The certainty of youth is best for spouting

In a debate by letters in C18th baroque Germany, Heinrich Bokemeyer suddenly realised that his views on the musical form canon, were complete bollocks:

'When I look at my old ideas, I am filled with the greatest disgust'.

I'd been discussing a similar notion earlier in the day with a colleague. We'd been wondering if she'd be better off writing opinion columns (or 'blogs' as we the call great-unread call them) now or in a few years when she'd seen a bit more life and had more to inform her barbed pen.

While you would have thought experience would benefit knowledge and so inform your opinions, there can though be an adverse effect on your spoutings. As Bokemeyer found there is certainty in youth.

The more you know the less certain you are. Plato knew this and was fond of saying philosophers knew they knew nothing and were always trying to find more out.

There's usually another side to a story and if you've read a bit and lived a bit you can probably sympathise with it.

Politicians tend to be very certain. It's been argued this is because they aren't as clever as some.

So if you want to proclaim with zest, do so in youthful ignorance. If you want to be balanced and correct, wait a bit.

'As mad as I am but no madder' or why J.S Mill would like my new hat

There's a Fry and Laurie sketch where a man goes to the doctor because he's a little bit mad. Not very much, just a tad. His only eccentricity is putting toast in his shoe.

'I'm as mad as I am but no madder' he declares.

I am boring. In fact i'd go as far as saying I'm balanced and rational. However I have just got new hat which gives me a tiny flicker of eccentricity.

OK so it's the equivalent of the accountant who wears a Homer Simpson tie but it's a start.

TRILBY

J.S Mill would approve.

He thought conformity curtailed our freedom as much as any laws. It was tyranny. A culture is stultified and constrained by everyone just fitting in and not rocking the boat.

Because of this tyranny he finds a genuine good in being different. In being eccentric, within the limits of not harming others.

The person who is different might be right. They might create life enhancing art or make a discovery.

Progress in society depends (amongst other things) on me wearing a Trilby in public.