I WAS caught completely offguard when trudging along a cemented path, outside some houses in Bangsar and towards the shopping centre at the top of the hill.

Young plants by the side, beautiful and ornamental yet hardly appropriate; the plants were all thorns. Morbid as I can get, I imagined tripping and being impaled on the thorn-tipped leaves.

As I walked on, the “evil” plants gained territory, creeping closer to the cement pathway till some hundred metres further, the plants had merged with the path. I had to step off, and onto the road every 20 metres or so because some idiot was not thinking. I was livid and despairing.

This, no doubt, is an apt metaphor of “public” life in Malaysia; public meaning, of course, “free for all” and “anything I damn well please to do” instead of perhaps “common ownership and responsibility” and “realm of civility”.

Perhaps I expect too much of my fellow man. In fact, because I have such a high regard for my fellow man, I have become interested in history, if only to remind myself that we have come a long way. Yes, human history is one of endless drama with many a low point and just enough humour and sparkle of genius to redeem the wretched lot of us.

A STRANGE ODYSSEY: Keeping our foibles in historical perspective

It’s a tragicomedy of global proportions. In geological terms, our existence hardly warrants a blip on the radar. In terms of flora and fauna, we are clearly relatively young – relative to the cockroach, for instance. In civilisational terms – since we started domesticating plants and animals, invented writing and formed cities and crisscrossed the globe – we are still relatively new.

After all, it has only been 12,000 years since we did all that we associate with being civilised. That’s not too long. I would recommend one of the finest popular books on the matter, Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. Less than a hundred years ago, we had a world war that claimed the lives of tens of millions.

How shocking must the human race have seemed to those who emerged from the wreckage of World War Two. Even the politics of the immediate world around us still owes much to the cauldron of the Pacific War. A must-read for anyone interested to know why Southeast Asian politics is, as it is, is Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper’s infinitely readable two volume history Forgotten Armies and Forgotten Wars.

Together they cover the 1940s: first focusing on the British Empire as it stretched over India, Burma, Malaya and Singapore; and the second volume, over a larger area as Britain took control over the possessions of other imperial powers such as Dutch-controlled Indonesia and French-controlled Vietnam.

One day, no doubt, a book will be written about the system that allowed Michael Jackson to sparkle but then chewed him up and spat him out. And there is also a book out there waiting to be written about all the wasted talent crushed or marginalised by the hubris and venial motives of Southeast Asian political leaders.

These books – and the thought of others – often allow me to take my focus off the many thorny encroachments and absurd choices made for pedestrians.

● Sharaad Kuttan wonders about those who refuse to sidestep or sometimes can’t see thorny pathways.