Living by a social construct of reality at wide divergence from the physical one is a good working definition of “societal madness”.  Of course no social network will admit to that, but evidence of communities not getting along because they live by starkly different realities does develop.

In America today we seem to have a wide variety of mad social realities to choose from.  It might even be a perennial human condition…   Now they’ve come to clearly interfere with our adapting to changes in the physical world confronting us.

Our economy went from small to big, for example, and like anything else in nature must change directions.  Anything that gets “big” has to stop getting “bigger”, but our social worlds have devised numerous conflicting ways to believe they, or we, can be an exception.  It’s preventing us from acting on the problem at all.

The real concern is that in history people have produced scores of advanced technological societies, that failed is this kind of way.   They tended to be very good at one thing and then, like us, find themselves confused by the next thing, loosing their way.

A good modern day “test for madness” is needed.   One is just whether clear physical realities are “anti-social” to believe in or discuss.   There’s “anti-social reality” that almost everyone finds objectionable to bring up, effectively exposing our whole society as “mad”.  That is that for our economy to not get bigger would mean finding a practical end to growth, for both wealth and what we measure wealth with, money.

That particular “madness” is a defining characteristic of “tower of Babel” societies, that multiply their success with one thing to the point of fatal collapse of some other.  As you check out the details, we unquestionably DO seem to have the symptoms.

We are also socially hamstrung by being unable to discuss it.   That’s what I’m pointing out.  Our explorers of these questions are shut out of the societal conversation, as the subjects they raise are “anti-social”… :-(

I also have clear insights into the natural solutions, but we’d have to talk.