SQ

“So the Test Ban people couldn't do anything but shout about freedom and accuse Dr. Speakie and the Psychometric Bureau of trying to "turn the world into a huge insane asylum” (Le Guin 73).

I found Ursula K Le Guin’s “SQ” to be a comedic gem, whether its content is inspected literally or looked at through the lens of a critique on contemporary society (the latter being the route I am particularly fond of). In “SQ” a man by the name of Dr. Speakie develops a method of testing a person’s sanity. Should that person test under a 50, it means they are sane. However, should they test over a 50, it means they are insane, and should be institutionalized accordingly. Dr. Speakie and his statistically sane constituents also operate the asylums in which those who fail the test reside.  From the perspective of the reader, the test, perhaps counterintuitive to its purpose, does not seem to be an accurate way of determining the sanity of a person, because the majority of people who take the test fail. This would devalue any practical definition of the word “insane”. So many people fail that test that 60% of the remaining, sane population is used to operate the asylums to treat the 3.8 billion people institutionalized via the S.Q. As a result, the “universal application of the SQ test was eventually going to involve everybody either as Inmates or as Staff” (Le Guin 72).

At first, my contention with the story was the way in which they determined sanity. Although I know this is science fiction, I say this because there is no way of determining if a person is “insane”. Sanity is not even a psychological term, it is a legal term. By law, a person is insane only if they cannot distinguish between what is right and what is wrong. A person cannot be proven insane unless facing a charge in court of law, providing evidence to support such a claim. Similarly, the idea that “right” and “wrong” may change based on the opinion of the majority also helps to devalue the validity of the SQ, considering the majority test insane. However, I soon began to suspect that the legal definition of sanity may imply that our narrator, and in turn the SQ test, is unreliable. Such is evident when Mrs. Smith claims “The people who called him a power seeker were just the same people who used to say that Hitler was insane and Nixon was insane and all the world leaders were insane and the arms race was insane and our misuse of natural resources was insane and the whole world civilization was insane and suicidal” (Le Guin 69). No modern day sane person would believe that these things were not, to some degree, insane, at least in terms of right and wrong. In my eyes, her character was questionable from the beginning, as was the SQ test and Dr. Speaky.

The questionability of both her and Dr. Speakie’s characters serve a bigger purpose in my interpretation of the story. To that end, I believe “sanity” in terms of the story is to be taken with a grain of salt. I believe this measure of “sanity” is actually a comment on contemporary society and the dangers of conformity. In this case, “sane” would be representative of the word “normal”.  The skepticism the reader develops of Dr. Speakie and Mrs. Smith may function as the catalyst that helps pose the question “why would it be a good thing to be normal or 'sane', especially in the context of this story?” I believe the test more likely than not depicts a person’s deviation from normal behavior. Those who deviate too far are to be institutionalized. In an attempt to keep people from deviating too far, the rest of the population is forced to act as the “eternal vigilance” to help pay “the price of liberty” (Le Guin 73). In essence, if the world is divided into those who are insane and those who are not, (or those who are normal and those who are not) it would require that one look after the other to sustain their way of life. In an effort to create a world where no person should deviate too far from the spectrum of sane or “normal” in fear of criticism or ostracism, the world is turned “into a huge insane asylum”, assigning each individual the role of “Inmate” or “Staff”, thus devaluing Doctor Speakie’s innate belief that “Mental health is freedom” (Le Guin 73).