Derbyshire on Nature versus Nurture.

John Derbyshire says no we can't. Can't What? He says that even if given the opportunity, we can't do anything. That is, we are all of varying ability and these abilities and disabilities manifest themselves as soon as we are born. And try as we might, there are things we will never be able to do well. It is a depressing thought but the more I have lived, the more I have seen this observation to be true.

I will use myself as an example. The thing that most strikes me now when I look back on my formative years is what an inability I had to get on with my peers. My teenage years were quite isolated. Attempts to change this resulted in an realization that I was full of resentment against other people and at the same time was extremely bored and uncomfortable in their company. No talent for friendship: that is my major flaw; or at least one of my major flaws. The present situation seems just as it was in those teenage years.

Another flaw is a fear of confrontation which try as I might to reason away, I still have. It may well be that my nervous system stops me from acting and that there is nothing I can do about it.

What I have noticed as a teacher and as a supervisor with the increased contact I have had with people in the last four years is that Derbyshire's observation is hard to refute. The wide variety of pronounced personality flaws I have encountered amazes me. I have now come to believe that so many fiction stories I have read and quickly labelled as unrealistic because the characters did illogical things are not so unrealistic after all. People will do the wrong thing because that is the way their personalities are.

You can't change personalities; you can't change abilities. The most well-meaning of person can maybe achieve a modicum of progress in some way; but the people who make the most progress are those who have the ability.

So however my Tony turns out, I will love him all the same because it is my duty. If Tony doesn't think much of his old man when he grows older then that is the way it will be. I would be surprised now if didn't turn out that way.

The truth shall set you free. But naked truth, like naked old women and men, has to be dressed up with some decorative falsehoods.

The paradox! The paradox!