Ever since I was a kid, I've been aware of a problem in the world: a problem of people who are bonkers, or at best half-bonkers. And I noticed, as I grew, how the proportion of people I perceived to be bonkers also grew. But not only that; the status of those bonkers people increased too - that's to say, the higher their status the more bonkers they appeared to be. Then, as I entered my teens, I noticed that the status and level of bonkersness of those I'd formerly regarded as high-status bonkers people, seemed to shrink beside new even higher-status and even more bonkers ones... so that the former became indistinguishable from one another - like receding buildings of various sizes as you leave a great city and head for the freedom and expanse of open country...
From this new vantage point, vastly elevated levels of bonkersness came into view. At first the most weird of these appeared to have consequences, though weighty and dubious enough, that were not immediately relevant to me. Yet they still sat like a dark cloud in the background, a kind-of threat, a potential irritant. I noticed too that it was hard to spot the actual people behind these bokersnesses. Issues like: how criminals are treated so they're more likely to re-offend, how people who work hardest are paid the least money, how the most advertised food and drink were the least healthy and most expensive... how the most environmentally destructive products (ie, cars and airlines) dominated advertising, on billboards as well as TV... above all, and most upside-down of all: how there is no limit, apparently, to the £bns the UK (orUS) government will shell out for armies and weapons to invade and destroy, whereas to help the resulting refugees requires charity appeals... so many obvious bonkersnesses in every aspect of society, and that even the most ardent barrister would be hard-pushed to defend.
Numerous lesser bonkersnesses floated within my radar. Some affected me, some didn't. But I noticed them, or many of them at any rate. I guess a few escaped me. The list is long, either way. At all levels of society, from rubbish-tip operatives to council officials to the local MP and beyond, the world to me seemed excessively populated with 'little-Hitlers': power maniacs. Power-play and status ruled. Presumably, to look idiotic was their last concern. People who attempt to defend their irrational decisions seem incapable of objective self-observation. Or do they see the trade-off as part of the deal: the thrill of pointlessly wielding power at the expense of being regarded a total nutter? Frequently, though, being a nutter was the least of the consequences, which more frequently than not create a massive drag on anyone who likes an easy life, and is why I take steps, when I can, to avoid them...
On a much higher level, a bonkers politician who instructs MI6 to assassinate a key opponent could set a whole train of reprisals in motion... or a bonkers oil-CEO who skimps on safety could cause a catastrophe that the environment takes many decades to recover from... or bonkers BIGnuts like airline CEOs and bonkers transport politicians of several countries could jointly set the scene for global warming with consequences that are irreversible and devastating (especially to coastal/island communities) with huge sea-level rises, and (to poorly constructed dwellings) from more frequent and more violent hurricanes... etc.
On the everyday trivial level bonkersness is a phenomenon that affects almost everyone, bonkers or not. What could be more bonkers than to allow people who are bonkers to have any involvement in running anything? Yet this is what virtually always happens. Because the few who are not bonkers tend to weigh a situation before they act, rather than blindly obey - a phenomenon that high-status bonkers people find intolerable. And since it's usually the most bonkers people who aspire to high positions, thinking remains firmly out of reach, quietly simmering within the lower orders. So those who have the power to decide issues are usually bonkers. They comprise the 'cream' of what essentially is a great bonkers army: the naive, unreflective, propaganda-driven man/woman-in-the-street. This 'cream' are described by supporters as 'strategists', 'leaders', 'entrepreneurs', and by detractors as 'sharks' or 'crooks and spivs'... as if, in a nutshell, they are either one or the other, when in fact they are almost always all these or purely the latter. Either way, all operate as though blind to the repercussions of their activities. Whatever influence anything or anyone can have, they remain - like the proverbial psychopath - unmoved. They've elbowed and swindled their way past or around every obstacle, and have devised ways to brush aside competition, regulation, justification, qualification... including any other of myriad attempts by hapless outsiders to limit their activities and powers.
Over the decades, bonkers political representatives have tweaked this law and that, so as to engineer - not the mere perpetuation of the status, financial and otherwise, of their bonkers associates, obsessives, control freaks and lesser bonkers supporters - but the most rapid and extensive possible advancement of it. No regard for anything else falls within their visual field. For instance, their response to alarming survey reports on global warming is to announce an increase in air travel, lower prices, more runways... 'Upside-Down' as ever - ie, key irrefutable evidence of bonkersness.
You might say (if you're bonkers too): that's not bonkers.... who wouldn't take advantage if they could? Who wouldn't elevate themselves financially at any opportunity? And you'd have a point if you didn't give a rap for anyone else on the planet, either now or after you're dead. But if you pause and glance ahead - not far, just a decade is enough - at the likely aftermath and see where these bonkers approaches lead.... and then decide who's bonkers, you'd get quite a shock (assuming, as I say, you're bonkers too).
Even so, this is the position of a mere minority, a powerful and devastatingly problematic minority, one that bleeds the rest of us dry, the poorer the drier, and a minority beside whom ordinary criminals appear almost benign, angelic... but still a minority.... ie, ever more billionaires and food-banks. So what about the majority? What about us millions of 'ordinary' plebs who make up the bulk of this vast army, who've succumbed to supporting the protected minority of superbonkers 'strategists' and 'leaders' of industry, politics, everything that has power... plebs who, at the same time, have subscribed - wittingly or otherwise - to a whole range of other lesser kinds of bonkersness? So what about them (us)? I'm talking now about the low-level kind of bonkersness that invades, in its multitudinous ways, our everyday lives... the kind-of bonkersness we all encounter at one time or another, the kind that's mostly accepted with the ups and downs we experience in the impenetrable detail and haze of normal existence as we go about our lives... a bonkersness, in short, which is perhaps less sinister but more irrational, absurd, and more immediately irritating than those potentially lethal global ones as described above.
What I'm talking about here is for instance, not being able to buy a computer without the Windows OS (which isn't cheap, isn't necessary - when Linux is available - and just pours more money into an outfit that's already $bns overfed), or having to pay for a whole day's parking when you stop somewhere for 10-minutes, having to pay £300 car tax for driving 5-miles if that's all you do in a year (or only £30 for high-polluting diesel), or having to pay loads more on Channel Port ferries if you don't book in advance (including when the boat's half empty), or train fares being almost identical single or return. And far more serious bonkersnesses like always having to be early, or children being prevented from learning how to manage time, the drive for economies to endlessly grow, for people to endlessly work, to endlessly devour resources as fast and as extensively as possible (to feed the insatiable Big Corp).... to rip-off, out-smart and tread on your neighbour. To get, in short, what you can... and the Devil take the hindmost (as the saying goes).
OK.... all this is worse than bonkers, I know... hence the title 'A BONKERS item...'. The fact is: Humans are inherently, fundamentally bonkers. Whatever any non-bonkers people try to do to correct, ameliorate or prevent the cataclysmic effects of this all-pervading hierarchy of bonkersness, nothing seems to work.... people who are bonkers are continually being born (or weaned?) and are rising - clawing - through the ranks ('rank' is the word!) to take control...
And I've scarcely mentioned war!
That belongs under a different heading:
'BEYOND BONKERSNESS'.... see THIS YOUTUBE (if you can tolerate the dreaded 'music')... and maybe Donovan's 'Universal Soldier' too.
