In our self-awareness department

Doug Bell reviews the latest Conrad Black book for the Globe and Mail this weekend. He writes the following portrait of of Black based on his book:

... a chronicle of this caged odyssey is the scribbling equivalent of a rolling 50-car pile-up on the 401. You simply cannot turn away. He is by turns eloquent, mordant, funny (as hell), angry (ferociously and acidly), small (no slight too insignificant), generous and, above all, utterly unself-conscious and, it must be said, at times wincingly self-destructive. 

That may or may not be accurate—I neither know nor care—but it's a staggering thing to read from the man who wrote this  book in which he confesses to each of the failings he notes in Black above (except smallness perhaps) and every page of which displays a painful lack of discretion and self respect. I knew Doug briefly during and just after university and I can tell you that he has wincingly self-destructive down pat, and, again, there is tons of evidence of this in his book.

The key difference is that lots of people will and have read Conrad Black's books and not many have or ever will read Bell's book. Doug Bell knows what he wrote though and you would think it would have humbled him more.

All of which suggests that the maxims advising us to "know thyself' are highly over-rated.