This is one of the rare human interest threads from Scroobal that has nothing to do with politics/current affairs.
Reading now 3 pages of comments, they have given me food for thought over the past few days.
2 schools here:
a) this chap is consciously so
b) this chap is unconsciously so.
My take is he is not deliberately acting or trying to be different etc.
So it is (b), then it falls under a wide label called 'eccentricity'.
People who are eccentric are entitled to their eccentricities until such a time when, there are deemed harmful to the subject, maybe even fatally so.
The other uneducated folks who are fatalists, may say this guy is born under the zodiac sign of 'cat' - being so ngeow & unorthodox & even a 'born loser' - just plain unlucky.
But if one takes a more scientific look, you would realise perhaps the cause of all this eccentricity lies in the , for want of a better analogy, the 'special lens' he has honed & used over the years of his life.
All our perception & reasoning are based on a certain lens & their optical properties - a set of fixed beliefs validated from experience invariably unique, conclusions that are formed that form a person's world view.
By and large, there is a mainstream view or conventional wisdom.
But some fall outside this bell curve where the middle ground is conventional wisdom.
To the right of the Bell curve lies the geniuses.
To the left lies the disingenious, the fools, the misguided & the eccentrics.
Habits mental & physical are lifelong masters.
Your friend's record of failures is a result of some fatal flaw in his handling of affairs yet is oblivious to him because his flawed ways somehow lie hidden in the unique construct of his inner Universe which has served him well all through is life & is part of his identity, his being, his id.
Very hard to reason with such types - maybe even impossible because the reasoning heuristics are fossilized.
My bro, an army regular (LTC) is like that. His take on many things are so 'eccentric'. He is not spectacularly successful, neither is he a failure. he gets by with his life & all in all, a happy successful family to boot. But any discussion on current affairs with him never fails to amaze me.
These people who fall into the left side of the Bell curve may or may not be left alone. Some have within themselves the seeds of self-destruction - walking time-bombs.
You are obviously intrigued by your friend as a 'phenomenon' as well as concerned but not to the point of being proactively interventionist (wait for his wife to initiate....).
His many unorthodox behaviour in every sphere of life is to him entirely 'reasonable' based on his own special lens of seeing the world & life. Some might find his reasoning as endless justification or 'different for the sake of different' or simply 'ngeow'. I am pretty sure he didn't set out to be so. His responses are as natural as night & day to himself.
How to help ?
Perhaps only through his loved & close ones.
Winning their confidants' minds & confidence is the key to effectively averting them from possible tragedies ahead.
Just my 2 cents worth of opinion