One excellent and immediate antidote to orthodoxy is to be something wrong. Let’s face facts: we are all sometimes something wrong, in social terms. I can be sarcastic, intolerant of stupidity and bad pronunciation, dismissive of conservative-looking people, lazy, bad with money, skeptical, cynical and impatient.

These are not attractive qualities, and fortunately I am never all of the above at the same time. But this is not a popularity contest: it is a desperate struggle to escape the clutches of a stultifying demand for conformity and sameness. If that sometimes results in sarcasm, I regret it but I find it less offensive than an unquestioning, conservative fealty to an orthodox social or professional principle for its own sake.