I think about this frequently when i think about mental illness, the mentally ill, etc. I frequently think of Robert Pirsig speaking about how insanity is viewed

“He was insane. And when you look directly at an insane man all you see is a reflection of your own knowledge that he’s insane, which is not to see him at all. To see him you must see what he saw and when you are trying to see the vision of an insane man, an oblique route is the only way to come at it.”

In a way it’s an admission of the speaker that they’re unable to understand the thinking of the person they’re seeing as insane. They feel their own confusion towards what the other thinks and call it the other person’s insanity. I see it as people essentially saying “I do not understand you, and I don’t respect you enough to try.” Whereas the same person confronted by the same behaviors or thinking patterns in individuals they are socially conditioned to respect would be more likely to think of them as eccentric instead, just weird, but perhaps worth figuring out rather than pathologizing

Anyway I’m thinking about getting a haircut before i see a new doctor tomorrow for unrelated reasons, i should probably shave too