WELL BEING: If the deceased philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre could sit today in a Parisian café and observe modern Ireland through a crystal ball, the smoke of his Gaulois eliciting a small tear from his weaker left eye, my guess is his first words, after "Sacre bleu!", would be: "Can't they stop spending?" Haydn Shaughnessy reflects
It is, of course, not just an Irish problem, but it is a philosophical one.
Times have never been better across the western world. We can now acquire wealth without expending much energy. Only yesterday's men lift bails or dig mines. We can work in the home on a PC without raising a sweat, travel to all four corners of the planet for our leisure, watch 24-hour global news to help us evade those spots where there are dangers or unsightly hungers, and can, more or less, comport ourselves in a cocoon of optimism through work, rest and play.
None of which adds up to being a reason for unhappiness, unless you believe that restraint is a lost virtue - though wealth clearly brings its dissatisfactions.
The French call it ennui. Ennui is a social malaise, that grubby feeling when the reality we live with fails to meet our expectations. And we English-speakers used to adopt this Gallic mode of talk in the days when conversation had intelligent objectives. This was a time when the collective mind of the educated west directed itself at a question like: why?
Why does wealth make us want more and yet prevent us from buying our way to satisfaction? Sartre and his gang thought of ennui as an absurdity, an inbuilt mechanism preventing us from feeling fulfilled. It occurs in a world where shopping just makes you more eager and aimless with the cheque book.
But there is now the 21st century's post-millennial twist. Young people, who represent what we adults have made of the world, measure their slim achievements in terms of the amount of vodka it takes to obscure the edgy excitement and responsibility of being young.
This is worse than absurd. Youth used to reset society's moral agenda, reinstalling ideals we'd cynically become lazy over. No longer. Excess is now an end in itself.
The possible connections between those of us old enough to be their parents and those younger ones sober and independent enough to listen to us have all but disappeared.
Forty years ago, across Europe and America, there was a generation war.
Today? If only there was that much communication.
Standing between us and them are the night club bouncer and the drinks industry. Young lives have never been so insulated from the guidance of us oldies.
Slowly the focus of the world's marketing machine is turning its attention back to people of my age, the 40 and 50-plus who are heading towards retirement. Grey investment schemes and sheltered housing are two outdated examples.
Many of my generation cannot afford to retire - blitzed by the dotbomb, financially negligent in our earlier years, but equally determined that 60 and 70 are not cut-off dates.
Talking recently to students in Germany, I realised they have also accepted this reality for themselves. The state won't be there to protect them in their old age.
Our Polyfix state pretends it still can.
In 20 years' time, governments and insurers across the west will have abandoned pensions for the 65 to 75-year- olds. It will be a heretical decision but it was foretold at least 15 years ago. The scandal, when it breaks, will be over why governments have delayed so long on the obvious.
That means a whole generation of post-baby boomers and their kids must adapt to a new way of life.
We will compete with today's young people for opportunity. Today's young might see us as enemies.
We are the best educated generation in the long run of history. Now standards are low and dropping, whereas 30 years ago they were high and rising.
Our universities are forced to market themselves across the globe to rake in money from the developing economies of China, India and Vietnam in order to fund our own education system. Absurd. In the process, the virtue of a system where learning is valued in its own right is irreparably damaged. The idea of a liberal humanist education as the venerable apogee of a civilised society is now dead. Education, the process of raising the level of civility, is one of those things we buy and sell in the market. Absurd, but perhaps we can drink to that too.
The values that built a stable world have lost their attraction: modesty, restraint, a reverent approach to human dignity, a conscientious citizenship, the deepest possible respect for learning, a refined sense of justice.
Those values that took hundreds of years to establish are today easy to laugh at.
Why do we feel we can throw off and deride the restraints that guard against brutal behaviour?
It is not just because we have too much. We are probably poorer than we actually realise. We are, after all, unable to pay for our children's education. We need the support of the third world.
Our healthcare is in crisis - thankfully there are cheap doctors in Singapore.
As constrained as we really are, we believe our entitlements are limitless. And most young people are forced to set their aspirations in an environment, fostered by us, that does not demonstrate and explain social and natural limits.
Marketing organisations, governments, even health authorities encourage us to believe that we can, with a little knowledge, have more than society can provide.
If you are a regular user of olive oil, you are creating a desert in Spain from which olive oil will not grow in future. If you drink Australian wine, you have a role in destroying the fertility of vast tracts of Australia's fragile eco-structure.
The belief that fish is the way to a low cholesterol and healthy lifestyle is tipping the imbalance in our fisheries towards catastrophe. Even at the level of diet, we neglect natural limits.
The absence of any politics of restraint is the worst disservice that today's personality-driven governance has done for us. Restraint in personal behaviour or in consumption is a risible concept. Our youngsters are laughing as they stagger out of the clubs.
And this is all about to get more complex.
Governments, devoid of any solution to the pension problem, have an obligation to restructure our view of age, to open up the world of opportunity to those with grey hair, to convince us that age no longer equates with diminished capacity, to nurture psychological health as we get older, to support us to start new optimistic lives at 50 and 60.
Governments have to stop equating age with infirmity and need to proselytise a view that people up to their 80s can make creative contributions to society.
The cost of not doing so will impinge on young people - higher social security and healthcare bills, more care homes to winkle outrageous fees from the health system, more young families burdened by prematurely redundant brains.
The Government needs to sell this message while encouraging young people to believe that the future is theirs.
Absurd, say the French. Let's talk, say the baby-boomers' babies.