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Following the start of the new series of The Apprentice, the BBC magazine published a piece in praise of bravado. It wasn’t up to much, to be honest - received truths from psychologists and past contestants - although it did have some good quotes from this year’s idiot savants:

“I was born to do great things.” Not the words of Gandhi or Mandela. Nor Einstein or Newton. No, this is the gospel according to 28-year-old car hire boss from Coventry, Majid Nagra.

The most interesting part was the comments. What struck me was that while there was disagreement on the line between confidence and arrogance, and on what exactly confidence was, there was almost no-one who disagreed with the idea that confidence was in most respects essential.

I posted last week about the similarity between confidence and honour. Here is another point of comparison: one we can see in particular in the 17th century debates on duelling. The participants in the debates argued furiously about the true nature of honour, but they agreed without hesitation that honour was indispensable, a cardinal virtue for men and women alike. And so it remained, for the nobility at least, until well into the 19th century.

I make the point merely to show how temporary are even our most permanent structures. I wonder: will our unthinking devotion to confidence seem as strange to future generations as the past’s obsession with honour does to us?

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