One of the necessary conditions for sanity is the ability to order one’s thoughts, to control one’s mind, to flash the beam of thought where we want it to go. Those who struggle with various forms of acute mental illness are battling moment to moment to exert this kind of dominance over their own thoughts against intrusions, voices, apparitions, elements of psyche that feel outside of their control that come unbidden. But that precisely describes the nature of our shared public discourse, the burbling, insistent ruckus of a deeply unquiet mind.
