An election motivated by the desire to make someone pay will not help us out of the mire, writes BREDA O'BRIEN
MANY YEARS ago, when I lived for a while in Texas, I was mildly surprised to learn that Dallas-Forth Worth had roughly the same population as the Republic. It made me realise how small a country we are. It is both our weakness and our strength. It is a weakness, because in spite of immigration, everybody still knows everyone, with all the resulting cynicism that ensues from overfamiliarity.
“Who would he [or she] be, now?” is a very Irish question, a request that would be meaningless in a larger population.
There is an assumption the answer will encompass family, or significant relationships, or a faux pas, or any one of a hundred identifying tags, of which occupation may be the least significant.
When it is quite probable you know, if not all belonging to him or her, at least a meaningful number, it is very difficult for anyone to keep a sheen, much less any sense of mystery. We are hard on our own, while at the same time ridiculously proud of anyone with an Irish connection who makes a global impact.
Being small is also a strength, because we can function as a test case or an experiment. Our last experiment, in reckless capitalism, went awry. We always feared being “the laughing stock of Europe”, mostly in circumstances where no one was paying us any attention. Now, we really are a laughing stock, and it is painful and humiliating. We will need to get over that and start again. If we rouse ourselves, we could function as a different kind of example.
People paid attention to the “economic miracle” they thought we were. George Osborne was derided for his 2006 statement that “Ireland stands as a shining example of the art of the possible in long-term economic policymaking”. He was not alone.
Our success story was fascinating to many. Imagine if our boom had been built on solid foundations, and not on making property developers very, very rich indeed, and maximising profits for banks.
Imagine if we had really thought about what constitutes a good life. Chances are we would not have chosen spending hours a day commuting to overpriced houses and picking up exhausted toddlers from creches where they had to spend too long every day.
No one needs reminding of the extraordinary challenge facing us just to stay afloat. But clinging grimly to the wreckage will not be enough. Nor will endless recriminations bring us very far.
Perhaps an election could serve to focus our minds on what kind of country we really want. Auction politics are off the agenda. There is nothing left to bribe us with. There is a great danger that in the next election we will vote more “against” than “for”. An election motivated by the desire to make someone pay will have little chance of helping us out of the mire.
Without vision, the people perish. We could abolish the Seanad, or annihilate Fianna Fáil, and be no nearer to knowing what kind of “good life” we want to build for ourselves as a nation. Any vision of the good life will have to be sustainable. We only have one planet. We cannot go on merrily ripping irreplaceable resources from it, or destroying bio-diversity, without reaping consequences that will make the economic meltdown look like a picnic.
We are briefly fascinated when birds fall from the sky in bizarre incidents in Arkansas, Louisiana or Sweden, but not at all interested when species are wiped out due to loss of habitats or climate change.
We need to develop a concept of “enough”. Our entire economic system is predicated on the idea of ever-growing levels of consumption. The fact people have begun to save, instead of spending, is seen as disastrous for the economy. How crazy is that?
We need an entirely different vision, where “enough” is not a dirty word, but something positive. We tried conspicuous consumption, and it left a bitter aftertaste. Enough means turning our backs on the idea that more is always better. It would include eating locally and supporting local suppliers. We already see movements that recognise the satisfaction and savings involved in producing at least some of what you eat. Food security is going to be a huge issue.
And the discomfort of burst pipes and being without water is nothing compared to a world where water is more valuable than oil. We act as if water charges are a personal insult.
We are all so bruised and battered and terrified of the future, that it may seem Utopian to think about alternative ways. Many of us chose to ignore voices that said our boom was unsustainable. Will we ignore the voices that tell us climate change presents a far greater challenge?
We have an opportunity to do something positive in Ireland, for example, to become leaders in wave energy technology. Let’s not allow cynicism and defeatism prevail. We have a unique opportunity on this little island to build something sustainable.
James Lovelock, who invented a device for detecting CFC gases and came up with the Gaia theory, thinks we are all pretty much doomed. He thinks alternative energy is too little, too late. Yet even he thinks the inevitable crisis will create a “much-needed sense of purpose”. Let’s fervently hope he is wrong about our doom.
We need to use our familiarity with each other to identify leaders in civil society, industry, and politics capable of bringing us to a place where the eyes of the world are on us for reasons other than being incompetent scapegoats. If we could move beyond revenge and recrimination, election 2011 is not a bad place to start.