Southwestern University School of Law professor Butler Shaffer offers some big-picture insight regarding the insane asylum's zeitgeist, circa 2008. Recommended.
The only quibble I can offer is that Shaffer seems to suggest that "collective insanity" is somehow a new thing. Of course, it's been with us a long, long time. There does, however, seem to be an ebb and flow to lunacy-as-conventional-wisdom, and even crests and crashes.
Hamlet told us that "Denmark's a prison," but -- hint, hint -- "Denmark" wasn't just Denmark.
MacBeth was more on point:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrowCreeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
The "idiots" keep telling us what to think whilst they strut and fret. At the end of the day, we can take a certain comfort knowing that it indeed does signify nothing. Nothing at all.
-RC