Thin lines

Ever been on top of a very tall building? More importantly, ever been on top of a tall building and looked down from over it's terrace's boundary wall onto the ground below? It's about a 100 meter free-fall one's looking at. More often than not, there may arise this secret desire to jump over the wall. One may even go to the extent of pulling oneself toward the wall, preparing for a jump, and all of a sudden , sanity comes to rescue and saves the day, goodness forbid if it doesn't! And all this happens despite the fact that there was no intention of a suicide attempt to begin with.

And yet, just thinking about taking a leap into the abyss sounds like madness! Doesn't it?

Let's consider another not-so-life-threatening situation. If the most commonly used curse word is the word FUCK (Firetruck is also an F-word...), the most commonly asked question will be "Are you mad??!!" (Closely followed by "What the Fuck??!!"). Find one poor soul who hasn't been questioned about his/her sanity. Our obsession with normalcy is such that given a choice, we'd have everybody except ourselves working out of an asylum. Okay, maybe that went a bit too far. 

But there is madness in nature's methods. As the Hindi tag line for some soft-drink goes "पागलपंती भी ज़रूरी है "(Paagalpanti bhi zaroori hai) meaning "Even madness is necessary!" . As unsuitable the tag line may seem with regard to the product, as far as our lives are concerned, madness is essential! In the book called Wisdom of the Psychopaths, by Kevin Dutton, the author goes to great lengths to point out how certain elements of psychopathy are inbuilt in our nature, and more so, they exist in extremes. On one hand, there might be someone so risk averse/paranoid that he/she may have to resort to medication to sometimes, keep from dying of anxiety. On the other hand, there are those, the daredevils, if one may call them so, who's head never allows them to register a potential hazard, or rather they can voluntarily choose to override our 'normal' flight responses. For them it's like this....

Consider yourself walking somewhere. Also consider a gigantic spider dangling right above your head. The spider is the bird-eating kind..THAT BIG! But consider this too that you haven't seen the spider, and even that you are not going to see the spider for some reason.  So for you, there is no big fat spider on top of your head! 

But then again, madness is built into our existence. Basically, no matter how much progress we make, there will always be the serial killers and the psychos within our population. Why?

The traits they have, in small quantities, have helped our ancestors to survive better. And it's not just our ancestors. Today, more than ever, these psychological forces are at play everywhere. Our forests are made of concrete today, but there never the less is no drop in our animal instinct. Psychopathic behavior helps rise in the social/official cadre. Why again? We aren't talking 'eating off the office staff to become the CEO of a company' madness. Where's the fun in that?

But rising to the top requires a strange sense of brutality along with the 'sincere' and 'hardworking' natures that our parents have been raving about since the beginning of time(at least our time). Brutality of the sort that is not hindered by conscience. Example? Steve Jobs could be one, although he would have never let any one do a psychoanalysis test on him. Actually all bosses are a bit 'off' somewhere in the head. And they are required to be. Imagine. There's recession/ some great economic calamity, and if a company doesn't lay off it's staff to cut down on expenses(obviously without compensation), it will sink. So it is in the hand of someone on top to take the judgment call. Now, if this someone-on-the-top in the company starts to get second thoughts because of the misery he is going to bring upon all the folks he/she is going to lay off, SOMEONE SAVE THE COMPANY!!!!! Yes, it's going to be unfair! Yes, it's not the right thing to do! Yes to a thousand things that are not supposed to happen but happen anyway! And BOLLOCKS to all of it! We are selfish beings, as selfless we try to be. Oh! Talking of selflessness, Mother Teresa is one more person who could be a name in the list of potential psychopaths!

And if one comes to think of it, anyone pursuing something with everything he/she's got will be a bit 'off' in the eyes of the world! But then, that sort of psycho-ness gets to be called dedication. Then what separates the mild psychos from the total psychos?? Not much.. Exactly speaking, this is exactly the thin line exists, just like that between winning a Nobel Prize and winning a permanent bed in a mental hospital. Just that if the amount of 'psycho-ness' were to be controlled using a knob, some mischievous fellow turned it to 'max' in the total psychos. With progress in science, we have many ways to protect ourselves from our malfunctioning brethren. Ever heard of lobotomy? The doctors just lop off a part of one's brain's frontal lobe(If I am not wrong) and voila!! You are a psycho no more! Although there may be a risk of totally debilitating a person from interacting with society altogether, as shown in the movie "One that flew over the cuckoo's nest ", atleast there is one less psycho we need to deal with! Besides, apart form Lobotomy, there are many other 'tomys' by which different parts of your brain can be lopped off and handed to you. But this ain't no anatomy class, is it?

So what to make of all of this jargon?? No clue! But just in case you plan to make the jump off the building's rooftop, wear a safety-harness or something! Happy bungee jumping!