lemurians spend their lives, like Aquinas reconciling Aristotle and the Church, finding "occult" compatibilities among different Lemurian philosophies. The Lemurians, in the end, are thoroughly cracked, but they have created a system that allows them to function, for all their cruelty and madness. Most geniuses who become Lemurians join them―or more accurately, are recruited by them―within the first few months after their Breakthroughs, Some seek them out so that their broken visions might receive validation; others are granted the "truth" by a Lemurian who discovers a lonesome teetering on the edge of dangerous madness. There is the occasional trickle between the Peerage and Lemuria, but this is negligible: most Inspired remain on one side of the fence or another for life.

The Illuminated are not fooled by Mania: they are Mania. The Illuminated have been consumed by their own Inspiration. That alien light burns away their personalities, leaving nothing but a swirling vortex of Mania and alien logic. It's estimated that about 20% of all fall to Illumination eventually: 10% more or less immediately and 10% over the course of their lives. Most of the latter are Lemurians, but no one is entirely safe. An Illuminated becomes "genius," rather than remaining an individual genius. As a mad scientist succumbs to Illumination, raw Inspiration swallows up the genius' personality. He becomes something amazing and terrible, entirely devoid of human feelings or thoughts, a mere conduit for the deranged energy of genius as it floods into the world. The Illuminated are dangerous and magnificent, transcendental mathematical intellects wrapped in the guise of mortal flesh, their actions unpredictable and dangerous. Whatever motivates the Illuminated, they are often as beautiful as they are cruel, capable of composing grand and monstrous projects, as Maniacal light from another world spills from their eyes.