Normalizing Insanity

All of us have encountered viral narratives and wondered, Is this narrative really true? Does it represent the real world, or is it a fantasy? Before you can determine the answer to your questions, the media enters the picture, telling you that the narrative has been created by the right people with the right ideology, and therefore, you should believe it. Before long, you see that students and faculty at colleges and universities have adopted the narrative, entertainers are talking about it, and major government agencies are promoting it, and some are proposing policies to codify it.

But you're still not sure. After all, the narrative is based on a idea that has little connection to evidence, facts, statistics, history, or even common sense. It's really just fantasy, but it does hit an emotional chord.

Before long, the people promoting the narrative claim that it is the undisputed truth. Their defense of the narrative and the idea becomes more extreme, suggesting serious or even apocalyptic outcomes if the narrative is not accepted and followed. If you question it, you're accused of some form of moral failure. As this happens, things can begin to spin out of control. The idea, its viral narrative, and policies derived from it move from fantasy toward insanity. And when this happens with one idea, it tends to happen with others.

Our society has been drifting away from critical thinking and rational analysis and toward the normalization of crazy ideas and nutty policies for many years. Normalizing Insanity discusses how fantasy ideas and the narratives they spawn turn into "insane" public policy. It shows how the acceptance of one insane policy makes it easier to promote and then establish another, and how that leads to cracks in our culture that may someday take us all to a dark place.