The final straw came in the form of an email about a dead celebrity: "Sky1 HD have announced that world-renowned psychic medium Derek Acorah will attempt to make contact with Michael Jackson on Sky1 HD in two specially-commissioned shows, Michael Jackson: The Live Seance and Michael Jackson: the Search for his Spirit to be broadcast in November."

The seance will take place in Ireland with the psychic Derek Acorah (have I been living under a tarot card-shaped rock? Acorah's media publicist says he is "world renowned", although I ain't ever heard of him). "These programmes provide a unique opportunity to celebrate Michael Jackson's life," the announcement bangs on stubbornly, "and possibly find out his final message to the world." If by "celebrate" you mean flog a dead horse to make loads of money, and by "find out his final message to the world" you mean make something up that centres vaguely around the themes of saving the planet, the children are the future, blah blah blah, then… yes. Really, anything – even the most unpalatable distasteful muck – will do for entertainment. But worst of all, we're stupid enough to digest it.

Reflecting on a snapshot of right here, right now, it feels like a lot of the stuff we're doing, watching and preoccupied with is remarkably daft.

We're losing our minds over two tuneless X Factor twins (and I'm as guilty of this as anyone), with even the very serious and above-all-of-that Irish Times dedicating masses of column inches to their peroxide plight.

Instead of uniting against the government, we're content with constructing a civil war of words between public and private sector workers.

The only thing that sells in literature, TV, or film seems to involve horny vampires. And say what you like about that eejit down in Knock putting opticians in the west in business for the next decade by making thousands of even bigger eejits stare at the sun, but Joe Coleman is a key figure in the stupid solutions people grasp onto when no other hope abounds. So why, when what is really needed are smart solutions, have we all gone a bit stupid?

Some might say the internet is to blame. We've gone a decade using it as our prime communication tool and our attention spans are being flittered away unless the information we digest is in 140 characters or less. Some say that the speed at which humans now intake, digest and skip through information is actually making us smarter, but our recent collective behaviour certainly would indicate otherwise.

It seems for the most part, our (hopefully) temporary silliness is born out of economic stress. There is a certain degree of delusion people will indulge in in order to avoid the horrible realities of recession and economic crappery.

There's endless evidence to remind us of how idiotically we handled the boom: gold-plated toilet brush holders in Brown Thomas or that €200 juicer gathering dust on top of your press, but one would have thought such bingeing would lead to "seeing sense". Not so. Our intelligence was suspended during the Celtic Tiger years, with our brains replaced with a neurological cash register that thought, lived, breathed and acted money, moolah, lids, quids, dosh, and readies. Take that away, and there's a remarkable void in the collective Irish brain. What can we replace it with? Stupidity, apparently.

We are paralysed by a reality that seems so inescapable that the only real solution seems to be to curl up in the foetal position, rock slowly, and make 'la la la' noises while sticking one's fingers in one's ears. I call this Reach For The Blankey Syndrome, a state induced by economic shock that results in either inaction or reckless behaviour.

Of course, there's a very Irish solution to Reach For The Blankey Syndrome – get locked! If anyone was in an Irish city centre during last week's apocalyptic Hallowe'en celebrations they'll know what I mean. Hallowe'en turned into the new New Year's Eve, with entire sectors of the population running around dressed as zombies, Michael Jackson, animals, Jedward, going absolutely baloobas, as if it was the last chance to avoid everything by drinking themselves into an almost coma-like state.

So, how do we get smart again, or were we ever smart to begin with?

Luck can often be confused with competence or ability. Did we purposely get ourselves into our previously awesome economic situation, or did it just appear like a dancing sun coincidentally forecast by chancers? As our nation rapidly sheds its emperor's clothes, perhaps instead of streaking wildly, which is what our collective stupefied psyche seems to be doing at the moment, it might be time to seek a more measured change of threads. Or at the very least, something that looks a bit smarter.