But before pondering the commodification of paranoia, consider its history. While the concept dates to the big bang, maybe earlier, the word can be traced to ancient Greece -- where it was apparently used in the same way we use the broader term "insanity." It wasn't until the late 19th century that paranoia was first employed to refer to a specific array of delusions. And it was only about 35 years ago that it was embraced by what was then known (among other things) as the counterculture and is now known as many of the middle-aged people reading this. That generation passed on the word in its common usage to their children, who now also pepper their discourse with it. But while paranoia is often used as a synonym for fear, it's more than that; it's better. Paranoia is for those of us who savor a deep and abiding unease; it's fear for connoisseurs.

These days, we use the term to connote a popular recipe of high anxiety and persecution complex spiced with a few heaping tablespoons of self-obsession. Generally, we manage to contain our paranoia on the interpersonal level -- we imagine lovers are cheating on us, co-workers are plotting against us, people on the bus are looking at us strangely, friends are ostracizing us and so on.

But some prefer to work on a bigger canvas: CONSPIRACY, in which the most intriguing scenarios are implemented by dark-hearted, clandestine government (or quasi-government) organizations. Given that there's never been a shortage of such agencies, the fact that some individuals choose to torment themselves by imagining that big bad groups -- real or fictional -- have an unhealthy interest in them is not surprising. If you're in the market for a delusion, it's a no-brainer.

There are, of course, individuals afflicted with bona fide mental illness in which paranoid delusions play a central role. That's not the sort of paranoia being discussed in this week's collection of articles (though it's a relative). Our interest is in the contagion so many of us share: pop paranoia, the domain of the quirky, the obsessive, the slightly loopy dot connector, the compiler of bent facts, curious coincidences and curly conundrums, the sociopolitical fantasist, the darkly imaginative hobbyist -- neurotics, perhaps, but not psychotics. In other words, you, me and almost everybody we know.

For the confirmed paranoid, one of paranoia's most useful aspects is what we'll call the "Roger Rabbit" component. Much like animation and live action were intermixed in the 1988 film "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" threads of paranoid delusion can be so seamlessly woven into the fabric of reality that even the most acute, well-balanced mind will be hard put to tell where one stops and the other begins.

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