Yesterday evening I watched with jaw-dropping interest the BBC 1 documentary, "When Satan Came to Town", about the Manchester families whose children were taken into care in the early 1990's because social workers wrongly suspected the parents of "devil worship" and child abuse.  

I remember hearing about it at the time and, like most other people, assuming that there must, surely, be something to it. To learn that the suspicions were not just untrue, but also completely unfounded, in view of the traumatic experiences these families were subjected to as a consequence, is deeply disturbing - but, from a scientific (sociological, psychological, anthropological and historical) perspective, also extremely interesting and important (thus me addressing this to you at Thinking Allowed).  

When first learning about the horrors and irrationalities of medieval history, I remember my deep sense of thankfulness for living in modern, humane and rational times, but occasionally wondered how come things had changed so much in just a few short centuries. Slowly and with increasing anxiety, I came to realise that things haven't changed nearly as much as I'd assumed.

There's a biblical saying about removing the plank of wood from one's own eye before pointing out the splinter in someone else's. The truth is that we ALL have a plank of wood in our eye, which, because it has always been there (and we ALL have it), is extremely difficult (if not impossible) to see. Politicians and academics, of course, must also deny it, even to themselves, for professional reasons. Removing it would reveal what I refer to as the "insanities of normality ", which permeate and form a huge and essential part of our world. Essential, in the sense that without them, or anything to take their place, we would go mad (and hungry). I have slowly become aware of some of them, and thereby retain my sanity - although many would probably disagree . . .