The recent earthquake which passed through the economic systems of the world has been instructive indeed. The economies of the west righted themselves almost instantly in its aftermath, like film in reverse. The rubble on the streets re-inserted itself in the buildings from which it had come. The concrete beam trapping a mother and her five children on top of a burning gas main suddenly bounded back into its roof, the gas-fire extinguished itself, the crumpled coffin of a car re-inflated and, complete with laughing children and happy mother, reversed out of its unexpected grave.
The kind of seismic shock which once would have caused economic pandemonium, possibly lasting years, was absorbed and righted within a couple of days. It is an astounding lesson, and perhaps the most important one of modern times. It really does look as if the world order of democracies and liberal capitalism has created a fail-safe system which will protect us from economic disaster.
For those of us of a certain age, the certainty of rising prosperity takes some getting used to. This century there have been two world wars, the hungry Thirties and in the darker, longer past, the Famine. All my life, part of me has assumed the worst was going to happen, sooner or later. Now, without being cocky, we should assume the opposite - that growth and riches are inevitably ours if we work hard and are sensible. There is no longer an excuse for simply spending what we have now because tomorrow there might be a slump or nuclear war.
Attitudes to uncertainty
Since independence, our leaders in their decision-making have assumed one constant factor: uncertainty. Short-termism seemed the appropriate attitude to good fortune whenever it arrived. Enjoy it while it lasts. Yes, build that bungalow there, and another there, and another there. Yes, wreck that line of Georgian houses. Yes, knock down that old hall and build something profitable in the short-term.
That kind of decision-making was only sensible when we felt insecure, in doubt; why keep the old for a future which might not exist? We could say: why not clear the way for things we need now? For now was the only tense which made sense.
Now we know the truth about now. It does not exist. Now is an illusion created by those who dislike yesterday and fear tomorrow. Only the tyranny of this bogus thing, now, has permitted us to desecrate our landscapes and ruin our towns and cities, as if there were no tomorrow, as if there were no future generation to contemplate what we have bequeathed.
To that generation we are bequeathing despoliation, the obscene extent of which only became evident to me when I began recently to read estate agents' publicity about rural houses for sale. It has been stomach-churning, like finding pornography in a nursery, with brochures yodelling with salivatory glee about bungalows, panorama windows, plaster balustrades, tasteful Mediterranean arches, ruched curtains incl., tarmac drives.
Bungalow blight
Our eyes are now dead. They no longer see the bungalowblight which has spread along the main routes of Ireland, from entry at Rosslare to the onceglorious north-western seaboard at Bunbeg and beyond. Our countryside has been raped, our traditional housing styles abandoned and a visually grotesque, functionally spurious school of neo-vernacular architecture has spread like acne on adolescent skin. But it will not be as fleeting as acne. In one hundred years time, those houses will still stand.
The one theme - apart from litter - which unites letters to this newspaper from visitors to Ireland is the shock at what has been done to the countryside. There is another reaction too, which I hear privately. It is hilarity: for what we have done, or have permitted to be done, is deeply, deeply risible. If you behave in a laughable manner, people will laugh. And visitors to Ireland, once they have got over their initial horror, are amused at our truly deplorable public aesthetics.
National vandalism We all know that our planning processes are contemptible. Connemara is now Bungalara, Gweedore is now Eyesore, Fingal is now Fingalow. Not a county remains unsullied by the greatest act of national vandalism any free society has submitted to this century.
The good news is that economic uncertainty has often acted as a restraint on this vandalism. The bad news now is that restraint is removed as the tide of prosperity inexorably rises and the demand to suburbanise more of the countryside grows in proportion. The old safety net of economic downturn is gone. All we can rely on is our own political will.
Yes, indeed, well might you wake up screaming. For it will not be good enough just to stem the flow of planning permissions, as some gallantly honest planning officers are now attempting to do (in Kildare, for example). Rigorous control over housing-style will have to be imposed. Local government cannot be trusted to do it. It must be done by central government, with cross-party support, and enforced with puritan zeal by a State agency, free from government interference, with powers to compel house-owners to remove or conceal with climbing plants inappropriate architectural features (such as those ubiquitous and unspeakable balustrades).
Otherwise, what is left of our countryside will vanish in the twinkling of a bribed county councillor's eye as prosperity continues to grow, and by 2007, whatever tourists we get will be here for one reason, and one reason only: to have a good laugh.