IF social and political evolution really is a two-way race between education and catastrophe, then odds makers in Bermuda must currently be giving a decisive edge to catastrophe.

clearly not a case of Apocalypse Now in the Bermuda context but rather "When"? The superheated economy is so vibrant the island could probably run on the impetus provided by a wave of post-9/11 insurance and reinsurance incorporations and the associated trickle down benefits for another few years.

But the ubiquity of money in the current Bermuda context, the drifting dollar bills that can be snatched out of the air like so many fall leaves, tends to camouflage the fact that the legislative and regulatory infrastructures which make such wealth possible are being steadily eroded.

And those who should be most concerned about a Government that seems to be not only uneducated but ineducable seem more focused on the short-term profits to be made rather than the long-term sustainability of Bermuda, Inc.

The island's cultural is progressively becoming an ever more unpleasant compound of vinegarish cynicism, resignation and increasing detachment from public life on the part of the very Bermudians boasting resum?s that theoretically qualify them to assume leading roles in the political and civic processes.

Indeed, those best suited to contribute are the ones most assiduously building mental firewalls between themselves and Bermudian current affairs.

Local events seem to be as far removed from their thinking and experience as if they took place on the dark side of the Moon.

Usually employed in the financial service industries or its satellites ? the law, accountancy, management firms ? the best and the brightest Bermuda has to offer frequently seem to be as psychologically distanced from the island of their birth as they are physically removed from corporate head offices they report to in London or New York or Zurich. Be that as it may, their minds operate in those distant time-zones, jacked into separate realities courtesy of their computer modems and conference calls and videoconferencing. The gleaming, stylus-like marble and steel office buildings they work in that now spear the Hamilton skyline are becoming concrete symbols, quite literally, of their growing remoteness from what's occurring in street-level Bermuda.

The resistance of Bermuda's professional and intellectual elite to participating in an increasingly degraded political process is understandable to some degree.

Politicians, never held in particularly high esteem in Bermuda, are now increasingly viewed as falling somewhere between serial killers and amoeba on the social food-chain. The gloomy consensus of opinion seems to be that catastrophe of some sort of another is the most likely outcome given the ongoing damage being inflicted to Bermuda's lawmaking and regulatory infrastructures.

As a consequence few gifted Bermudians are willing to donate their time or abilities to help maintain the very systems that have so enriched them in recent decades. Among the professionals, there's a palpable sense of mercenary self-dealing in the air ? a frantic, almost primal hunter-gatherer impulse to get what's going while it's still available.

This, of course, is the sort of self-defeating thinking that can all too easily result in even the most demented worst-case scenarios bandied about in bars and coffee shops becoming self-fulfilling prophecies.

When no one sufficiently competent is prepared to even contemplate watching the increasingly unreliable governmental watchmen of Bermudian society, the unhappy results can be forecast with an absolute degree of accuracy.

This natural reluctance to participate is further compounded by the questionable but always well-publicised counsel of their corporate overlords, the off-shore premium barons who are never short on advice as to how Bermuda should manage its affairs.

anything-for-a-quiet-life philosophy is perfectly encapsulated in calls for Bermudians to direct their energies into non-contentious volunteer work rather than sometimes fractious public service. Or, as one of these supremos acidly jokes, he would prefer Bermuda to be a one-party state because one party is cheaper to buy than two.

That the insurance plutocrats of Gucci Gulch, as Bermudiana Road is now widely known, would wish to see a less politically volatile Bermuda as the domicile for their business activities is somewhat understandable.

But you wouldn't necessarily want to purchase catastrophe coverage off them. Such a desultory appraisal of the extraordinarily large role political risk can play in disrupting a community's ongoing viability is neither reassuring nor particularly realistic coming from individuals who are steered by actuarial tables.

Similarly, these same magnates like to privately delude themselves into believing that the Bermuda Government is entirely beholden to them, that it is in some ways a wholly-owned subsidiary of their own operations. They subscribe to the notion that Bermuda is a palm-fringed, latterday company town, a community dominated economically as well as politically by the leaders of its primary industry. Bermuda politics is a puppet show, with them manipulating the strings.

Pull the curtains back and trace the strings upwards from the hands of these putative puppeteers and you will find they actually loop back into the hands of the same willful marionettes on stage.

The events of last July, when a Premier the island's corporate leadership openly boasted of courting if not actually controlling was deposed by a coup de main these professional risk assessors entirely failed to anticipate, should have demonstrated how limited their understanding of local political dynamics are.

There is, of course, a definite relationship between Bermuda's major economic and political players: but it is a far more complex one than those cocooned in the executive suites would ever care to admit.

When economic and political interests converge, as they do on matters ranging from taxation to work permit limits, the most an off-the-books campaign contribution or some other corporate enticement buys is a somewhat more rapid hearing than the man on the street might expect to receive from the politician in question. But nothing else. The incentives the corporate chieftains provide to Bermuda's political leadership, some subtle and community-oriented, others amounting to little more than barely disguised forms of graft, do not in fact amount to taking out a form of political insurance with the Government of the day. Their money buys them access, nothing more.

converse side to their argument for a hands-off approach to politics by Bermuda's best and brightest would eventually allow for the self-same system of laws and lawmaking institutions, customs and conventions, that allows the financial service industries to prosper so extraordinarily here to come apart every bit as dramatically as a tin shack in the track of a Category Five Hurricane. Such frameworks are fragile, held together by little more than the procedural equivalents of cobwebs, stamp hinges and goodwill that's every bit as insubstantial as moonbeams.

That process, some would argue, is already well under way in Bermuda.

Bermuda's Not Ready For Primetime Government not only appears to learn nothing from even its most calamitous experiences, the Cabinet seems to actually revel in a kind of nihilistic afterglow following on from its more conspicuous missteps.

The message that education is rapidly losing ground to catastrophe at the Government level is rammed home on an almost daily basis by the current administration.

Wistful talk of economic empowerment notwithstanding, to most observers it would seem the only people being financially empowered are members of the Government and their most lickspittle cronies. Little has been done since last July's coup de main against Jennifer Smith to reassure the electorate or the business sector that corruption ended with her watch, that the Progressive Labour Party is in fact more interested in governance than off-the-books profit taking.

Government is seemingly resolute in its determination to operate outside any system of checks and balances - that is, in fact, to check the checks and unbalance the balances as is evidenced by do-it-yourself constitutional reforms and continuing threats to geld the Auditor General. Is it any wonder that catastrophe would seem to be opening such an insurmountable lead on education?