John McAfee is the creator of the anti-virus software that is his namesake. After being worth $100 million dollars at one point after he sold his share of the company in 1994, his life seems to have become a rather interesting story. Searching online for news stories about the eccentric recluse, it seems that the saying ‘there’s a fine line between genius and insanity’ is fairly to the point in the case of McAfee, who seems to be dancing and possibly smoking the line between reality and delusion.
Fear and Loathing in Belize
McAfee was living in Central America, in a country that doesn’t make the news too often, Belize. Belize is a place that westerners go to get away from law, order and society if they have enough money to want to live life their way. It’s a paradise for the people who are rich enough to be called eccentric (However, if they were poor they’d be locked away in a hospital and heavily medicated.). In his own little world, McAfee’s fortune went from $100 million to $4 million, he attempted to make pharmaceuticals using natural remedies from jungle plants, practiced relative yoga, collected a wide variety of guns, is said to have been in a relationship with a 17 year old as well as having 7 live in girlfriends, and this year found himself under arrest for having illegal weapons and drugs, with his dog being shot dead by police during the raid.
Now, there’s no part of that story that sounds like a man who could be a part of our society, a man whose mind was quite intelligent but lack the capacity to make mature and intelligent choices. How intelligent can someone be if their choices are deluded, dangerous and could be possibly called stupid? Now, McAfee is finding himself on the run, and is apparent hiding out with an iPad without a charger, 3 DVDs (How he plays them on an iPad, who knows.) and not much else because his neighbour, Gregory Vaint Faull was found dead after disagreements between the pair.
Can The Innocent Be Paranoid
It begs the question, if McAfee is innocent, why would he be acting so erratic, and be on the run as he is? The Prime Minister of Belize, Dean Barrow has said of McAfee “I don’t want to be unkind, but he seems to be extremely paranoid — I would go so far as to say bonkers, he ought to man up and respect our laws and go in and talk to the police.”
Nothing in McAfee’s life makes him sound like a man, more like a child with too much money and too many toys. His lifestyle is quite bizarre, and with what seems to be a delusional mind, I doubt he’d be able to react normally, rationally or maturely to any situation. It seems, to McAfee, life is a game.
‘If you own the facts, you may distort them as you like.’ John McAfee, 1992.
McAfee has found himself in jail before, claiming that the prison he was held in used a milk carton as a toilet, no beds and was horrible to be in. It seems that for him, being under lock and key is his future.
The rich are eccentric, the poor are insane, and when the rich turn poor by their own ridiculous actions, no one has sympathy.
