The Tower and personal growth

Some people increase in confidence as they get older. In others the spark seems to dim. The former gain experience and wisdom step by step, gradually building up a sense of right, an impression of good action, creating an instinct. These people start from the ground up, in the beginning they have nothing, the nervous boy at school, the poor public speaker, the distinctly unremarkable, shy of responsibility. There is no thought of immortality, no need to look at greatness. Things are as they are, each grain of life is just a grain. From this base, this grounding, foundations can be built, a sense of the real, and steadily built upon by experience, eventually reaching peaks of fine ability, confidence and originality. Darwin is a fine exemplar of this.

Others start with a strong sense of action and right, of self-confidence and bravado. Children who seem to speak like adults from a young age, the precocious. Youths with grand ideals and full of vision and determination from the word go. Instead of experience becoming a source of growth, it becomes an attritional reality. Through experience they get things wrong, make poor choices and mistakes, and confidence is gradually eroded. The sense of self is then one of insecurity, shaky judgment, untrustable instincts. The knowledge and action upon which they thought they could depend turns out to be a sham, and empty arrogance, the utterly unfulfilled. Truly the inhabitants of The Tower; built on unsteady foundations, starting from the top down, paradigm of the flighty, the unsustainable; lives of hubris, for whom the only way is down. They fall either through some catastrophic event, the lighting bolt, some experience of boundary and mortality, being cast headlong towards the earth, or the fall happens through stumbles down the stairs, mis-step by mis-step, one by one to the ground.

If we all need firm foundations on which to build, shouldn't those who have risen without them hasten their own downfall? Instead of waiting to arrive at the bedrock, why not fling oneself towards rock-bottom? Deliberately make poor choices, disregard right action, follow nothing but the basest instincts. Those who think they can fly must crash before they can walk.