Mea Culpa

Just as Robert Graves once wrote words to the effect that we cannot take life, as it were, “neat”, that is to say without the the addition of one drug or another, be it love, sex, money, etc, so do I think it is impossible to get through life without having a reasonably good opinion of oneself, even if thet opinion is objectively unjustified!

This thought came to me in reading Andrew Marr’s truly excellent A History of Modern Britain. The book covers almost exactly the years of my own lifetime, and as I survey the series of events depicted in it, I am struck by the fact that my views at the time  on such issues as Suez, the Common Market, Enoch Powell, apartheid, nuclear disarmament, racism and so on, reflected unquestioningly the “establishment” thinking of the times. I cannot think of a single opinion that was not at odds with the accepted argument of the time. Nowadays, I hold completely different views on every single subject! Indeed, I remember how angry I was when one of my schoolmates - Paul Burden, I think his name was, voiced a virulent anti-Americanism. I do not know whether his attitude was the result of clear thinking or rather the reflection of personal circumstances. 

This is what I mean when I say that I need a good opinion of myself in spite of everything, otherwise I would go out and cut my throat!

A simpler way of arriving at the same conclusion would be to say that we are what we are.

Nature and nurture have conspired to make what I am, though it’s taken me the whole of my life to realise that! On the nurture or environment side, there is no doubt that boarding school and a tense atmosphere at home,  had much more effect on me than I was prepared to admit.