Madness a rule, not an exception

You'd be off your tree if you believed you were totally sane. Gaga, nuts, and cuckoo, not to mention seminally stupid.

If our starting position is the belief that we're all mad, you'll find many of the mysteries of life disappear, and we're left with far less to explain.

For all that, the health boffins claim that on any given day, it's only one in four of us who are bonkers. I apologise, I meant ''who suffers a mental illness''.

They say only one in four? Well, clearly they're mad. To any sensible observer, it's obvious an ''only one in four'' score is crumpscuddle. It takes the sober citizen only half a lifetime to realise everyone you know well - yes everyone - is in their own way, more than just a little troppo.

I'm not saying their sanity has departed and left no forwarding address. I simply mean it frequently pops out to lunch. And more often than you think.

Sanity can be as tricky to identify as insanity. Take the very recent Queenstown case of the chap accused of harassing his ex with phone calls. When arrested he told the police his iPhone was set to voice commands so that Siri, its humanoid robot, did the work when he spoke. And his ex's phone number was listed under ''Bitch''. So whenever he ...

If you've used Siri, you realise she's actually quite thick. Siri often gets the wrong end of the stick.

But was this a sane or insane explanation? If your mobile has ever made a pocket phone call you'll know ''Siri did it,'' may be in the same field as ''the dog ate my homework''. At first glance it seems an unlikely excuse, but then again, why not? The beak didn't accept the Siri Defence - there were other factors - but I suspect he still thought it the most original excuse he'd heard since Christmas.

We haven't heard the last of the ''Siri did it'' defence. It has vast potential.

I favour Sam Goldwyn's thought that you need your head read if you see a shrink. But if I was tied down to the psychiatrist's couch and subjected to rigorous testing, what would happen?

My guess is I'd probably earn a Sanity Score somewhere around C+. Or a solid B- on my good days. You may think this a poor performance, but actually a Sanity Score hovering above C+ is perfectly acceptable, and certainly exceeds the requirements for American presidents.

The election of President Donald is a reminder that insanity is not just a private matter. The institutions we've created to govern us may seem born of sound mind, but they, too, become touched by madness.

Friedrich Nietzsche, the poseur's favourite German philosopher, said this: ''Insanity in individuals is rare (one of Freddy's dodgier assertions), but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.''

I'm quoting Nietzsche not because I want to write about the rise of the Nazis - but because I want to paint my house.

And getting my house painted means a brush with one of the ways our system gets crazier still - the Health and Safety industry.

Cave paintings found in Valencia indicate intelligent man invented an item called the ladder at least 10,000 years ago. Ladders are handy things for painters. When they have to work beyond hand's reach, they lean their trusty ladder against the wall and climb it. If they have to do this for more than a few minutes, your painter gets two ladders, safely secures an elevated plank between them, then climbs aboard and does the job.

This has happened for millennia. But you know where this story is headed. Today the painter can't simply run the plank between the ladders, or say ''Joe, could you hold the ladder steady''.

He must call in experts to erect scaffolding, as if your house is a construction site for a skyscraper. And so the price of painting my house goes further north.

But it could be worse. I have a farming mate who's just been forced to build a new shed to house a book. Yes, one small book, one whole shed.

Health and Safety required he provide a proper place for a record book which farm visitors must sign
as they enter. It turned out that because of factors a, b, and c, he
was also required to build the book a shed.

And does anyone bother entering the shed to sign the Health and Safety book? You know the answer.

-John Lapsley is an Arrowtown writer.

Comments

Before ACC in the 1970's, property owners were responsible for accident causing injury, ie, they paid. This potential penalty focused the mind, and care was taken. Ladders and height work are appropriate concerns for H & S.

There is a completely doolaly commercial on TV, which doesn't bear close consideration. A tremulous woman with seaweed in her hair, representing the Spirit of the Beach, enquires, weakly, "Will you buy the beers?"