THE recent controversy about television deflectors carried many metaphors relating to recent socio economic life here. It not only provides insight into the possibilities of democracy, but touches also on issues of independence, equality and fair treatment, modernity versus tradition, opportunity, market convergence, and political ideology. And so, whatever about the "best" outcome from the point of view of those who decide what is in the "national interest", the most democratic outcome of this general election would probably be a minority administration supported by deflector candidates.
The availability of British television in Ireland has been, much more than we admit, at the core of the Irish modernisation project. Down the west in the 1970s, the very possibility of being able to receive British television had a dizzying effect on our sensibilities. The denizens of Dublin had access to British TV by virtue of what appeared to be an accident of geography. In the west, things were, as always, more difficult and more interesting. The idea that the modern world, which we were told we were obliged to embrace, was there already, in the very atmosphere over our heads, gave us a sense that anything might be possible right where we stood. We did not need to go anywhere. All we needed was the right equipment to bring this modern world to life right here.
Firstly, this exposed the myth of submodernity so essential to the ideology of modernisation. This ideology told us that simply by living in a particular place you were, ipsofacto, backward. The hills and trees and mountains were, by virtue of their inhospitality to the incoming television signals, a symbol of our intractable uncivilisation. We were traditionalists, whether we liked it or not.
Being opposed to the modern world, the very idea of British TV was supposed to fill us with fear that our cherished ways of life were being threatened by the filthy modern tide. We were given the choice, but only in the certainty that the offer would be refused. Right on cue, a uniformed spokesman would state, on our behalf, that we would have no truck with foreign filth and dirt. Being pious people, we did not demur. The modernisers, acknowledging the power of the spokesman, would silently assent and resolve not to interfere with our sacred traditions. If we wanted to be modern, we would have to get off our back sides and come up to Dublin. They shrugged and left us to get on with snagging our turnips.
UNKNOWN to them, we had been in contact with the modern world all along, except that for us it clearly existed at some distance from ourselves. Thus, when, on a Saturday night, the youth of some country town went up to the one house on the street with BBC TV, to watch Match of the Day, they were not, as were their compatriots along the east coast, enjoying some natural amenity, to be taken for granted. They were sampling the possibilities of migration, on a visit to the future. Modernity, it seemed, was elsewhere.
Then came independence, or at least a metaphor for it. In the early 1980s, entrepreneurial spirits in many such country towns began to work out that, with the right equipment, it should be possible to pick up British TV signals on high ground and boost and retransmit them. Thus, the modern world was accessed by the hitherto traditionalist inhabitants of submodern rural Ireland. Using indigenous ingenuity and imported technology, we had tamed an aspect of the future, and put it to use in our own place. Being, like so much else in our lives, subject to climactic fluctuations, the deflectors weren't perfect: the pictures were often wonky and you never faced into the world snooker championships with more than a pious aspiration that the signal would hold out until the final. But we were happy enough in our own way, and in many respects the erratic nature of the phenomenon suited our temperaments.
But we failed to understand that the modern world was not a place of cultural opportunity, but an economic entity which we dare not defy. What we had mistaken for a metaphor for modernity had been a metaphor for a market.
It should have been obvious all along. The very fact that British television signals were available, free of charge, on the east coast, should have alerted us to the error of our perspective. For this was no accident of geography, but rather the visible evidence of the reality of our relationship with modernity. Dublin didn't just happen to be better located vis a vis Britain, and therefore in a better position to pick up her television signals. On the contrary, the very location of our capital city was a consequence of the relative position of Britain and the markets she had represented in the centuries of colonisation.
Had we thought about this, it would not have surprised us to find that, under the MMDS system, the topographically disadvantaged citizens of the Irish countryside were to be required to pay large amounts of money for the service. This was not, as we were led to believe, an "accident of geography", but a consequence of the tyranny of the market to which we were required to bow.
A market is a deeply dysfunctional phenomenon: few living beings are as emotionally insecure or in need of reassurance. Part of the pathology is the insistence of the market on drawing everything towards it. It needs to subdue, dislocate, fracture. Its purpose is not to facilitate life on human terms, but to recreate life on market terms.
WE thought modernity was something we were simply required to embrace, so as not to contaminate the modern world with our bog ignorance. But the market required more: it required us to come and live beside it, to participate in the modern world under its supervision. To achieve this, the guardians of the market had created no end of technocracy by which to make life as difficult as possible for those who refused to pander to the market pathology. For example, they invented the notion of copyright royalties to ensure that nobody, anywhere, could succeed in tapping into the modern world other than on the statutory terms.
This obsession with regulation ensured that nobody did anything for themselves without conforming to criteria objectively defined. The ideology being all pervasive, we took all this for granted, as though it were the expression of a self evident, consistent universe.
Applied to the television deflector issue, this meant that people could not simply enjoy being able to avail of something that was "up there in the atmosphere"; they had to do so in a manner prescribed by the law of the market. Those who insisted on staying where they were could have perfect TV pictures costing a lot of money, or they would have nothing at all.
The MMDS system is a tax on geography and on the freedom of the people in certain areas to participate in the "modern" world on their own terms. As with many tyrannies, the only antidote to market convergence is democracy.