We have become a society that can't self-correct that can't address its obvious problems that can't pull out of its nosedive. And so to our list of disasters let us add this fourth entry: we have entered an age of folly that - for all our Facebooking and the twittling tweedle-dee-tweets of the twitterati - we can't wake up from.
We must not however be like the leaders of the great romantic revolt who in their eagerness to get rid of the husk of convention disregarded also the humane aspiration.