Friday 26 November 2010

Nature or Nurture?

This evening following the Liverpool University Drama Society's production of 'Playhouse Creatures', we went home, drank tea, and discussed the relative responsibility that nature and nurture plays in making you the person you become Our discussion, as all of the best are, was inconclusive. But it did make me think of this poem:


'This Be The Verse'
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
  They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
  And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
  By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
  And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
  It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
  And don't have any kids yourself.
                    Philip Larkin

Larkin was clearly a miserable old bastard, but his cynicism rings true. 

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