Lizette Alvarez published an article in the New York Times on 2nd February entitled Suddenly Rich, Poor Old Ireland seems Bewildered, in which she outlines an apparent moral dilemma facing Irish people as we come to terms with our newfound prosperity. In addition, the reduced threat of a 'belt of the crozier', due to the embroiling of the Irish Catholic Church in a paedophile scandal, has apparently added to our confusion as our moral certainties are shaken on two fronts.
Alvarez puts forward the proposition that Irish people are suffering a crisis of identity, due to our newfound wealth and moral freedom.
She asks a number of questions, some of them pertinent to current debates we are engaged in around immigration and inequality, others less so. For example, she asks What does it mean to be Irish, given that so much of the national psyche is tied up in centuries of poverty?
How is that relevant, or specific, to Irishness? Have not most peoples, nations, or communities suffered the indignity of poverty at some time or another? It struck me that, with its emphasis on material possessions,it was a particularly American outlook on what informs a psyche. Surely a psyche is formed from more enduring influences. Our location on an island at the western edge of the European continent, for example. Our homogeneity (according to recent genetic research, over 80% of Irish male DNA comes from the same mutation). Or our landscape and climate. Surely these are the conditions that impact on our psyche and inform how we react to relatively transient issues such as poverty, oppression, rebellion, religious obedience, or emigration.
Personally, I think it is all moot. What is important now is how we use our newfound wealth as a tool to identify and inform our role in a global society. To misquote Joseph Campbell: The result is an unprecedented expansion of horizon, that could well serve in our age.
So, how's the view?
Alvarez quotes from a recent speech by Emily O'Reilly, a conservative, a former journalist and current Information Commissioner: Released from the handcuff of religious obedience, we are Dionysian in our revelry ... hence the staggering drink consumption, the childlike showing off of helicopters, four wheel drives and private cinemas, the fetishing of handbags and high heels.
My first reaction to this was that I move in very different social circles to Ms O'Reilly! But, seriously, surely this has more to do with the impact of consumerism, channelled through an increasingly corrupt media, on a newly wealthy population. Keeping up with the Jones' is a human habit that some of us indulge in because we are human and we can afford it. Not because the bishops have lost their vice-like on our necks.
The core of Alvarez' article seems to be the now boring (to those of us who remember the penurious, jobless, violence-ridden seventies and eighties) argument that Irish culture and character - its keen sense of community, its sharp humour in the face of hardship - will be steamrolled by the rollicking economy.
This view takes no consideration of the way in which the world is organised today. Our keen sense of community is still alive - the villages we live have modernised is all. I, along with the rest of the population (Ireland-based, or diaspora), am a member of many communities. Online, offline, local, global, where I live, where I'm from, built around my hobbies, my sporting allegiances, and my concerns. I play an active role in all of them.
Our sharp humour is still rampant, but nowadays it serves to illuminate our views on everything from Desperate Housewives (how did that show win a Golden Globe), to the bombing of Kabul, to record-breaking bank robberies in Belfast. And the hardship is still there - we are fully-fledged members of a polarised, war-torn, environmentally-damaged, disease-riddled planet, along with the rest of you.
We are a kind, compassionate, passionate, gregarious, inquisitive, unafraid people who put our hands in our wallets whenever we encounter the misfortune of others. My parent's generation built our economic miracle by going without to educate their children, by adroitly playing 'the great game' of the global labour market, and by developing a unique system of social dialogue that ensures everyone has a voice at the policy table.
Our voice is heard internationally too. Our NGOs are thought leaders in the developing world. We send our police and soldiers to Sierra Leone, to Bosnia, and to East Timor to fulfil our UN peace-keeping duties. We take an active part in building a social Europe. And our Government continues to repay its debt to the US by facilitating its military transports to the war in Iraq, even though it is against the wishes of many of its citizens.
But apart from all that, we know that life is for living, and that we are all different, and if your idea of a fun night out is to pop a bottle of vodka in your Prada handbag, slip on your Mahnolo Blahniks, fly your helicopter over to a friend's post-modern hacienda to watch ninety minutes of unadulterated, American cultural imperialist rubbish on his plasma screen, if that is what floats your unique, beautiful boat, then fair play to you. But you can expect a right slagging from the rest of us when you get back.
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