{Balance, Toughness, and Curiosity for Truth [continued (3)]}[4th August 1990]

[Redbook7:190-191][19900804:1125h]{Balance, Toughness, and Curiosity for Truth [continued (3)]}[4th August 1990]

19900804.1125

[continued]

I believe, though,* that the fundamental impulse comes from something deeper within my own psyche, an innate independence of mind and curiosity for truth, which implies that the exploration and discovery would have achieved much the same final results, although perhaps after less pain, if I had grown up in circumstances which nurtured my nature, and against which I did not have to fight.

(I remember my [primary-level]-school headmaster, when I was 8 or 9, expressing amazement at the will-power which drove me to get my first swimming star** using a doggy-paddle, something which (if my recollection is correct) he had never seen done before. When motivated, which for me means self-motivated, I am almost unstoppable; unless motivated, I am virtually unstartable).

I believe in this fundamental impulse and its source partly because my preoccupations now are the same as those of many years ago, even, broadly speaking, of childhood. But at the same time, I suspect that a mind less tough, less balanced, and less curious for Truth [sic], must have given way to the strain: must have either gone along with the imperatives of oppression, or cracked beneath them. This is one of the things which give my work in the past few years its particular emphasis, and make it so interesting, and relevant to modern problems.

*[See last previous entry]

**[3 lengths of the school swimming pool]

[continued]

[PostedBlogger13082021]