I blame the parents

There are different opinions about psychological problems in adulthood.

You can trace them back to childhood and blame parental failings.

You can say that blaming your parents is a cop-out and you should just work through your hang-ups.

Or you can say that your parents did their best by the standards of the times and so you shouldn't blame them for their failings.

Personally I take the first approach. It's clear to me that my parents sent me to an entirely unsuitable boarding school that didn't equip me properly for adult life and left me emotionally and intellectually under-developed.

I don't think it's a cop-out to blame my parents if it's quite obvious they made a major error of judgment and there's no way they could pin it on anything else. That error is a reality and should be acknowledged.

I also think referring to the standards of the times doesn't absolve my parents. Whatever the standards of the times, they picked an unsuitable school and they should have noticed I wasn't happy, I wasn't thriving, and the quality of teaching wasn't good enough.

Of course if your parents are still alive, you don't want to upset them by telling them they were deficient parents. So you're likely to hide your criticism and pretend they did a great job. Which simply sweeps everything under the carpet.

Falling back on "the standards of the times" is dangerous, as it can excuse all sorts of negative behaviour - like domestic violence, homophobia and sacking pregnant women. Behaviour should be judged by today's standards and not the standards of 50 years ago, as if the following decades of cultural changes never happened.

The glorious past

There are two types of nostalgia, and I don't subscribe to either of them.

There's nostalgia meaning a belief in some sort of golden period in the past, when everything was better than nowadays - people were kinder, more reliable, more efficient, more honest etc etc. You would actively like to go back to that period and leave all the deficiencies of the present day behind.

Then there's nostalgia meaning the belief that standards used to be higher, people took more of a pride in what they did, whereas now the bare minimum will do and sloppiness and mediocrity are rampant. Journalism has degenerated into tittle-tattle, bad grammar goes uncorrected, letters from businesses make no sense, and so on.

Well, I've never believed in a golden period. Whatever years you look at, there are plenty of failings along with the benefits. In the 1960s for example, often seen as a glorious decade, yes, you had high salaries, cheap housing and free university tuition, but you also had homophobia, much more racism, and until 1967 abortion was illegal.

But the problems of previous eras tend to be conveniently forgotten while the problems of the present are all too evident and emphasised day after day by the media, often blown up out of all proportion.

As for slipping standards, well, they are and they aren't. Yes, standards of some things like letter-writing, journalism and degree courses may have declined, but what about the coronavirus vaccines, or complex medical treatment, or computer software, or the increasing reliability of cars? No diminishing standards there.

Personally I've no desire to turn the clock back. I think I'll stay right here with the internet and all its little miracles. So thanks but no thanks.

Why compete?

I've never liked competing. I've always thought it was a vastly over-rated concept. I much prefer to set my own standards and try to reach them. Competing so often becomes a mindless desire to "win" and to defeat other people, frequently in the name of some dubious goal like making a fat profit or being famous or exciting envy.

And does competition drive up standards, as it's generally said to do? Look at all those jobs where competition is rife and tell me how high the standards are. Politicians? Estate agents? Journalists? Car salesmen? It's more like a race to the bottom, with principles thrown out the window in favour of being top dog and trouncing your rivals.

All too often the frantic desire to win leads to widespread cheating and fiddling - drug-taking by sportspeople, plastic surgery by models, gazumping by estate agents. Publicly it's condemned, but in private the attitude is, anything goes in order to reach the top.

I've always thought that the people who achieve the most, be it happiness, job satisfaction, a purpose in life or creative innovation, tend to be motivated not by competition but by personal standards they've set for themselves and tried to live up to or exceed. Rather than endlessly looking over their shoulder at what other people are doing, they're ploughing their own furrow and following their own impulses.

They may be aware of what others are doing, they be influenced and inspired by them, but they're not competing with them, they're simply using them as grist to the mill, as a shot in the arm.

The people who impress me most are not Oscar winners and gold medallists so much as the determined individuals who make a name for themselves solely by pursuing their own high-minded goals and meeting them. Camila Batmanghelidgh, say, or Paris Lees or Shami Chakrabarti. I take my hat off to them.