The Mental State of the Union

An article in the newest issue of the Thresher, by SF writer John Shirley.

a quote:

"What is insanity? Among other things, it's the idea that we're immune to consequences. A madman thinks he's invulnerable, at times-when he's not being paranoid, as our Sane Leaders were in the McCarthy era. We think we can dump billions of pounds of toxins into ourselves-and not have one in three people come down with cancer and one in five with a psychiatric disorder. We are insane as a society. We are far more asleep, more automatic, more mechanistic in our reactions, our behavior than we know-and that is something psychiatry diagnoses as disassociation."