Lacy Wright – Letter From WashingtonMOST OF us pay little attention to the ancient Greek injunction, "Know thyself," in our younger years. What school subjects are more reviled than biology and anatomy, which explain the workings of the human body, or psychology, which treats such important subjects as mood swings and depression? Let us not even mention philosophy or ethics. Generally, by adulthood we have carefully refrained from acquiring the kind of knowledge that might have helped us lead healthier, more reasoned, or more righteous lives.
Similarly, for much of our lives we are too preoccupied with other things to focus on our own motivations. For most of us, it is only in our declining years that we get down to business and try to figure out why we behave as we do.
On one level, determining motivations is easy. We work because we need to earn a living. We buy a house in a certain neighbourhood because it is close to our children's school.
Yet, the more deeply we delve into our motivations and search for their sources, the more we recognise that our beliefs and principles have little to do with reason and much to do with long-ago influences that by now may even have faded from memory.
If you are a Catholic, you may be adept at citing St. Thomas Aquinas' five proofs for the existence of God and otherwise making a vigorous intellectual defence of Catholic doctrine. But in most cases the real reason for your choice of religion is your parentage: you were told from the cradle that Catholicism was the one true faith.
That's an easy one because cause and effect are so transparent. For many of our convictions and behaviours, however, the motivations are hidden. Ferreting them out is a voyage of discovery that may begin only after we retire and have the time to ask the questions we never asked before.
Most fascinating, I think, is how we interact with other people. Some of us are naturally suspicious; others, naturally accommodating. Either outlook is an underpinning to our personality so fundamental that we may never reflect on it or consider that the way we approach others is only one of several possibilities. Identifying such underpinnings and tracing them back to their roots are steps that are crucial to self-knowledge.
Much of what we are goes back, of course, to our parents and the example they set, or failed to set, for us. In areas like self-confidence, ambition, work and leadership, our direction was laid out long before we realised the importance of our family's influence. Its impact becomes clear only after many years.
But there are other influences as well. Teachers, classmates and others have an impact on what we will become. Most of us remember people and incidents that helped determine our futures.
And what about popular culture? For children of my own generation, I believe the myth of the cowboy - incarnated in an endless array of films of the 1940s and '50s - was a powerful, and not altogether wholesome, influence. Millions of boys grew up believing that a man should be just like John Wayne - just and principled, but also taciturn, bereft of permanent attachments, and capable of levelling scoundrels with his fists. There is no doubt in my mind that these ideals followed many a boy into adulthood - without his ever reflecting on where they came from.
These observations reinforce what we already knew - that the younger the person, the more likely the influences on him or her will be long-lasting. Similarly, they show that if we are to know ourselves, we must reach back to our earliest beginnings. Only then will we understand the forces that shaped us.
Lacy Wright was Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Kingston and acted as Ambassador in 1993-1994. He can be reached at LacyWright@cox.net.
