So you’re single. At least if you’re reading this, there is a good chance you are. Do you view being single positively or negatively? What stories do you tell yourself about why you are currently single, and about what your life may be like when you have a partner in it?
Through my work as a relationship coach, many of my clients tell me they need a partner to do things with, share experiences, support them, or take care of them. But there is a problem when you tell yourself you need a partner for these reasons. It suggests there is something lacking in your life, limiting you from experiencing a full life without someone else.
Sure, there is a comfort in sharing experiences with another person, but when you decide this can only be found through someone else there is a problem.
I believe you are only ready to create a healthy intimate relationship when you can wholeheartedly say you want rather than need (i.e., a partner).
If you are reading this thinking, of course I don’t need a partner but the attitude you hold about being in a relationship is that it is far superior to being single, then perhaps this attitude is blocking you from attracting the kind of mate you seek.
I regard modern dating as romantic consumerism with an over-reliance on online dating.
Online dating has changed the way people date, mate and separate, yet our human need to connect, be accepted, desired and treated with compassion and love has not. Humans are born to belong and connect, yet swiping culture offers a selection of ways to opt out of real connection and settle for pseudo-connection.
If you genuinely want to meet a partner or make an authentic connection with people, and rely solely on online dating to do that, you will end up dissatisfied and frustrated. Most of my clients who are dating online in Dublin at the moment describe how challenging it is to connect with people virtually, never mind in person, and begin to think there is something wrong with them.
It doesn’t stop there. After one unsuccessful match there often comes the catastrophic thinking that, ‘I will be alone forever’. Modern dating requires so much resilience and adaptability to deal with all the uncertainty characteristic of a game with no rules.
What might be improved upon is a person’s quality of thinking. Any kind of limited thinking regarding your ability to meet someone is flawed in the same way as it is wrong to believe a relationship can offer you a refuge from the life you are living.
Research conducted by Roy Baumeister suggests that entertaining the very idea of social exclusion can actually impair your IQ and ability to think straight. This information helps us understand the suffering you can feel by merely thinking about a future without a partner in it.
The thought alone can lead to further impaired thinking and we must protect against that. One way to do so is to find ways to be socially connected exclusive of online dating, to protect your wellbeing, and be in a better position to attract a suitable partner.
Here are five ways to stay socially connected and in the process make it easier to find someone:
What lights you up? Do more of the things you love such as attending the theatre, gigs, or outdoor activities.
Unsure what lights you up? Spend time to find out what does. Reach out to people you know who may already be involved in interesting activities.
Take the plunge and connect with friends of friends if they live in your area. You already have things in common, and most people are happy to extend their circle.
Look after your well-being. Find a grounding activity such as meditation, yoga, Tai Chi.
Talk and engage with people at any opportunity, from the person serving you to whoever is sitting beside you in the coffee shop. Become a pro at connecting with people in every day situations.
Remember, if you experience anxiety or depression, developing relationships and socialising in traditional ways can be that little bit more challenging, and may affect your ability to interact and connect with others. Access www.aware.ie or www.socialanxietyireland.com to empower you to develop more confidence in social settings, and build healthy relationships.
Annie Lavin, Ireland’s dating and relationship coach, is based in Dublin and works with clients all over the world. She empowers people to achieve relationship success by transforming their relationship with themselves. Annie is passionate about supporting people to create and maintain healthy, meaningful relationships amid the chaos of the modern dating world www.relationshipcoach.ie.
In the previous edition of Cassandra Voices Eoin Tierney explored the extent to which data is routinely harvested in a variety of ways, some of which we cannot easily control. This extends to hardware used to measure one’s fitness.
Fitbit, a company producing a famous activity tracker, is no exception. Data gleaned from these devices, usually worn like watches, has even been accepted as evidence in criminal trials in the United States. While in certain contexts such application renders numerous advantages, in the wrong hands there are obvious risks to the kind of information amassed by Fitbit being in circulation.
With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) entering into force last month, organisations all over the globe are reconsidering their data protection approaches and, as a result, updating their privacy policies. The brand-new Fitbit Privacy Policy, last updated on April 23rd 2018, can be found on the Fitbit’s official website.
Like most privacy policies, its main objective is to align the company’s data privacy policies with the requirements of the GDPR. In particular, it lays down the scope of data routinely collected by Fitbit devices which includes a customer’s name, email address, phone number, payment details and geographic location, period of time for which such data is retained, and more..
All these provisions are worth noting down for anyone who uses or intends to use Fitbit devices. One category that is essential for the Fitbit operations, but should have a red flag attached to it in the context of the GDPR, is the health-related and biometric data.
In particular, Fitbit routinely collects your ‘logs for food, weight, sleep, water or female health tracking’, as well as other details that may furnish a vivid picture of any user’s behavioural patterns.
Article 9 of the GDPR places data concerning health and biometric data within the special categories of personal data, processing of which is restricted to ten instances only. These, include, among others, explicit consent, public interest consideration and performance of obligations in the area of employment and social security.
Article 9.4 goes further, creating wide leeway for member states to legislate in this area – something that should have Fitbit on its guard for legislative developments in the countries where it operates.
This being said, Fitbit’s Privacy Policy does acknowledge the extent of sensitive personal data gathered by its watches and commits to obtain a separate consent from its users for related processing. It also expressly reserves the right to ‘preserve or disclose information about you to comply with a law, regulation, legal process, or governmental request’.
This is a typical provision found in most privacy policies. The GDPR itself expressly allows the disclosure of personal data following a mandatory legal requirement.
However, in case of Fitbit it took an unexpected turn in a recent Wisconsin murder trial, when a judge allowed step-tracking data, generated by Fitbit, as evidence to prove the defendant was not capable of committing a murder, as the device proved he had been sleeping at that time.
In another instance, Fitbit logs were used by Connecticut police, this time to charge Richard Dabate for murdering his wife. The man concocted a fictional story to cover the murder, but his wife’s Fitbit brought the truth to the surface, revealing inconsistencies in Dabate’s version of events.
Yet another example of Fitbit usage that clearly goes beyond what a fitness bracelet was intended for is the partnership that insurance companies are entering into with Fitbit.
In particular, individuals are offered the option of a type of coverage that involves wearing a tracking device and sharing the data it collects with the insurance provider. On the one hand, such development will help insurance companies to stay up to date with the health condition of their customers and, if the need be, provide necessary assistance in case of an accident.
At the same time, it effectively offers a full overview of a person’s life, including information about biorhythms, habits, and lifestyle quirks, that may later be utilized by insurance providers for purposes contrary to the interest of insurees, for example, by denying them insurance coverage, or raising their premium.
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The aforementioned cases illustrate how modern technologies may be utilized in ways that an average user would never expect when purchasing a devise. This may bring benefits, while in other instances it shares intimate information about its owner which could be their detriment.
The purposes for which public authorities and external companies are using Fitbit-generated data remain contentious. Clearly, it turns out deceptively-guiltless fitness-tracking-gadgets turn out to amass unprecedented amounts of personal data.
Arguably this tendency will only increase in future, with companies seeking more and more personal data to enhance and customise their products and services, in order to remain competitive in the modern market of accelerated technological development.
For now, the least a regular user should do is to stay up to date with his or her rights under existing data protection legislation; as well as developing a clear picture of what personal data, and for which purposes, is being processed, and used, by manufacturers.
All of these questions should be addressed in the privacy policy of any company in question, and these are usually available on a company’s website.
So next time, before blithely hitting the ‘I accept’ button in a privacy notice pop-up while configuring your Fitbit device, make sure you genuinely do not mind that sensitive and, otherwise, confidential, information about you is being collected, analysed, stored and even shared externally for purposes that go far beyond keeping you fit.
Tune into any Irish radio station, and it is hard to escape the constant flogging of motor cars: RTE’s flagship ‘Morning Ireland’ is associated with Opel; sports bulletins on the same programme are brought to you by Kia; traffic introduced by Hyundai, only afterwards to be announced as ‘AA Roadwatch’. Ads for other brands such as Mercedes and Peugeot generally feature during commercial breaks, seemingly every third or fourth slot. By early evening it is ‘Drivetime’; while over on Newstalk, you find Ivan Yates’s ‘The Hard Shoulder’.
Meanwhile, national newspapers carry regular motoring supplements – with adverts also layered through the main sections. In Ireland car ‘culture’ not only prevails, it dominates.
Ostensibly innocuous, if anything the adverts appear reassuring: smooth voices caressing parents into protecting their little cherubs inside whichever metal-cocoon-on-wheels they are selling. Branding imbues these vehicles – or ‘estates’ – with a pioneering sense of ‘Discovery’; a ‘Highlander’, ‘Land Cruiser’ or ‘Land Rover’ ranging across a great sweep of virgin landscape, as opposed to the reality of sitting for hours in traffic.
The not-so-subliminal-message is that a shiny-new-car is a good sign. But car-usage is blatantly contrary to the national interest, if we are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and associated fines. Transport, a substantial proportion of which is private car-usage, accounts for approximately 20% of all national emissions.
As long as media outlets receive hefty advertising revenue from car importers, there will be an inducement to avoid questioning our car culture. More obviously, vehicles are frequently offered as prizes in competitions, most recently on RTE’s ‘The Late Late Show’ on the 25th of May(3). By contrast, the lowly bicycle is rarely, if ever, considered prize-worthy.
Lone cyclist, Charlemont Bridge, Dublin.
II – Cyclist ‘deaths’
Typically, when a cyclist is killed headlines and news bulletins state he has died in a collision – a passive inevitability arising from being on the wrong side of an autonomous vehicle. Yet such machines are under human control. Would it not be more accurate to say a cyclist has been killed?
Alas, neither cyclists, public transport users, nor pedestrians tend to purchase media space, despite comprising the vast majority of those in transit across Ireland, particularly in urban areas, in which most of the population now resides. Where there is coverage of transport alternatives it usually relates to how these affect motorists, as where bus lanes generate traffic jams, or where cyclists create a nuisance by failing to observe the law.
Little substantive probing occurs into improvements to the transport infrastructure – or indeed how Ireland stacks up internationally.
Apart from being presented as a nuisance, on those rare occasions that cycling is treated positively, it is depicted as good for children or fitness. But rarely, if ever, is it taken as a realistic alternative to the car. Overwhelmingly, the message is: four wheels good, two wheels bad.
Last month, a cyclist was killed by a driver turning a lorry at the main N11 junction immediately outside RTE’s premises in Dublin(4). Coincidentally, currently there are plans to develop a new vehicular junction along the N11 on lands formerly owned by RTE that are being redeveloped for housing. The plans are attracting objections, alleging the proposed provision for cyclists is unsafe and substandard(5).
Notably, the route is a major cycle artery to the country’s largest university, University College Dublin. The RTE radar does not appear to have picked up an important story on its doorstep.
III – Cars In Their Eyes
One basic measure the national broadcaster could make to raise public confidence would be to provide an easily accessible public declaration of any direct remuneration, ‘gifts’, or other contractual arrangements into which RTE or its senior personnel enter into with third parties, including car dealers and importers. This would be in line with the transparency the BBC demands of its employees(6).
It is of interest that over the years reports have emerged of various ‘stars’ being provided with complimentary cars by dealerships. As far back as May 2005, Tommy Broughan TD called for transparency, informing Dáil Éireann that Ryan Tubridy had the use of a Lexus, while Pat Kenny and Gerry Ryan (both then contracted to RTE) had ‘relationships’ with BMW and Mazda respectively(7).
Tubridy currently presents ‘The Late Late Show’, which is ‘sponsored’ by Renault. Earlier this year his comments – which the Dublin Cycling Campaign described as ‘casual incitement of hatred’ – attracted five hundred complaints to the broadcaster. He had suggested that people who (legally) cycle two abreast should be ‘binned‘(8).
Given RTE receives almost two hundred million euro per annum from the public through mandatory TV licences, surely the Irish people have a right to know whether Mr Tubridy continues to be provided with a vehicle by any outside firms.
What information there is available is generally gleaned from marketeers’ press releases. Investigations into possible conflicts of interest are almost unheard of, at least in public.
Meanwhile, an opinion piece last year by RTE’s Countrywide presenter Damien O’Reilly in The Farmers Journal ridiculed Irish cyclists for wearing luminescent clothing to ensure their safety: this was ‘aggressively coloured’ as O’Reilly put it(9). Separately, the Sunday Times revealed (following a successful freedom of information request) that O’Reilly had been paid for work done on behalf of An Bord Bia in Dubai, which was approved by RTE management(10).
‘Moonlighting’ of RTE stars has given rise to further controversy in recent months, with Claire Byrne landing herself in hot water over work done on behalf of financial services firm Davy’s(11).
Elsewhere there has been a failure to reveal corporate funding of programming. Phoenix Magazine reported that Derek Mooney’s Programme ‘Turf Life’, broadcast on May 4th 2018, was supported financially by Bord Na Móna, but this was not declared in the programme’s credits(12).
IV – George’s Marvellous Meddling
Over on Newstalk, George Hook set himself up as the champion of the poor downtrodden motorists, while castigating other road users – such as cyclists of course!
In 2015 on daytime television Hook declared that he ‘hates cyclists with a passion‘(13), before stating: ‘They do what the hell they like. They’re a threat to themselves, they’re a threat to pedestrians, and ultimately they’re a threat to motorcars, as motorcars trying to avoid these lunatics will have an accident.’
Notably, Hook has previously been provided with a free car by Peugeot. RTE’s own website carries a report from June 22nd, 2011 in their ‘Motors’ section, entitled (seemingly without irony) ‘508 Hooked’, in which ‘Peugeot Managing Director Geroge Harbourne said: ‘George is an excellent brand ambassador for Peugeot. We very much look forward to working with him to increase the awareness of the Peugeot brand in Ireland, through his high public profile’ (15).
V – Increasing Obsolescence
Last year, national car sales dropped 10%, yet contrary to perceived wisdom this did not coincide with economic stagnation(16). Increasingly, those fortunate enough to get by without a car realise that these metal boxes no longer represent freedom, but are instead a costly burden best avoided.
Cars are good for a weekly shop – but so is a taxi – and in any case the traditional weekly shop is a decreasing habit, especially among the younger generation. Yet perversely, as more people move away from cars, the national broadcaster sings the praises of the internal combustion engine with increasing vigour.
During the ‘Bertie boom years’, many first-time buyers bought a ‘starter home’ far from Dublin, which required a long daily commute by car. This was often endured in the hope of returning to Dublin at some later date. Alas many of those dreams have receded.
These days, although accommodation in Dublin is in notoriously short supply, most of the younger generation are nonetheless opting to stay put in the capital, and avoiding the daily imprisonment that car dependency brings. Wander around the ‘go-getter ghettos’ of Google’s HQ on Barrow Street, Docklands, and East Point Business Park: cyclists, pedestrians, and public transport users abound, but there is little sign of cars.
In Dublin twenty years ago taxis were notoriously rare, and buses did not enjoy their own lanes. Having a motor in those days was a distinct advantage. Yet roll on two decades and owning a car is arguably more of a burden, and increasingly identified with ill-health.
The link between car dependency and obesity is well established(17); sadly, Ireland could be set to become the most obese country in Europe(18), which in part reflects our car dependency. Yet instead of discussing the obvious links, the Irish media is more likely to allude to the danger and zealotry of cyclists. Could it be that the idea of cycling as a normal mode of transport for regular people is too much of a threat to vested interests?
VI – A Gathering Storm
The New Scientist(19) reported that the fumes created by car engines tend to have a worse effect on those inside vehicles, rather than outside, as had previously been believed. That lovely ‘new car smell’ may actually mask toxic odours, which the driver and occupants might otherwise detect. For example, PM 10s are among the numerous known carcinogens created by diesel emissions(20).
Another report recently featured in the UK media indicates that a class action is being brought against Volkswagen(21), following the emissions scandal, which involved the manufacturer lying for years about the level of toxic fumes generated by its vehicles. This may be the tip of a large iceberg.
If it turns out that children developed asthma from riding in such vehicles – and if there is no background family history causation is plausible(22) – the emissions scandal could explode further, with major consequences in terms of costs to manufacturers, and changes in public policy.
Unsurprisingly, there has been little coverage of this in the Irish media, but the story could be of even more relevance here. Firstly, our greater car-dependency exposes us to greater danger. Secondly, the manufacturer associated with misleading governments, the public, and owners – Volkswagen – was the top-selling brand in this country between 2012 and 2016(23).
That is a triple-whammy to which Irish people may have been particularly exposed – yet hardly a peep from anywhere in the Irish media. Might we see greater coverage of such issues in mainstream Irish media in the years to come? Don’t hold your breath, unless that is you are being passed by a noxious vehicle belching out toxic fumes.
On May 8th RTE’s Freedom of Information Officer accepted a Freedom of Information Request from Cassandra Voices seeking records of payments or payments-in-kind from motor car dealership to leading RTE stars that have been approved by RTE management since January 1st, 2017. RTE have 30 days in which to respond. Details will be revealed in the next edition.
(1) Untitled, Belfast Telegraph, ‘EU using Dublin as example of worst-case urban, 4th of October, 2016, sprawl’ https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/breakingnews/breakingnews_ukandireland/eu-using-dublin-as-example-of-worstcase-urban-sprawl-28409383.html
(23)Melanie May, ‘These are the 5 top-selling cars of 2017 so far’, downloaded 29/5/2018 http://www.thejournal.ie/best-selling-cars-ireland-2017-3483985-Jul2017/
One evening, while walking on Derada Hill, a hare sprung from under my feet. I found myself, all of a sudden, on the ground burying my head in the warm form left in the grass, and I asked that primordial form to act as a poultice, to draw out my expensive European education from my head, because in my western way of thinking I was damaging the earth. It had set me up in opposition to what is natural and native to us.
John Moriarty, Nostos, (Lilliput Press, Dublin, 1994).
I can’t say when I first played hurling. It was with me on all of the great moments of self-discovery I can think of. Once I had a decent footing in the world I became aware of a stick being close by.
It defined my youth; this game, this skill, this way of spending time. It was frustrating and it was ordinary and it was miserable at times, but a current ran through me, a note that intensified as I played. It got more serious as I grew up, the stakes got higher, my identity hardened, a community of people formed and goals were unconsciously set, if not assumed.
A former captain of the Wexford Intercounty team, Diarmuid Lyng analyses games for TG4 and Newstalk , and contributes to national print media.
And when the final curtain fell, amid the chaos of going from the all-encompassing nature of modern sport to the great vacuum of retirement, I found myself in West Kerry, with the writings of John Moriarty, trying to read my way through a depression, in the hope that I would once again, make sense of me, to me.
I was wandering the countryside a lot during that period, learning to forage wild plants while growing comfortable in swathes of time dedicated to the question of how the outer world was interacting with my inner landscape.
I remember sitting at the foot of Ceann Sibéal on the evening of an honest storm, marveling at waves rolling in and crashing against the foot of the cliff. Inwardly, I thought of the net in Croke Park shaking. The waves of energy emanating from the player, the sliotar bypassing the goalkeeper and crashing into the net, creating a wave like that at the foot of the cliff in front of me.
I sat on Clogher Beach and marvelled at the ability of a player standing fully ninety yards apart from another, who hits a ball at over one hundred miles an hour, reaching a height of seventy yards at its apex, and within the first second or two of him striking it – in it’s very initial ascent – to move to the exact spot where the ball arrives so as only to have to extend an arm in order to catch it. What remarkable qualities of mind and body are at work there? What more are we capable of? And why doesn’t anyone refer to this? Shouldn’t it turn our spines in to question marks to interrogate the magnificent of it all?
Silver Branch Perception
What I found in West Kerry is that when the fences around me fell away, when I went out to the wild places, the boundaries in my mind disintegrated too, and these thoughts and feelings had their way with me. It brought me back to the soul of the game: to Silver Branch Perception.
Silver Branch Perception was bestowed on Bran Mac Feabhal by Mananánn Mac Lir in Irish mythology. It is a gift, a way of seeing the world for the paradise that it is; the awareness that when we separate ourselves from our social story, we can see the world paradisally.
The Tuath Dé would later defend this gift at the Second Battle of Maigh Tuiread against the Formorians.
Balor of the Evil Eye led the Formorians, who, according to Moriarty, looked on Ireland purely for its resources, the reducing eye – the Súil Mildeagach –seeing only uses and benefits. Thus a cow is looked on as pounds of beef, and a tree for the lengths of its timber.
The Tuath Dé, led by Lugh, held the Silver Branch and they fought to defend it. According to Moriarty, The Third Battle of Maigh Tuiread is being enacted within us today.
I recognise from my hurling experiences what he meant. We are disconnected from the parts of the game that are essential to the overall health of society. We have adopted a Formorian mindset, we have assumed Balor’s evil eye. It is disconnecting us from the essence of the game.
But Nature is lying us down on the psychiatrists couch and asking hard questions. Theash die-back disease is one of the symptoms diagnosed. This will decimate the most common Irish hedgerow tree over the next thirty to forty years. Its chances of survival are uncertain. Still 50,000 trees are cut down a year for 350,000 hurls to keep it business-as-usual.
But what of the ash tree? Could most GAA players identify what one even looks like? Do we care? Do we feel a responsibility for its survival beyond what is needed for our ‘use and benefit’? Is Nature reminding us of one of the fundamentals of the game?
We know now that the forest floor is alive with a web of mycelium that function along the lines of the Internet: a ‘tree wide web’. When a bush is sick it can tell a healthy tree, which may send the necessary nutrients to its ailing friend. Can we play the same role for the ash? Can we listen to what the tree needs, and come to its assistance?
If we don’t go back to listening, to being humbled by nature – if we ignore the possibilities of the Silver Branch – we will be paying lip service to bridging the great disconnect, choosing the dis-ease of the Formorian mindset so prevalent in modern Irish society.
Spiritually, there is a shift going on here from Rome to the Orient. Meditation, yoga, Tai Chi and mindfulness are rooted in Eastern ideas of existence. True to form, we look beyond our cultural inheritance to negotiate an internal crises in our perception of reality.
But answers are here, all around us. Let us plant ash trees in every GAA club in the country in the hope of identifying strains resistant to the disease, and ensure its survival. Let us reduce dependence on a food system in danger of implosion, by subsidising polytunnels for anyone willing to work one. Let us go out to the wild places and allow our own wildness to surface, and, in so doing, revive an awareness that what is primeval inside us is not to be feared, but valued.
I am aware of the intellectual ease with which many will digest this notion, but can we live it? Can we make the hard choices? Colonisation introduced many well-documented ills. Being the bastard child of Americana has brought even greater woes, though less appreciated, as we remain in a cultural, political and economical stranglehold. But as the neon lights of superficiality fade, what will anchor us?
I think about the role of hurling, the tree, and the way we play the game. I examine my own role. I wonder about my role as a father; I wonder how the win-at-all-costs mentality will affect my son. I wonder about what caused a woman to email me last week to say she was relieved a torn cruciate ligament would keep her away from the stresses of GAA.
The Minotaur
I ask Moriarty what we need. He tells me about the Minotaur.
The great Greek legend of the Minotaur is King Minos’s tale of woe. His wife Pasiphae becomes transfixed with the Bull God that emerges from the sea.
The Bull won’t mate with any human, so she orders the carpenter Daedalus to construct a wooden cow. Once completed she enters the cow, assumes the position, and the Bull impregnates her.
Soon she gives birth to a half-man half-bull: a monstrous creation. Out of shame King Minos constructs a labyrinth beneath the city of Knossos and banishes the Minotaur beneath the royal carpet.
Once a month a virgin child is sent from the city of Athens and dispatched into the labyrinth as food for the insatiable beast. Theseus takes umbrage that the maidens of his city are being devoured, and travels to Crete vowing to slay the monster. There he meets Ariadne, stepdaughter of the king and half-sister of the Minotaur, at the gates of the labyrinth. She gives him a ball of wool to navigate his return.
Theseus fulfills his destiny as a warrior by killing the monster and emerges in triumph from the labyrinth. That, to Moriarty, is the mythical story, but he sees another dimension.
The Minotaur represents our animal nature, and it is the appeal of this that Pasiphae has succumbed to. Minos as King has dominion over the people, and regulates his society. Animal nature, primordial wildness, runs contrary to civic virtue. He drives his shame beneath that which he controls. He then must feed that shame with sacrifice.
Enter the Warrior Theseus. He has bloody murder on his mind and awaits a triumphant return. But according to Moriarty this win-at-all-costs mentality must change; this is where we cross over from the mythological into the real, to the battles at Croke Park.
We don’t need another Theseus, or another Cuchulainn. We need a medicine man, someone that can dive into the depths of the Irish psyche and take a comb of walrus ivory to Caitlin Ni hUllachain’s hair: to comb our Cartesianism, to comb out our sins against Nature, to comb out our theories and creeds that put us on a collision course with this gorgeous blue jewel hanging in space.
If Theseus or anyone else wants to be a real hero, he must join King Minos and return to the labyrinth, take the Minotaur by the hand and walk him into the cityscape, accepting his shame in order to transcend it. This is the great journey.
We have a great opportunity now within the GAA to create a healing space in which coaches can heal: where they can tune into the deeper messages of the game, of the hurl, of the tree. Where they hear the medicines of Nature, which heals them of their anger and shame. Where they reconnect to purpose and are reminded of agency. Where they rediscover their place in the world, and where outcome is secondary to the journey.
Fulfilling a Heroic Destiny
Spiritually, we are at sea. That’s why we don’t feel the plight of the ailing ash. The Catholic Church took on the role of guardian of the great message of the Christ story. The message that we can be at one with the unfolding moment, that we can transcend our suffering and open ourselves to a greater potential.
The Church became moral arbiters of that message and pursued power and control, which divorced them from the source. They were not equipped for the gravity of the message that we are, in fact, already in Paradise. But independently we can create a space to engage with it, with humble invitation, we can heal ourselves and return to abundance.
Nature is abundant. The law of the universe is balance. When we are in balance we are in abundance. When we chose with agency to be in imbalance, we no longer live in abundance; instead we become locked in a mentality of scarcity, which furthers the imbalance.
Those that benefit most from these conditions are those that are most fearful of the scarcity complex within themselves. Those that are in imbalance have lost the ability to trust in the unfolding moment. They replace that trust with sufficient control of the moment to ensure they don’t slip into a reality that their minds are incapable of digesting.
We must deal with our fear in order to be whelmed and overwhelmed by the majesty of the natural world. In crossing that threshold we slip into a paradisal view of the Earth, and no longer want to damage it. This is free energy. We allow ourselves to re-integrate, we play our Orphic note that resonates with the universe.
This is where we identify our purpose, from this place. As though in sitting with Nature, in being psycho-analysed by Nature, where our preconceived stories about ourselves fall silent; the messages that we need to hear can be heard above the din: from the universe demanding we fulfill our heroic destiny; where we recall our gravity and our greatness, and make the contribution the universe requires of us.
Then we can identify the most pressing needs in the world, and apply our tremendous talents and resources to meet those needs, therein lies our purpose.
Croke Park
I spoke about some of these things in Croke Park recently, ideas that have been forming around me and inside of me, inspired by John Moriarty and my experience of hurling. He gave me leave to understand the world for myself, deferring to no one.
I don’t need experts to tell me about Climate Change, or the effect of EMF’s on bee populations, or young men’s suicide rate, to know the disconnect is for real. It’s everywhere. It’s screaming at us to stop, to look around, to renegotiate our most sacred and primal contracts with Nature, and hurling has a role to play.
Moriarty is guide. He is a guide because he went to these places. He let go of his conditioning and walked the earth with a barefoot mind and a barefoot heart. The last pages of Nostos, his autobiography, are written from the paradise he so often refers to. This is not a philosophical concept, it is the reality of the universe, which will lead us away from calamity. I know it is real because I have experienced it.
Its appreciation brings great possibilities for our young people, who are less hampered by the toxic legacy of shame lying on us as a people, on our language and on our landscape. With minds blown open by the Internet, they have the energy of youth to take great strides, but require mentors more than ever. Can the GAA offer a space where coaches harrow their own great depths to become the mentors we need?
Can we encourage balance in our young people so they can make their great contribution? Where they play sport to experience the union that is central to all creative pursuit, the feeling that comes when time and effort cease and a blissful harmony prevails. Can we value those moments once again, and in valuing them permit our young people to experience the world in a different way, beyond the limitations of outcome?
This is a journey Moriarty opened up for me, on which I constantly take wrong turns, but one worthy of continuing. If you are still with me, I encourage you to stand on the edge of a lake, or in front of a tree and just breathe. Breathe and resist the temptation to label and to understand and to intellectualise, and see what fills the gaps. It may be a fleeting experience, it may be difficult to hold on to, but it will heal.
And if you happen to see the wild form of the hare, bury your head in that wild form, and ask it with humility and reverence to guide you on this heroic journey out of the Formorian labyrinth, and back to the great and sacred Earth.
Diarmuid Lyng facilitates group exploration of spirituality in nature, masculinity, meditation, resilience, yoga to a wide range of audiences including schools, university, GAA clubs.
The task of ascertaining essential qualities required to be a judge is necessary for the preservation of a functioning democracy. Any state demands gatekeepers of independence and probity, and leadership of the just and the wise. Importantly, the qualities that make for a good judge do not necessarily align with the skills of a successful advocate.
First and foremost, judicial appointments must be transparent and non-political. Peer selection may bring effective appointments, but often cronyism and tribal affiliation leads to the selection of judges lacking independence, and even ensnared by vested interests. Crucially, a judge is not a servant of the state but the Rule of Law.
The judge who bends over backwards to manipulate doctrine to serve the interests of his paymasters in government is no longer a true judge. The judge who does not approach each case with an open mind also dishonours his role. The judge who protects the state, no matter what its malfeasance, is unjudicial and even subversive.
A first recommendation is that judges should neither be appointed by politicians, nor elected as in the U.S.. Alas even supposedly independent appointment boards are often stacked with the ‘yes’ men of the state, which is another stumbling block to the appointment of truly independent judges. To preserve and promote independence those who select judges must also themselves be independent.
Secondly, the qualities of the advocate and judge are quite distinct. In Ireland at least, there is far too much veneration of successful barristers, which leads to the assumption that their abilities are those required of a judge. Sir Edward Carson was among the greatest barristers of all time, but a hopeless judge in the House of Lords, where his judgments are often incomprehensible. Partisan, fearless advocacy, so necessary to the stock in-trade of the barrister, is often an impediment to being a judge, who must eschew this approach in favour of dispassionate reflection.
A judge should sit back and listen, and only selectively intervene, not rush in as if it were a college debate. A person of an adversarial bent is not inclined to be even-handed: he takes sides; rushes to judgment; intervenes and confronts.
Judges are of course subject to emotions, foibles and prejudices. But to call someone prejudiced is not necessarily pejorative, it merely recognises our flawed humanity. Ecce Homo. What is important is to recognise our prejudices as such, and adjust our responses accordingly.
II
The great jurist Jerome Frank argues in Law and The Modern Mind (1930) that in order to predict a judge’s decision we would need a full biography of his life; the politics, morality, race, sex, religion and other factors that shape his character, and which will predict the outcome of any case.
Frank tuned into how the prejudice of participants in the trial process (judges and indeed jurors or witnesses) influenced decisions, and how selective recall or mistakes in evidence often affected the outcome of cases. Thus, the unpredictability of court decisions resides primarily in the elusiveness of establishing the truth and deep-seated prejudice. He expresses this in two deeply evocative passages:
But are not those categories–political, economic and moral biases–too gross, too crude, too wide? A man’s political or economic prejudices are frequently cut across by his affection for or animosity to some particular individual or group, due to some unique experience he has had; ….the judge’s sympathies and antipathies are likely to be active with respect to the persons of the witness, the attorneys, and the parties to the suit. His own past may have created plus or minus reactions to women, or blonde men, or plumbers, or ministers, or college graduates, or Democrats. A certain twang or cough or gesture may start up memories pleasant or painful to the man. Those memories of the judge, while he is listening to a witness with such a twang or cough or gesture, may affect the judge’s initial hearing of, or subsequent recollection of, what the witness said…
Or:
Jerome Frank 1889-1957.
When pivotal testimony at the trial is oral and conflicting, as it is in most lawsuits, the trial court’s finding of the fact involve a multitude of elusive factors: First the trial judge in a non-jury trial or the jury in a jury trial must learn about the facts from the witnesses and witnesses, being humanely fallible, frequently make mistakes in observation of what they saw and heard, or in their recollections of what they observed, or in their court room reports of those recollections. Second, the trial judges or juries also human, may have prejudices – often unconscious unknown even to themselves – for or against some of the witnesses, or the parties to the suit, or the lawyers … Those prejudices when they are racial, religious, political or economic, may sometimes be surmised by others. But there are some hidden, unconscious biases of trial judges or jurors – such as for example, plus or minus reactions to women, or unmarried woman, or red haired woman . . . or men with deep voices or high pitched voices . . .
He concludes: ‘The chief obstacle to prophesying a trial court decision is, then, the inability, thanks to these inscrutable factors, to foresee what a particular trial judge or jury will believe to be the facts.’
In substance Frank is making two points about the unpredictability of outcomes in trial courts. First, that a judge’s background, prejudices and hunches conditions his decision-making, and secondly that decision are often based on mistaken recollections.
The usefulness of the judicial hunch – so central to legal realist thought – should not to be dismissed outright. Intuition, common sense, or a feel for an outcome compliments arid rationality, but this has limits.
A modern variant of the undue application of prejudice is what is called cognitive or confirmation bias, whereby a judge makes his mind up in advance of a trial. A judge who predetermines issues or is influenced by a network of ties, or is simply biased, is failing to preform his job.
I was recently involved in a case involving a judge of Greek Cypriot origin and a Greek Cypriot complainant. I argued that given Greek Cypriots are a tight-knit community the judge should recuse himself, step aside, which, to his credit, he did. More to the point, he actually brought the matter up himself, which displayed the real qualities required of a judge.
A judge who fails to disclose any real or ostensible bias is subject to the sanction of breaching natural justice. Thus Lord Hoffman’s failure to disclose his involvement in Amnesty International in an extradition case against Chile’s General Pinochet, which involved the charity, led to a fresh hearing being ordered. The application of the Rule of Law gives anyone a fair trial.
III
There have been numerous instances of judges allowing their personal or ideological convictions to influence outcomes. In 1927 the much-lauded Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jerome Frank’s ideal judge, rejected Carrie Buck‘s argument that her constitutional rights had been infringed by being forcibly sterilization for being ‘mentally defective’.
The attack is not upon the procedure but upon the substantive law. It seems to be contended that in no circumstances could such an order be justified. It certainly is contended that the order cannot be justified upon the existing grounds. The judgment finds the facts that have been recited and that Carrie Buck ‘is the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring, likewise afflicted, that she may be sexually sterilized without detriment to her general health and that her welfare and that of society will be promoted by her sterilization,’ and thereupon makes the order. In view of the general declarations of the Legislature and the specific findings of the Court obviously we cannot say as matter of law that the grounds do not exist, and if they exist they justify the result. We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U. S. 11, 25 S. Ct. 358, 49 L. Ed. 643, 3 Ann. Cas. 765. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
Surely Holmes’s belief in eugenics and his mistaken embrace of popular prejudice conditions the outcome of the trial?
On a lighter note, in terms of judicial prejudice, in Miller v. Jackson (1977) isLord Denning refusal to grant an injunction to a family against a cricket club. The family had moved into a house adjacent to a cricket ground, upset by the danger posed to their young children by cricket balls flying into the back garden. The conclusion is startling obvious from the famous opening paragraph.
In summertime village cricket is the delight of everyone. Nearly every village has its own cricket field where the young men play and the old men watch. In the village of Lintz in County Durham they have their own ground, where they have played these last seventy years. They tend it well. The wicket area is well rolled and mown. The outfield is kept short. It has a good club-house for the players and seats for the onlookers. The village team play there on Saturdays and Sundays. They belong to a league, competing with the neighbouring villages. On other evenings after work they practice while the light lasts. Yet now after these 70 years a Judge of the High Court has ordered that they must not play there anymore, lie has issued an injunction to stop them. He has done it at the instance of a newcomer who is no lover of cricket. This newcomer has built, or has had built for him, a house on the edge of the cricket ground which four years ago was a field where cattle grazed. The animals did not mind the cricket. But now this adjoining field has been turned into a housing estate. The newcomer bought one of the houses on the edge of the cricket ground. No doubt the open space was a selling point. Now he complains that, when a batsman hits a six, the ball has been known to land in his garden or on or near his house. His wife has got so upset about it that they always go out at weekends. They do not go into the garden when cricket is being played. They say that this is intolerable. So they asked the Judge to stop the cricket being played. And the Judge, I am sorry to say, feels that the cricket must be stopped: with the consequences, I suppose, that the Lintz cricket-club will disappear. The cricket ground will be turned to some other use. I expect for more houses or a factory. The young men will turn to other things instead of cricket. The whole village will be much the poorer. And all this because of a newcomer who has just bought a house there next to the cricket ground.
IV
A substantial number of roguish characters have been made judges, who like the rest of the speckled timber of humanity inevitably have their foibles. Some judges are perverts, some are alcoholics. A few are both. Far too many are deeply conservative creatures of the establishment. In Ireland, we have our fair share of religious fundamentalists, or worse religious fundamentalist former prosecutors. Perversion in spades.
Nonetheless, in Ireland, with some notable exceptions, most judges have kept their bibs clean in their personal lives. It may seem controversial to say so, but that should not necessarily matter, at least prior to their appointment.
A good judge will probably have had wide-ranging life experiences, bringing an ability to empathise with people of variegated backgrounds rather than imposing a class, or caste, credo in increasingly diverse and multicultural societies. I have noticed a significant difference between the smorisgoboard of backgrounds in evidence on the English bench, and the distinct narrowness of background and mentality apparent among their Irish counterparts.
The more one understands and tolerates the waywardness and infamy inherent in human nature, the more one sees through liars, fraudsters, dissemblers and fabricators among the legal fraternity and their clients. In other words the better one can judge.
So, what should it mean then to judge? Apart from independence and an ability to acknowledge and submerge personal viewpoints, he has to be, in most circumstances, balanced. He has to weigh and sift and evaluate the evidence and submissions before him. But ideally a judge should not be a narrowly technical lawyer.
The law must be placed in its social context, and more than a passing awareness of non-legal disciplines such as sociology and philosophy, along with a good dollop of common sense, are required. A judge should be morally-upright, which does not mean sexually-sanitised. Any judge should not be precluded from having a personal life, although this must be, to some extent controlled and restrained. Who you meet and why you meet them could come back to haunt you.
Self-restraint comes with the territory of being a judge, even though you might not like it. This is not to condone the absurd aloofness, and lack of engagement common among many judges.
But morality in the sense of integrity is a prerequisite. A judge should not be bought or sold. A judge should not allow personal feelings or attachments to influence decision-making. A judge should always search for the right answer as a matter of principle.
Technical lawyers often miss the big picture through too narrow a focus. A strict adherence to the wording of an act or case law is often to the detriment of justice. A judge should focus on the spirit of the law, applying a purposive and principled approach.
If a rule does not conform with basic moral or legal principles then it should be jettisoned or subtly avoided. A judge should have the flexibility and wherewithal – the bag of rhetorical tricks – to cater for that scenario.
As a realist Frank advocates that judges focus on law-in-action, and think in terms of wider policy
Lord Denning 1899-1999.
ramifications. Thus Lord Denning in Spartan Steel Alloys v Martin and Co. Ltd 1973 reasoned that if damages were awarded in the context of a power strike then the electricity company could go bankrupt. He struck out the case on the basis that the public interest lay in maintaining a solvent company to generate electricity supply.
Denning tended to fashion remedies in a novel and creative way to subvert conventional doctrine. For example, he fashioned the doctrine of promissory estoppel to overcome the strict contract law principles of offer and consideration. He asserted that if someone makes a promise they cannot go back on it. An Englishman’s word is his bond. A norm often lacking in Ireland.
V
A judge must have intellectual integrity, which is not to say a judge cannot have opinions. It is just necessary to be up front with preferences or prejudices. Which is not to say that a judge’s opinions are necessarily correct.
There are numerous academic commentaries regarding the methods a judge may use to interpret a text. I have indicated that literalism and rigidity is a dead-end, but there are other failings.
The method of strict historical interpretation holds a particular spell over Conservatives in the United States. This imports the anachronistic values of long dead individuals into the interpretation of contemporary law. This allowed Judge Scalia in America to uphold the legality of owning handguns simply because the 18th century forefathers of American constitutionalism ran rampant with muskets.
The most sinister nonsense of the law and economics movement in America – with two highly placed exponents in Easterbrook and Posner – has given rise to a cost-benefit analysis where wealth maximisation is the defining feature of every legal decision, at the expense of human rights.
Nonsense has infected our culture, and promotes the agenda of the Far Right and Neoliberalism. The costing of everything in hyper inflated times has destroyed much and continues to do so. The balance is wrong. Not the bank balance but the moral balance. The ledger of life.
Judges, even the greatest ones, are often ensnared by a viewpoint that does not stand up to intellectual scrutiny over time. Even the great Oliver Wendell Holmes became a proponent of Social Darwinism and eugenics, which led him to permit the compulsory sterilisation of a mentally defective person on the basis that three generations of imbeciles was enough.
I fear Social Darwinism is back in fashion, but at least in the multicultural environment of London, racial abuse and racism are dissipated. But even here there is growing apprehension. Draconian asylum laws and judgments reflect the slide. The deportation of the undesirable is often the deportation of those you disagree with. The greatest judges have always been immune to ideas of racial hierarchies
VI
Every judge should also have an inner voice second guessing them. He or she should hear someone whispering in their ear: ‘Perhaps not’, or, ‘Restrain yourself.’ He or she must remain as neutral as an umpire as in a cricket or a tennis match, evaluating the rules of the game and when matters are out of bounds.
It is a grave responsibility to sit in judgment particularly in criminal justice matters, and apart from the obligation to sift and evaluate evidence carefully, an obligation always arises to lean over backwards to protect the innocent, or at least to accord them the presumption of innocence.
To impose any form of punishment on a fellow human being as a judge, without a critical filter and a defined sense of what you are doing and why you are doing it, is to forfeit one’s suitability.
For judges to collude with state authorities or bend and manipulate procedure and doctrine is a form of intellectual sadism. Many barristers try and avoid particular courts on that basis if they can.
A judge should also have a commitment to procedural fairness, equality-of-arms, human rights, independence and all the other aspects of the Rule of Law, which has little or nothing to do with judicial pay or pensions.
In Ireland those who prattle on about the Rule of Law are largely political barristers, the men of the Castle seeking high offices of state, and with much to protect and preserve; deliberately masking self-interest in ruling class chatter.
The appointment of avowedly party-political judges is a grave danger in any serious democracy. A judge should not have been involved or been a member of any political party prior to their appointment.
A judge should also give detailed reasons for any decision he makes, and that reasoning should display careful consideration. Failure to do so, or delay, is an abnegation of judicial responsibility.
As a Dublin-based barrister I endured too many written judgments failed to take into account the depth and sophistication of submissions; where the reasons adduced were a paper mask and compression; where the outcome was never in doubt and equality of arms a charade.
This leads to the question of when a hearing is fair or not. The most important point in this regard is to distinguish between procedural fairness and the obligation to hear both sides and substantive fairness.
Substantive fairness, which I have found lacking in Ireland, is always to do the right thing, and bugger the consequences. A judge should not be influenced in reaching a decision by how it will look in the media. A judge is not a fashionista or one of the beautiful people. A judge is not a pop star singing to politicians, though some have advanced that way.
A judge should fearlessly expose corruption and, above all else, not conceal it or protect it. That obligation is often difficult to follow. Giovanni Falcone was assassinated for confronting mafia corruption in Italy. There are different species of mafia, who may even operate among the ostensible guardians of the state.
Ireland’s greatest judge, for all his faults, of the last twenty years was Adrian Hardiman. The day after his death I met a judicial colleague of his who remarked: ‘Say what you want, he was a voice of independence in this country’; as if that is exceptional!
Absent are such independent voices in our present judiciary. The times-they-are-a-changing for the worse, winter is coming and difficult decisions are required, but by people ill-equipped for the task. History will judge our judges as not judging in all of the above senses.
For a great judge can become an historian, a cultural commissar, a public intellectual, and an arbitrator.
*******
A last important point on the qualities required in a judge is that he or she should not have an excessively authoritarian personality. A judge should thus be self-reflexive, and avoid pomposity at all costs. Peter Cooke’s caricature is invaluable for anyone aspiring to be one.
Above all, as the legendary French writer Camus observed, a judge should be a just man.
Perhaps we can agree on this much: conflict is intrinsic to the human condition. We are desiring creatures. Our needs and wants rub up against those of others. Add in an event of intensification: a road accident, a perceived act of negligence, breach of commitment or betrayal of trust. Then there arises anger and its close relative, blame.
Many such situations can be framed in legal terms. We have codes to regulate how people ought to behave. A breach gives rise to the possibility of redress. Often, however, we may observe what looks like a complex legal dispute, but that is not at the heart of the matter.
As a lawyer I worked for months on the blowout of a large and successful business partnership that engaged several large law firms, and various court proceedings. Yet it was never clear why the parties had fallen out. I heard it suggested that the root of the trouble was the slighting by one partner of another’s wife. There is also the phenomenon of ‘grief to grievance’. People in heightened emotional states are more prone to disagreement and finding fault.
Because we are generally disabled by our conflicts, it can suit us to delegate their resolution to people trained for that purpose. ‘You will be hearing from my solicitors!’ Those are the experts who know what remedies are obtainable, or how far our interests can be pushed.
II
The work of lawyers is considered that of a profession. To call an occupation a profession suggests a difference from other ways of scratching a living. There is, in origin at least, the suggestion of calling or vocation.
That said, professions have their own associated pathologies. George Bernard Shaw fashioned the line that ‘every profession is a conspiracy against the laity’. Adam Smith famously wrote in The Wealth of Nations that ‘People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.’
I want to focus for a moment on the nature of professional legal work in litigation and dispute resolution before considering the emerging profession of a mediator.
The question arises now, whether there is a useful distinction that can still be drawn between a profession and a business. One hears a complaint in recent years that the law has become just one more business. Indeed promotional advertising addressed to the business community often makes a virtue of this development, suggesting that legal firms have a better understanding of the needs of business as a result of being, so to speak, in the same boat: ‘We are [firm XY], where law means business…’.
What are the distinguishing features of a profession? Generally, one finds an insistence on codes of practice which its members must adhere to. Since lawyers hold a monopoly on the workings of the justice system, their conduct is heavily regulated. By contrast, persons working, say, in the IT sector will have to comply with relevant law applicable to that activity, but will not be subject personally to regulation as to how they conduct their business.
Another aspect is that professional work seems to involve a higher degree of responsibility for the welfare of the person to whom services are supplied. It should not be a case of profit maximization, of caveat emptor. The expression ‘client’ rather than ‘customer’ indicates a different standard.
Admittedly, much legal work performed in modern conditions, such as that associated with purchase and sale of property, or construction or corporate mergers or acquisitions might be considered as, simply, one more business. On the other hand, work in handling civil disputes can more readily be seen to have a more significant professional element, especially if promotion of a more peaceful, less strife-ridden society is to be seen as a public good.
The idea of a profession would also suggest some level of restraint as regards charges, as opposed to ‘what the market will bear’. The historic appendage of a cloth purse till attached to a barrister’s gown, into which a couple of guineas could be slipped unbeknownst to the noble advocate may attract derision, but there is some kind of echo there, however faint.
Within a law firm, it is hard to justify the use of fee targets for practitioners in dispute work if the social aim is to encourage expeditious settlement. Any scheme to base remuneration or bonuses on such targets would surely be suggestive of a Faustian bargain.
One would also expect a measure of restraint as regards marketing of professional services which would not be applicable to pure business. This is a difficult area because lawyers have to take account of what competitors are doing. Yet a young solicitor observed to me rather sadly: ‘I was brought up to believe the fee follows the work, but now it seems the work follows the fee’.
III
A distinguishing feature of professional work is that it attracts the expression ‘practice’ as a description. There is a whole field of philosophical commentary as to the nature of ‘practices’ and their contribution to society. The philosopher Joseph Dunne has illuminated this subject. His words can offer an inspirational ideal for professional practice.
A practice is a coherent and invariably quite complex set of activities and tasks that has evolved cooperatively and cumulatively over time. It is alive in the community who are its insiders (that is to say its genuine practitioners) and it stays alive only so long as they sustain a commitment to creatively develop and sustain it – sometimes by shifts which at the time may seem dramatic and even subversive. Central to any such practice are standards of excellence, themselves subject to development and redefinition, which demand responsiveness from those who are, or are trying to become, practitioners.
Engagement in the characteristic tasks of a practice, which embody standards that challenge one in so far as they are beyond one, leads, when it goes well, to the development not only of competencies specific to that practice but also of moral qualities that transcend it – that characterize one not just as a practitioner in that domain but as a person in life.
He adds that a thing worth noticing about what may be called the economy of a practice is that it is not based on scarcity. Thus if one person excels it need not be at the cost of the other people’s chances to develop their talents. He concludes that ‘Every achievement of excellence enriches all those who participate in or care about a practice; it can be an occasion for admiration or even celebration as well as sometimes, of course, for attempts at emulation.’
What is spoken of here, of course, is practice at its very best, but to express the ideal is to provide some yardstick by which particular work settings can be judged.
IV
What then of the newly emerging profession of mediator, an activity recently given status in Ireland as a result of the Mediation Act 2017? This Act, which envisages the establishment of codes of conduct for mediators, had a lengthy gestation, starting with a consultation undertaken by the Law Reform Commission nearly a decade ago.
The main impetus has been dissatisfaction with the standard model of litigation, built as it is on adversarial confrontation, and correspondingly high costs. There is increasing resistance to what is labeled as ‘binary’ thinking, and promotion of what is termed a ‘non-dual consciousness’. The mediation model asks parties to recognize that they have a shared problem.
Patterns of practice in mediation are still emerging. Those who have engaged in this work for many years can be heard to complain that lawyers are wanting to take over the field, and to run mediations as if conducted on a practice ground so as to play out what a courtroom outcome would look like.
The kind of intellectual activity associated with intensive legal work – what a neuroscientist might classify as left-brain-activity, may be necessary to provide an understanding of a case that has proceeded along the litigation path, but the actual work of mediation calls for capacities more associated with the right hemisphere of the brain, and recourse to intuition.
It is notable that the Mediation Act requires solicitors to give advice on the mediation option before legal proceeding can be commenced. The essential innovation introduced by the mediation alternative is not the arrival of the mediator on the scene, but a decision by parties in conflict to face each other to discuss their differences. This opens the possibility for value added in the engagement of a third party to facilitate the process.
I suggest that mediation reaches its full potential when the mediator is able to bring to the table a certain capacity that may be called a ‘presence,’ a personal stillness that is evident even in a highly charged setting. This attribute will be hospitable to the parties. It will also support what may be considered the particular ‘magic’ of mediation, a feature unmatched in the adversarial legal system. This is the right of a mediator to have confidential discussions with each party to the conflict. To the degree that the mediator’s energy is sufficiently receptive, a party will be encouraged to be frank in such meetings, to look at both sides of the case, and to recognize their own share in creating the conflict.
The kind of energies called for in mediation are exactly opposite to the driven, ‘weaponised’ environment associated with legal processes. The quality of presence that I have referred to is not beyond anyone working in dispute resolution, but it needs to be cultivated. For some this may mean consistent Zen meditation or yoga or like practices (the body is always present), or long walks with the dog. A certain spaciousness is called for.
To imagine that what is called for in mediation is a mere brokering role, or knocking heads together, is to misconceive the potential. And mediators need to remember that reference to what it might cost to have a legal case run through the courts’ system is a poor yardstick with which to measure the value of the service.
********
A younger colleague who worked with me, who was generally considered to have ‘got’ mediation observed that she had come to realize that ‘mediation is mostly about doing nothing’.
But then, as we know, a certain kind of non-doing can be very powerful.
And as to selling the mediator’s expertise, there is a wisdom in the story of the famed Rabbi who consoled a young colleague disappointed at how few people were seeking his advice: ‘They come to me’, the great man said, ‘because I am astonished that they come, and they do not come to you, because you are astonished that they do not come’.
Earthsong camps assemble people of all ages, who converge in a natural setting to sing and dance their hearts out. Using the UK-based Unicorn camps as a model, Earthsong was engendered in Ireland by John Bowker and Angie Pinson in 2007. Other influences include Oak Dragon camps, and even Glastonbury.
Earthsong offers an escape from the humdrum: a temporary ‘liminal’ space to explore wildness and sensitivities. As the week progresses the feeling of separation from normality grows. At Earthsong there are no age restrictions leading to a mélange of generations. Families make up the majority of participants, and almost half of those in attendance are under eighteen.
Some come simply for a family holiday, or to spend a sociable week camping; others seek to drop out of ‘reality’ for a period. It is a space where esoteric ideas flourish as like-minded souls celebrate shared outlooks. For some Earthsong counteracts feelings of negativity towards spiritual ideas, born out of compulsion in their religious upbringings.
The field where Earthsong is located is found up a leafy lane-way set away from the road. On arrival participants are greeted by whimsical signs such as ‘Warning, fairies crossing’. Magic is in the air. At the top of the lane, a ‘gatekeeper’, in a fairy costume, greets new arrivals.
Dropping off one’s car on the ‘outside’ before stepping into the arena is the first stage in a rite of passage. Upon arrival participants choose a circle in which to pitch their tent, where it remains for the duration. Each circle contains approximately twenty people. These clusters lie on the edge of the field, while social spaces such as the Big Top, yurts, Big White marquee, café and shop are centrally located.
Throughout the week all live and cook as one over a central fire, and participate in a multitude of group activities. This type of communal living is novel for many – and can be challenging if one is accustomed to the usual separation from one’s neighbours.
It can be intense, both physically and psychologically, but rewarding too. This is an extreme and concentrated example of community, providing insights into how wider communal and ecologically-minded societies could evolve.
II
Earthsong offers a space to explore essential characteristics of our humanity through workshops that are on offer throughout the week. These range from tribal-drumming, basket-weaving, ‘family constellations’, African dance, non-violent communication, laughter-yoga, yurt-making, group-singing, sound-healing to circle dance, depending on the camp. There are two seven-day camps each summer in County Tipperary, ‘Dance Camp’ and ‘Harvest Camp’, as well as two three-day camps in County Clare.
Through altered language, behaviours and activities Earthsong generates separation from the ‘outside world’, or ‘muggle land’, as it is jokingly referred to1. This isolation contributes to the unique atmosphere of the retreat, allowing participants to forget aspects of their lives on the outside.
A serious challenge is the absence of electricity, although, communal showers, heated by a wood-burning stove, are available in a wooden lodge. People are also encouraged to switch off mobile phones, or store them in cars or tents.
There is a strict no alcohol or drugs policy, which provides a rare experience in Ireland, and is a defining feature of the Earthsong experience. ‘Natural highs’ are achieved through events such as drumming and group singing. Safety is the principal rational for this. The ban on intoxicants makes Earthsong family-friendly, and also means everyone is on the same ‘buzz’.
Earthsong is respectful of all spiritual traditions, but is not affiliated to any particular belief system, and organisers consciously avoid dogma. Nonetheless, ritual plays a defining role, from symbolic hand-gestures to welcoming ceremonies, and the Firedance; these generate an aura of mystery and forge community.
Earthsong is a patchwork of cultures and rites, holding each one in equal esteem. The musical practices at Earthsong include west African drumming and chanting, African dance, kirtan, circle dance, folk music, among many others.
III
What is it that attracts people to countercultural, alternative living, such as is experienced at Earthsong, even temporarily? To some extent it is a way of life and set of attitudes that are consciously differentiated from any dominant culture.
This may be born out of dissatisfaction with society as it has developed, where an increasing obsession with technology, a Neoliberal outlook, lack of care for the environment and stressful work-life imbalances leads to alienation, anxiety and a growing culture of fear or distrust. It also reflects a desire to restore spirituality and purpose, and discover alternatives to destructive patterns of unsustainable living2.
An alternative standpoint is to view Earthsong in terms of what people are moving towards rather than what they are running from3. Many who attend Earthsong do not lack for community or a sustainable lifestyle beyond the camp. It often serves to affirm lifestyles rooted in nature and creative thought.
The word liminality derives from the Latin ‘limin’ meaning ‘threshold’, and was first identified by Arnold van Gennep in 1909 in his study Les Rites de Passage. He suggested that customs within social groups are linked to sacred phases. In many instances the passage from one phase to another – whether ageing, illnesses or change in season – involve some sort of ceremony, or rite of passage.
He suggests there are three stages to this ritual process; the first involves a separation from everyday life preliminaire; this is followed by the liminal, or ‘in-between’ phase liminaire, where status is removed and daily routine is replaced by devotion to the sacred. The third phase is reaggregation, or post-liminaire, where the initiate returns to everyday life, newly defined and ‘transformed’ by the ritual journey.
Van Gennep’s description of the liminaire phase inspired Victor Turner in the 1960s to develop the term ‘betwixt and between’ to describe the liminal state of hippies and the Beat Generation (The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, 1969).
Van Gennep’s theory had been applied to non-Western societies, but Turner used them for modern society, applying the term ‘liminoid’ for a state of being that was ‘like-liminal’, but not quite. He cited the hippies of the 1960s as examples, especially those choosing to live in a society on the threshold of ‘traditional’, mainstream and structured society.
Turner adopted the term ‘structural outsiderhood’ for a state of mind of ‘normal’ citizens who have yet to reach the ‘utopia’ they wish and fight for. As such, they float in a liminoid space. It is perhaps this ‘liminoid’ element, in combination with the more ‘traditional’, ritual-based liminal element, that best describes the music found at Earthsong.
IV
Communitas is a Latin noun referring either to an unstructured community in which people are equal, or to the spirit of community itself. There are varying levels of communitas operating at Earthcamp, including existential (or spontaneous) communitas in what William Blake knew as the winged moment as it flies4. Ironically, it is the fate of all existential communitas to ‘decline and fall’ into structure.
Loersch and Arbuckle5 argue that music evolved as a mechanism to create and maintain group structure by acting as a form of social communication – a tool to share a group’s mental state with others, without the need for direct interaction. They hypothesised that a musical performance uniquely influences the behaviours and emotions of participants, thus creating a coordinated group.
There is evidence that synchronised movement in response to music amplifies this bonding process. This occurs in dance. Others suggest that ‘musicking’ provides a space where traditional status hierarchies no longer hold (Bergh (2010)6 and Boyce-Tillman (2009)7).
Reilly, in her study of the Magi people of Southeast Brazil, suggests that to experience ‘musical communitas’ is to experience: ‘a sense of intersubjectivity, which neutralises structure and creates the illusion of anti-structure’8. She goes on to suggest that all musical activity entails ritualised behaviour, ‘obscuring the divide’ between the sacred and the profane.
Therefore, ‘enchantment’ is not only found in religious contexts: any environment that encourages an experience of communitas through music conjures an alternative social reality into being.
It is in this world of enchantment that participants construct and experience the ‘harmonious order’ that could merge with an external reality; a mystical vision which is often out of step with dominant ideas in our culture.
In The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible, Charles Eisenstein develops the age-old concept of ‘interbeing’, the idea of everything in the universe being interconnected9. This ‘echoes the worldview’ of ancient tribes and traditions across time and space, challenging us to ‘look beyond the world of concepts and opposites’, and thereby put aside our differences.
Eisenstein speaks of humans experiencing a ‘separation’ from interconnectedness, embodied in money, school, religion and politics, which have the potential to alienate and destruct. He warns against the contemporary ‘glorification of change…of constantly discarding the old’, which may become a form of escapism.
While appropriation of native spirituality has been condemned as cultural murder, Eisenstein suggests this interest comes from a recognition that indigenous peoples have retained for millennia that which ‘we of the West are finally ready to hear, as our own rituals, myths, and institutions break down’.
He uses the term ‘Age of Reunion’ to describe this reintegration. This also offers a defence against the charge of acquisition of anOther’s traditions; looking beyond borders and boundaries and acknowledging our dependence on, and connectedness with, all other members of our species (the important ethical considerations of this concept lie far beyond the reaches of this current research).
V
Throughout the camp Heartsong took place at 8.45 am each morning in the Big Top, after the kirtan session and Dance of Life. Heartsong means to sing ‘from the heart’, to sing one’s emotions out in full, alongside others.
The songs chosen are traditional from a variety of sources as well as contemporary numbers written by Heartsong facilitators. Usually practised in simple four-part harmony in repetitive lines, Heartsong melodies and words tend to evoke powerful emotions.
On one such morning during Dance camp I arrived at 8.40am, just in time to witness the gentle practice of lighting the tea-lights around the altar. It was a slow start, with participants trickling in through one of the four entrances of the tent. We were invited to stand in one of four sections (‘tops’, altos, tenors, bass) in a circle around a central column or ‘altar’.
We were given a short background to the songs we were about to sing, and reassured that we did not have to be great singers. The precise cultural context of the songs was not always of primary importance. Similarly, Tríona Ní Shíocháin in her discussion of Irish traditional song, wrote that in the re-creation of oral transmission, the singer enters a ludic, playful space, where new ideas and interpretations come to the fore, and a collective identity is thereby reinvented10.
In the case of Heartsong where most, if not all, participants are unfamiliar with the language of the lyrics, one is left to interpret feelings through the sound, rather than the meaning of the words. This can represent a space of empathy and imagination.
That morning as we began to learn our parts, through repetition of the slow, simple phrases, more and more people joined the group. Once all the sections were up to speed, we were ready to begin singing in unison.
We began by creating a space of safety, using a Maori signal. This involved placing one’s right hand on the heart and holding the other out in front, with everyone singing a collective ‘ooooo’, while wiggling the fingers of their left hand. Thus we sent a wave of energy from our fingertips to the people around us.
We were reminded that the space of Heartsong might lead to powerful release of emotion. The importance of safety was repeatedly highlighted throughout: there was a recognition that what we were doing could be misconstrued beyond the gates.
The gate-crew could be seen as guarding the entrance ‘over the limen’ into the space of Earthsong, enhancing one’s journey through the camp.
Organisers spoke of our ‘tribe’, and the idea of sending the energy of songs to our ‘people’, be they ‘rivers, animals [or] trees’. We were encouraged to look out for participants whose emotions were triggered by the experience.
At my first camp two years before, I must admit, it was an unsettling sight and sound. We are not accustomed to such raw emotions being on show, we are used to hiding these as we proceed on our generally solitary path through the maze of social life.
Heartsong provides a caring, non-judgmental space in which emotions are welcomed and honoured.
One evening there was a ‘Forest Songs’ session held below a circle of trees, which had a profoundly ethereal quality. It was a unique feeling to sing one’s heart out in the company of trees. On the night approximately sixty participants gathered under the canopy with the singing facilitators in the centre. Faces could only be distinguished by flickering candle-light.
VI
The Firedance, weather-permitting, takes place at the centre of the field as the festival draws to a close. During the day a huge fire of slab-wood and logs are constructed by volunteers.
The drummers attend a practice earlier on the day, so the Firedance commences immediately. We are encouraged to think as a whole community, not just one, and to believe that by taking part in the Firedance we are welcoming ancient traditions, and acknowledging all indigenous communities, who form part of a collective ancestry.
The dangers and force of the fire is not taken lightly, and as I experienced on a windy evening, the flames and smoke are highly unpredictable. The danger is acknowledged and respected, and we are all responsible for one another’s safety. We step into a dangerous environment, but that fire represents life and our wild natures, and reminds us to look out for one another.
While liminal spaces are sites of togetherness and creativity they can also be unsettling, disturbing and dangerous as we confront what is missing from our culture11.
The creation of safe spaces and the altered language and behaviours create a magical environment. This other-worldliness, togetherness and community are crucial factors in encouraging people to return year on year, recreating a temporary space in which to re-imagine themselves, their lives, and the society around them.
I do not wish to overly romanticise Earthsong. It would be impossible to generate a fully ritualistic, liminal space for the duration of the camps. Being a mere week in duration, it is simply a taster of real magic.
As with any gathering of people, festival, or communal living experience, issues arise, rules are broken and behaviours of ‘normal life’ are not easily cast off. Sometimes people sullenly sit in their cars, making phone-calls or updating their Instagram accounts. Children steal from the shop. Families squabble. A child attempts to set the compost loos on fire.
The no-drink-and-drugs rule was broken once or twice (or more) the last time I attended. Complaints are made. Shelters collapse. Eyes sting from cooking over an open fire. Arguments ensue. Earthsong is both very different and quite similar to ‘normal life’.
There are nonetheless pockets of togetherness and shared experience that bind the community, despite all the practical necessities, and mundanities. These are in fact part and parcel of the experience.
Turner writes of the great difficulty in maintaining a permanent state of communitas and that it ‘must sooner or later come to an end. We thus encounter the paradox that the experience of communitas becomes the memory of communitas…’12.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge all those who interacted with me during fieldwork at Earthsong in July 2016, and am very grateful for the contributions they made to the research.
Reference List
Dowd, N. (2015). ‘The re-enchantment of the world: the transformative experience of Earthsong camp.’ Undergraduate. University College Cork.
Ehrenfeld, J. (2008). Sustainability by Design. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, p.64.
Holyfield, L., Cobb, M., Murray, K., & McKinzie, A. (2013). ‘Musical Ties That Bind: Nostalgia, Affect, and Heritage in Festival Narratives.’ Symbolic Interaction, 36(4), p.457-477.
Turner, V. (1969). The ritual process. New York: Cornell University Press, p.132.
Loersch, C. and Arbuckle, N. (2013). ‘Unraveling the mystery of music: Music as an evolved group process.’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105(5), p.777-798.
Bergh, A. (2010). I’d like to teach the world to sing: Music and conflict transformation. Ph.D. University of Exeter.
Boyce-Tillman, J. (2009). ‘The Transformative Qualities of a Liminal Space Created by Musicking.’ Philosophy of Music Education Review, 17(2), p.184-202.
Reily, S. (2002). Voices of the Magi. Chicago [Ill.]: University of Chicago Press.
Eisenstein, C. (2013). The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible. North Atlantic Books.
Ní Shíocháin, T. (2014). ‘Memory, Liminality and Song Performance: Understanding the History of Thought through Song.’ International Political Anthropology, 7(1), p.73-88.
Tempest, S., Starkey, K., & Ennew, C. (2007). ‘In the Death Zone: A study of limits in the 1996 Mount Everest disaster.’ Human Relations, 60(7), p.1039-1064.
Turner, V. (1982). ‘From ritual to theatre.’ New York, NY: Performing Arts Journal Publications.
He enabled the Invincibles, only the second team not to lose once in an entire season in one of the most competitive leagues in the world. He fostered so many of the talents who shone not only for him but all their clubs and countries. His best teams played some of the loveliest soccer, fast, tough, and often breath-takingly skillful. He introduced modern diet and conditioning. He won most of the available competitions at least once, with the significant exception of the Champions League.
He’s one of the most philosophical of football men. His great failing is that he is fundamentally an Economist.
Wenger’s austere, intellectual, worldly yet kind approach, combined with his deep understanding, allowed him to alloy continental notions of diet and training with native English hard-running and combative effort. He gave out PhD’s in soccer. He maybe didn’t win enough, but he built a future not just for his club but for the game. He is a coach who could lecture a board of directors on amortization as easily as train a teenager in positioning.
His best teams possessed great strength, speed, technique, and will. Doughty personalities worked hard for each other, with honesty and compassion. Composed of players from all over the world they were nonetheless clearly Arsenal players. They played for their shirt, their fans. They played for Arsène.
The goals, so many great goals, my favourite Bergkamp’s spatio-temporal short-circuit:
Henry’s goal is another triumph of outrageous athleticism, creativity, and skill:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qy5iZh86e4
Wenger’s other great achievement was his facilitation of the move from the old Highbury stadium to the Emirates, all the while managing to avoid the vast debts that have impaired so many other clubs. He tended to buy young players and develop them, selling on those not quite his type, and only in later years splurged, unsuccessfully, on a few marquee names. He was truly a manager not a coach. Players speak of his trust in them to learn, his expectation of intelligence and willing curiosity.
Throughout it all, his anachronistic, prickly, “didn’t see it,” demeanor both charmed and irritated. He could be kind and overbearing at the same time, like a tired old schoolteacher reaching deep for the patience needed to help his errant charges, and was often especially so with journalists. Perhaps unwittingly he provided a theatrical counterpoint to the gruff, over-manly, almost thuggish displays of other managers.
In recent years his inability to spend, or spend wisely, has enervated his squads. They have done well to provide a reminiscent value, and a kind of tactical test, against which all other Premiership teams must measure themselves twice a season, but they have not looked close to being able to challenge for honours. They still have a ropey defense, their midfield is slight, and their strikers profligate if not disinterested. They flatter and deceive in equal measure. They have become an echo of an idea of a kind of football, and the world has moved on with typically robust lack of romance. Too much an economist to be a romantic Wenger nonetheless seems trapped in an ideological hall of soccer mirrors, forever seeing some variant of old reflections staring back at him.
The issue of data privacy is becoming a source of increasing individual and corporate unease with wide political ramifications. To that end the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which comes into force in less than two months, will attempt to harmonize and enhance data protection standards across the continent.
Around the world governments actively monitor Internet communications. Here I examine Russia’s System for Operative Investigative Activities (SORM) that the government employs for the purposes of lawful interception of various IT and telecommunication systems.
The original version of SORM was introduced in 1995, and allowed the Federal Security Services (FSB) to monitor phone calls and the Internet activity of users, despite the limited reach and functionality of Internet services at that time.
SORM-1 was represented by special hardware furnished by the FSB that telecommunication operators were mandated to adopt within their infrastructures. The arguments used in favour of SORM-1 were around maintaining security in the public interest, at a time of considerable unrest in the country.
As information technologies have matured in Russia, so have the technologies utilized by the government to oversee and, where the need arises, tame them. In 1998 a new version of SORM was released (SORM-2). This time it was required that SORM-2 be installed on the servers of Internet service providers, thus providing the FSB with oversight over all transactions passing through these servers.
Subsequently, the scope of SORM-2 was further expanded to encompass monitoring of social networks and forum traffic. All operators were required to integrate this fully at their own cost. In addition, more governmental institutions and security agencies, apart from the FSB, were given leave to exploit the information-gathering-potential of SORM-2 (including the Police, Customs Authorities, Presidential Security Services and others).
In 2014 the most recent version of SORM was deployed pursuant to a ministerial order issued by the Russian Ministry of Communication, with less than a one year deadline imposed for implementation. SORM-3 covers a wider range of online resources and activities, which may be subjected to targeted surveillance. These include, but are not limited to, users’ phone numbers, unique media access control addresses, as well as email addresses accessed from, for instance, mail.ru, yandex.ru, rambler.ru etc.
Notably, SORM-3 resorts to a very comprehensive data processing protocol called Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), in which the content of each piece (packet) of data is thoroughly scrutinized, and rerouted accordingly.
Ordinarily, in order to acquire specific data, the governmental agency in charge requires a court order. But operatives are under no obligation to present this to a raided party. Refusal to divulge data in the absence of a court order will get you nowhere. Moreover, while the court order is required to seize the content, metadata (the description and ancillary context of the data in question) may be collected in its absence.
In 2015 the lawfulness of SORM was raised by the European Court of Human Rights in Zakharov v Russia. The Court held that SORM potentially violates Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (a right to respect for private and family life), concluding that given the significant risk of SORM being misused, the Russian state had failed to provide adequate safeguards to eliminate its potential arbitrariness, as well as failing to arrange for suitable measures to prevent unwarranted scrutiny.
At present, Russia is not the only county introducing far-reaching control of its IT and Telecommunication platforms. Systems that bear resemblance to SORM are already operating in the Europe Union with the European Telecommunications Standard’s Institute’s (ETSI) specifications, and in the United States through the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act.
Although targeted surveillance plays an important role in the prevention of crime, including terrorism, the full scope of governmental surveillance technologies are not clearly defined, either in Russia, or in other countries.
One beauty of the game of golf is the possibility to play it right up until your death. Indeed, many’s the enthusiast who has breathed his last on the fairway. It is often said there are worse ways to go. My own father had the unfortunate experience of attempting to resuscitate a man on the third green in Lahinch, but sadly the cardiac arrest proved too severe. There was general consensus – among his golf brethren at least – that there was no better spot on which to meet your maker.
This brings us to the recent resuscitation in the fortunes of Tiger Woods. The Golfing Gods had created, we thought, a man capable of walking on any water hazard. An unbreakable spirit. His rise through the world rankings spread the gospel of the game, and brought a global following of disciples.
Yet when the burden of carrying the clubs grew too heavy it seemed Golf had killed poor Tiger. Success and the weight of expectation brought behaviour patterns not associated with a ‘heavenly being’. They certainly did not accord with his father Earl’s earlier perception of messianic powers lying in his son. In 1996 he said: ‘The world will be a better place to live in by virtue of his existence. He will bring to the world a humanitarianism. I know I was personally selected by God to nurture this young man’.
This false prophecy from a Father about a Son ended up an unholeable Ghostly mess. Life lived through golf left a man unable to see the Woods for the trees. The Tiger we admired no longer lives. He was crucified, and the game of golf suffered for his sins. Unfortunately the young apostles in his wake could not captivate the masses. Golf’s television ratings were left drowning in a river of Jordan Spieth and co..
However, one beauty of this Life is the possibility of redemption. The list of humans, sporting or otherwise, resurrected from past indiscretions is legion. Tiger has sought forgiveness for being a false idol, and the High Priests and Pharisees of golf and television no longer wash their hands of him. In return they have been rewarded by far more than thirty silver pieces.
On reflection, it is now legitimate to ask whether Tiger has been something of the sacrificial lamb in this story. Perhaps it is really for the rest of us to repent, and seek redemption from our past expression of vitriol and disgust towards him.
Life and Golf sometimes share similar teachings. Humility, respect, and even silence are all part of the learning. The Buddhist in Tiger should appreciate these lessons. When he returns to the garden of Augusta after Easter the predominantly Christian crowd will rise to the occasion and rejoice in his humbled return with respectful applause. The awestruck silence as the game’s saviour rounds Amen Corner once again may confirm that golf’s prayers have been answered.
Moriarty is guide. He is a guide because he went to these places. He let go of his conditioning and walked the earth with a barefoot mind and a barefoot heart. The last pages of Nostos, his autobiography, are written from the paradise he so often refers to. This is not a philosophical concept, it is the reality of the universe, which will lead us away from calamity. I know it is real because I have experienced it.
It is a grave responsibility to sit in judgment particularly in criminal justice matters, and apart from the obligation to sift and evaluate evidence carefully, an obligation always arises to lean over backwards to protect the innocent, or at least to accord them the presumption of innocence.
