The Riddler Speaks - Casefile #0100 (Patreon)

Jazztronic asks: Madness is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results every time. Forgive me for paraphrasing, but I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on the matter, given the people you encounter in your... Line of work.

Hahaha! Good old Einstein. Always quotable, and refreshingly logical, too. It's hard not to admire him when you've read any given account of his life, and it's my personal opinion that he was absolutely correct in this little observation. Everyone is Gotham is doing the same thing over and over again; I know why I'm doing it, of course. An experiment needs to be retried if its conditions are spoiled, and I intend to keep trying until I manage to generate uncorrupted results. I know why the Joker's doing the same thing, and frankly it's just that he's found his niche and is refusing to leave it. If our local clown tried anything new, I suspect his head would explode. 

As for the citizens of Gotham, what else can they do, besides what they've always done? Changing their lifestyles would be tantamount to admitting that the criminal hordes have won. Back in World War Two of course, they might have felt differently: proud to ration their foods and change their routines for the sake of victory. But now? Unlikely. The digital age has done its work. People would sooner die than admit that they need to change in order to survive. Definitely a form of insanity, albeit a passive one. Not committing suicide, just failing to save themselves. Change is survival. Adapt and overcome. Certain animals are called living fossils because they haven't changed in millions of years and it's for one of two reasons. Either nature has already arrived at the best possible design, as with the shark or the skunk, or they live in a sealed environment that protects them. The abyssal plain, the absolute bottom of the sea, is host to dozens of species that haven't changed since the time of the dinosaurs, because they were simply too cut off from the world above to be affected when everything else died. Everybody in Gotham, hero or villain, or ordinary everyday citizen, is just doing the same thing and expecting that it will change for the better. Oh sure, there have been a few attempts at doing otherwise, that Arkham City business for example, but they never last for long. Stagnation is insanity, and insanity is death. QED.