Cassandra Voices

Category: Society

  • My England

    Richard Wilson was born in 1931 and has lived all over England. The feature image is of him performing compulsory military service. Further biographic information is provided at the end of the article.

    Richard Wilson in 2010.

    Has any nation, if you can call the English such, a comparable span of excellence and depravity? In a land of contrasts we find unrivaled gardens alongside the most bleak prisons in Europe; a sense of humour so rich, but languishing below other mature democracies in the OECD’s Better Life Index; rampant helpfulness, despite a social structure engineered to enrich those one per cent that own over half of all wealth; a unique health service and loveliest of nurses found anywhere, allied to doctors, half of whom end up being in it for rich rewards, or besieged by drug companies, paperwork and patient overload.

    A pervading kindness too, alas often lost in loveless family contexts, where a controlling, even violent, ideology of child-rearing holds sway. Is it any wonder there are racial tensions in the big cities, and knife attacks rife? Our unparalleled range of pubs are dying out, and being replaced by a culture of binge drinking.

    In England we find phenomenal interest in games – were not most actually invented in the UK? – yet, ironically, there is also a spectacular level of obesity. Similarly, a vast range and number of charity shops, coupled with a fear, hatred in some, of immigrants, the very people charities aim to rescue.

    We enjoy universal education, yet a mere 20% of teachers are rated as outstanding, the rest drown in bureaucracy and test scores, both largely superfluous, in a format almost wholly unsuited to a child’s needs and wishes: being taught rather than learning. Virtually absent from the curriculum is the development of crucial skills for living such as gardening, construction, or meaningful personal development.

    But viewed historically, is twenty-first century England not living through a Golden Age? As recently as the 1930s we could die of hunger, or be cut down in swathes in the 1920s by a flu epidemic that killed thirty million worldwide – three times the number of fatalities as in World War I. Rates of infant and maternal mortality have plummeted, and debilitating childhood illnesses such as polio and tuberculosis have been virtually eliminated. Longevity has soared. No more Wars of the Roses, except on the cricket field.

    The working class, and destitute, of 1900 – when my grandfather Henry Wilson was helping to found a Labour party in Bradford – would gasp at the profusion of supermarkets, the diversity and relative good value of food and drink from all over the world. And when you need reviving you simply jump on a cheap flight to one of hundreds of sunny resorts.

    But place England in its geographical context and shortcomings leap out. Are we not served by some of the most arrogant and conceited politicians in the world? Brexit, where we are opting out of the first ever European political association that has kept war at bay for over seventy years, prompts not apologetic requests as in a mature divorce, but insulting demands from our leaders. Is it any wonder that people in their twenties and thirties are sickened, if not horrified, by their elders?

    So where is the joy in living amongst a divided nation? What may we learn from the Italians who seem to smile perpetually and gloriously; the Spanish and Greeks, infused with gaiety; the Swiss and Germans displaying an exalted thoroughness, the former with a novel form of participatory democracy; the Danes and the Norwegians, with their communal drive to make society work for literally everyone, allied with an environmental conscience – the former now meets its electricity needs entirely with wind energy.

    Further afield we find street violence in Japan is almost unknown; a love of life and laughter in Africa in spite of crippling poverty, wars and disease. In Indian society, the only primarily vegetarian in the world, though not without a violent streak, their whole approach to life is like a meandering river, its waters infused with magical otherness, a continuous stream of yoga, raga music, ashrams and Bollywood! Could another country have thrown up a Krishnamurti or a Sadhguru? He contrived last year to have have fifty million trees planted in a single day.

    So what is it like to live in England today for most people? The answer is a gigantic difference depending on region, whether urban or rural, social class, wealth or lack of it, physical wellbeing and education level. Watch the Michael Caine film ‘Harry Brown’, a dramatic masterpiece, to see just how tough it is to climb out of social deprivation.

    Let us recall another England untouched by industry and ecological distortion. I recall sixty years ago regularly encountering profusions of wild flowers, and wild strawberries; whereas now a twelve mile cycle from the city of Hereford yields a desultory zoo, and a token wayside stretch with eighteen wild flowers from a bygone age. The rest have been obliterated by chemicals and pesticides.

    What is equally disheartening for me is that the English have a genius for complaining, but are oblivious, unwilling or incapable, of acting to reduce our carbon footprint, or protest against the phenomenal desecration over the past fifty years of the land, trees, wild grasses, rivers, and free animals. But how can we win when uncaring, profit-seeking, multinational companies, not governments, rule? The grassroots approach to local government of the town of Preston, may prove inspirational.

    The great enigma is this: are we on the brink of finally shedding the three-hundred-and-fifty-year-old crippling Cromwellian legacy of Puritanism and self-denial, the Victorian hypocrisy allied (still!) to a vicious class divide? When we add into the mix the pervading commercialism unleashed by Thatcher, is it not a tsunami from which we must flee to high ground?

    A Cockney taxi driver once said to me that the English are as corrupt as anyone, but the best at concealing it. When I asked a young Frenchman what he thought of England his quick-fire response was: ‘The basic society is shit, but the counter-culture is great’. He identified all that sustained the royal family as injurious to the body politic.

    But can that counter-culture of rock bands, the three hundred or so annual folk festivals, or innumerable individual acts of kindness, outweigh the structural deficiencies?

    Can we learn from the Irish, who perhaps know the English better even than we know ourselves? There hospitality, poetry and traditional music still seem to count for something, but this has been hard won. Tim Pat Coogan’s Ireland in the 20th Century points out that they have only finally triumphed after three hundred years of often brutal English rule, which created warring factions among themselves.

    This is akin to the personal development of experiencing the suffering that leads to passion, so that finally one can see beauty. I wept when I read of General Lake in the 1790s quelling an uprising with murder and torture. Predictably the Irish retaliated and thirty thousand of them were gunned down, men, women and children: our next-door-neighbours.

    We cannot escape this side of the English character which a Czech friend once described with three adjectives: pitiless, merciless and ruthless.

    Can the richness of Shakespeare’s vision for humanity in tragedy, comedy and histories guide us and make us confront this shameful past? The Dutch scholar Erasmus, on a visit in 1499, writing to a French friend, offers of a glimpse of society at that time. ‘Everywhere you go the girls kiss you on arrival, when you leave and kiss you in between. There is no pleasanter girl than the English.’

    Those small affections endure across time. I meet them regularly as I negotiate a heavily-laden trolley through railway stations. I recall once being at the foot of a stairwell with seconds to spare before my train pulled out of the station, whereupon two men, separately, rushed down the stairs, turned round, grabbed my bags and raced with me to the train. Where else in the world would that happen?

    Reticence is a common trait, but I found, having made a conscious decision to speak to passers-by, this easily dissolves; whilst in the clover of Cornwall, the checkout girls in Tesco chime: ‘there you are my darling’, or ‘my dearest’, or even ‘my dove’. We have the most wonderful possibility to improve these qualities of affection in ourselves. Indeed the English character bears similarities to English food: fundamentally good ingredients but appalling processing.

    Can we reach a point where a restored appreciation for poetry, music and drama culminates in a Shakespeare for our time? Maybe then, not 35%, but 95% will lead fulfilled, colourful lives. But how to sidestep the paradoxical constraints of modern technology? Some of us may choose to be inquisitive nomads, roaming the wide world not the world wide web; refusing to settle for a humdrum semi-d or high rise flat, the ugliness of which must lower the spirit.

    *******

    With the evaporation of the Village Green Society – shop, post office, church-going, pub – is there anything to hold anyone with Sense and Sensibility in England? At the helm, goons like Gove, jokers like Johnson, the darling buddies of May, turn governing into a Molière comedy, or even a Feydeau farce, acted out in an anachronistic building, two sides facing one another in a slanging match, redolent of a school playground, instead of Knights of the Round Table in harmonious dialogue.

    This remarkably animal-loving people recently permitted a road closure above Bath to last six weeks to allow toads their annual hop along their preferred route. Yet hypocrisy runs deep, as most eat animals reared in factory farms, and slaughtered in hideous abattoirs. Where is the compassion and love to create the frequent friendly interaction that still exists in the typical African family hut?

    But what a wealth of humour has emerged in England over the last century, from Wodehouse, Saki, Frank Muir and Dennis Norden, Peter Sellers, John Bird and John Fortune, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore and my favourite comic genius Miles Kington, who wrote over 5000 articles for The Times and The Independent.

    I find it almost unbearable to think of so many being compelled to work at twice their natural pace, and twice as long as their bodies can stand, indoors, encircled by machines, all in the context of an over-regulated and absurd bureaucracy.

    Two outcomes of this are that all of the Health Visitors in one part of a county were absent at one point from stress, while in another, in a Referral School for disturbed children, all the staff bar one became so disturbed that by a certain stage all had experienced nervous breakdown.

    And lest we forget that rough sleeping is on the rise, and the young cannot afford to buy houses, whilst we sell arms to countries with extremely questionable human rights records.

    We now propose constructing a £55.7 billion railway, H2S at a mere £403 million per mile, when there are not enough houses. Its name is the same as H2S, the chemical formula for Hydrogen Sulphide, commonly known as rotten egg gas.

    The final crazy contrast is that a glorious diversity of races should be married to a ruthless murder of plant diversity. The only remedy is to stay insanely positive, and unshakably optimistic that the rising generation will triumph and take us down ‘the road less travelled and that will make all the difference’.

    Richard Wilson was born in 1931 and grew up in Yorkshire, Oxford and Malaysia where his father was a colonial official. He spent most of World War II in Australia, along with his mother, brother and sister, while his father was interned by the Japanese. Returning to England afterwards he completed his secondary education in Rugby School, where he developed an enduring affection for the oval-balled game. After compulsory military service he read history at Brasenose College, Oxford, before embarking on a career in the music industry, first with EMI. Later he opened his own record shop in Exeter, the Left Bank, which became the most successful independently-owned such store in the country, renowned for its selection of Classical music. In the 1970s he moved to Hereford, where he spent ten years running another record shop, and in the ensuing thirty organised over fifty concerts featuring world class musicians, seven of them a complete cycle of Beethoven piano sonatas. He recently moved to Cornwall in the South-West of England, but is currently wintering in the French Alps where he indulges an enduring passion for the piste. He has never been on an airplane in his life, but manages to make regular visits, using overland conveyance, to his extended family which includes two great-grandsons and a wide circle of friends in Britain, Ireland and Czech Republic.

    English Nature at Peace in my Youth

    Remember, remember
    The first of September
    The sky, the wind, the rain
    Knew season had to chain

    Its heart, its soul, its breath
    To change from August warmth
    Let leaves go yellow brown
    Ripe corn gently cut down

    Bliss, bliss Ode to Autumn
    Sure as farewell to sun
    The sun that browned, not burn
    The skin of child who’d learned

    To race along the sand
    On edge of sea, dance grand
    With golden hair that gleamed
    Oh smile of joy which dreamed

    No thought of wanton harm
    That would destroy the charm
    Of settled Nature’s ways
    Through man’s thoughtless mad craze

    For wealth, for change that lost
    Ironically, what meant most
    To man’s inward calm growth
    From war, hurt, greed and sloth

    The heart cries out why, why?
    Can we not cling to sky
    Of blue, not grey, of love
    That makes each man a dove

  • A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Life

    Harry Gleeson was wrongfully hanged for the murder of Moll McCarthy in 1941, and fully exonerated in 2015 after the case was re-investigated by the Innocence Project in Ireland.[i] Gleeson was framed by the police, with the collusion of elected representatives, for the murder of Moll McCarthy, by reputation a ‘lady of the night.’

    There followed what amounted to a show trial in which the judge and prosecution barrister concealed evidence, and conducted proceedings in a wholly inappropriate manner. On the eve of his execution Gleeson met his junior counsel Seán MacBride who, expecting an admission of guilt, instead was confronted with an assertion of innocence and plea that one day his name should be cleared.

    McBride was moved, and thereafter, having served as Minister for External Affairs between 1948 and 1951, campaigned against the death penalty. He was instrumental in setting up Amnesty International, for which he ultimately received the Nobel and Lenin peace prizes.

    Sean MacBride in 1986

    That case betrays the closed nature of Irish society in the 1940s. But with pervasive patterns of corruption, apparent state criminality, including targeting of individuals, can we say governance today has improved? The late Supreme Court Justice Adrian Hardiman gave a disturbing account of the conduct of ‘the force publique’ over the past number of years in his dissenting judgment in DPP v JC (2015)[ii], citing a former President of the High Court to the effect that ‘proper discipline has been lost from An Garda Síochána.’

    If anything, state-sponsored illegality may be worse than ever. Recently our police force, perhaps in collusion of Tulsa and the Department of Justice, subjected an innocent man, Garda Maurice McCabe, who was perceived as a threat, dissident or whistleblower, to an horrendous allegation of child sex abuse.

    Rather than being pensioned-off, high-ranking Gardaí and their lawyers, should be brought before a court capable of identifying a new species of crime, as occurred at Nuremberg after World War II. Framing people for abuse or murder is no ordinary offence, but amounts to a Crime against Humanity by agents of the state, a breach of an obligation ergo omnes, offending fundamental principles of Natural Law, and universal human rights.

    The crucial point about framing people for sex abuse, or indeed state-sponsored murder, is that it fatally undermines the integrity of the justice system. When the gatekeepers are themselves criminal, as was the case in Nazi Germany, or in Serbia under Milosevic, it erodes trust in government, and any sentencing should take into account this profoundly aggravating factor.

    Nuremberg Trials, 1946. Crimes Against Humanity.

    Radbruch’s formula

    In this context, it is notable (in Streletz v Krenz ECtHR, 2001[iii]) that East German Border Guards were retroactively convicted for shooting people as they escaped over the Berlin Wall; even though, at that stage, they could argue that they were merely complying with commands.

    The German Constitutional Court and indeed the European Court of Human Rights utilised the great anti-Nazi German jurist Gustav Radbruch’s formula that positive law must always yield to fundamental principles of morality. Any law compelling servants of the state to shoot fellow citizens – in circumstances where clear threats to public safety are absent – does not comply with fundamental principles of justice.

    The defence of following orders, which the Nazi official Adolf Eichmann had offered at his trial in Tel Aviv in 1961, is not available. Evil is evil, no less so for being the banal plea of a bean counter that he was merely putting people on trains. Perhaps we may one day also hear: ‘I was only doing my job working for Goldman Sachs.’

    Kenya

    In Kenya, my client Mr. Kimani has been on death row for seventeen years. While still a teenager he was caught on the same bus as where a brutal crime was being committed. Thereafter, he stopped at a restaurant and was arrested, brutalised and charged.

    During the ensuing trial he was provided with sub-standard representation (too mildly referred to as ‘ineffective assistance of counsel’) and, despite no meaningful evidence, the judge directed a decision of guilt, violating the presumption of innocence, which Lord Sankey described as ‘the golden thread of the common law’, in Woolmington v. D.P.P (UKHL, 1935). Thus his youth has bee snatched away after seventeen years on death row, prior to the ongoing intervention of the Innocence Project.

    My involvement came about after Elizabeth Kimani, a former student, visited me in Griffith College, where I taught at the time. She had just returned from Kenya, after a break of many years, where she had attended her sister’s funeral. There she discovered her nephew’s plight. She requested my assistance, and I consented after some deliberation. This resulted in a trip to Kenya accompanied by Michael Gallagher, a student caseworker, to present submissions to the then recently constituted Committee of Mercy in Nairobi, under the elegantly named, but dubiously relevant Power of Mercy Act, 2011.

    Nairobi, Kenya

    I arrived in Nairobi with a degree of trepidation, having heard it is the seventh most dangerous city on Earth. Thankfully, I was greeted by a waiting guide, who provided an armed guard and armour-plated vehicle to chaperone us through teeming streets to the secure sanctuary of the Stevroy Stanly Hotel. There followed a pause for breath, a quick shower, and then another three hour journey through the Rift Valley to Naivasha prison, perhaps the most hostile prison in all of Africa.

    When Michael and I arrived we were kept waiting for another three hours before the scheduled meeting with the Committee of Mercy took place in a small dark waiting area. It was no more than the size of a large kitchen, and contained at least ten prison guards in combat uniforms, who floated in and out with sub machine guns poised for action. At the end of what I think a not accidental ordeal, the hearing, which again took over three hours, was conducted in a packed room in circumstances of polite formality, but underlying hostility.

    The runes and smoke signals of an altogether different culture are difficult to interpret, but age and professionalism masked my nervousness. I proceeded to point out the utter improbability of my client having any involvement in the crime, with the aid of a clearly traumatised but remarkably articulate client, who despite being downtrodden was secure in his plea of innocence.

    Second Visit

    Circumstances beyond my control compelled a return flight the following day, but a second appearance over the summer was finally agreed. The issues of the original case were re-ventilated, including victim impact reports. The relatives of the crime were also allowed to express their distress, which had no bearing at all on the guilt or innocence of my client.

    Long hours passed before I requested a break for coffee and a cigarette: ‘Of course sir, please come this way’, I was told. I was then led through security checkpoints down from the sixth floor we were on, and driven half a mile up the road to the top floor of another building, where a dusty annex of a bar served as a smoking area.

    President Kenyatta had in fact banned smoking in all public places in Kenya and, I was informed by a senior government official that two American tourists had actually been arrested for lighting up in a public building the previous day. At the time the social impact of the crime of smoking in a public building seemed almost humorous to me by comparison with the distortion of justice inflicted on Mr Kimani.

    After this diversion, the Committee of Mercy asked me to draft a supplemental set of submissions, addressing a section that had not attracted attention. It enquired, notwithstanding my client’s innocence, whether he could fend for himself on the outside. This reflects recent trends in the administration of justice, symptomatic of a neo-liberal tendency to apportion human rights according to economic status, an evolution in the direction of homo economicus, on which more later.

    Since then there has been silence out of Kenya: reconstituted committees, dithering, managing of the message and now a power vacuum, during which Kenya has had no government, after an invalidated election. The fate of Mr. Kenyatta and his government, and by extension Mr. Kimani, hangs in the balance. So I await the long deferred outcome, more in hope than expectation.

    Born Free

    Thereafter I took a brief safari to see what wild animals survive, and encountered the wonderful Lake Naivasha. I also visited the former house of the writer of Born Free, Joy Adamson, and her husband, both of whom had been murdered by local vigilantes for their outspoken views. On both trips an informative guide issued a series of coded warnings.

    That very day, he said, the country’s most prominent human rights lawyer had been murdered at the behest of the government. He warned that our activities had attracted their attention too, and our movements were being monitored, a situation not altogether unfamiliar to me in Ireland. Aside from the pleasure of discovering the National Museum, and a truly fabulous flea market, it was with some relief that I boarded my plane out of the country, landing in another country with a Third World legal system: Ireland.

    Flying back, I was deeply unsettled by the outrage perpetrated on Mr Kimani, and the sinister weighing of his life post-release in terms of his economic status. I also dwelt on the murder of the human rights lawyer, and the desperate plight of wildlife, which constitutes ecocide. A light bulb went off in my mind, as I saw a common systemic source for all this injustice.

    I consider Goldman Sachs, along with certain other multinational corporations to be war criminals, as they have perpetrated Crimes Against Humanity and universal breaches, ergo omnes, of economicide and ecocide. Ruthless economic exploitation and environmental destruction work hand in hand. So let us convene a virtual reality Nuremberg hearing, a new International Criminal Court directed against the corporate criminals of the New World Order.

    It must remain a virtual for the moment as the perpetrators now manipulate the machinery of the state, but the wheels of justice keep on turning. Our Earth is in constant motion too, but humanity is playing its final rounds on a doomsday roulette wheel.

    Corporate criminals who design and profit from the excesses of human exploitation should be brought before international tribunals, along with those who would callously consign people to fend for themselves after unlawful incarcerations. At least, with the help of the Innocence Project in the US, after his exoneration Sunny Jacobs secured a measure of compensation, allowing her to open the Sunny Jacobs Centre on the not altogether sunny west coast of Ireland.

    Meanwhile, as U.S. Republicans luxuriate in destroying the welfare and administrative state, and a plutocracy attempts to secede from humanity, building safe havens against Climate Change, and boltholes in distant outposts, Mr. Kimani sees his life ebb away in the worst prison in Africa. We must hope the Committee of Mercy reconvenes quickly, and at least the stain of that singular injustice will be washed away, as, to quote Shakespeare’s Portia.

    Shakespeare’s Portia.

    The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
    It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
    Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
    It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
    ‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
    The throned monarch better than his crown;
    His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
    The attribute to awe and majesty,
    Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
    But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
    It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
    It is an attribute to God Himself;
    (The Merchant of Venice, Act 4, Scene 1)

    At the same time we demand a broader interpretation of justice, with humanity on the brink of extinction: at current rates of degradation to top soil we have sixty years of agriculture remaining.[iv]

    As three-term former U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) put it: ‘A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.’[v] We require a new Nuremberg for Crimes Against Humanity and Nature, evolving our understanding of mercy and justice, “above this sceptred sway.”

    Crimes Against Humanity

    I recently visited Chartwell House, once the permanent residence of perhaps the greatest politician to have ever lived: Winston Churchill. To paint him as a latter-day saint would be wide of the mark, but to a large extent it was his conviction that Nazism was a distinct barbarism that ultimately led to the Nuremberg trials.

    In the wilderness years before World War II he was indeed a Cassandra voice. But any rush to judgment of our latter-day war criminals must be tempered with deliberation, thereby avoiding Herman Goering‘s charge at Nuremberg that ‘the victor will always be the judge and the vanquished the accused.’[vi]

    In Roy Jenkin’s view Winston Churchill was the greatest prime minister of Britain, and I would concur. But tell that to soldiers annihilated at Gallipoli or civilians firebombed in Dresden. He too was directly or indirectly implicated in Crimes against Humanity.

    It tends to be the little people who suffer, and away from abstract theorising, I will continue to lobby for the release of Mr Kimani. But let us still convene an International War Crimes Tribunal of the righteous holding to account corporate criminals, who endeavour to secede from the rest of humanity by retreating into gated enclosures.

    An indictment can proceed from their own memoirs, as such characters are generally shameless. Let them bear witness to their depredations, and let us signal to posterity our opposition to their infamy, for as the Czech novelist Milan Kundera attested the loss a historical memory involves a failure to confront tyranny.

    By drawing attention to their criminality, future generations may adapt, before it is too late for the natural world, and perhaps the likes of Mr Kimani may yet be welcomed back into society. Alas it is too late for Harry Gleeson, but at least he now may rest more peacefully.

    [i] Erin McGuire, ‘How Harry Gleeson was wrongly hanged for murder in 1941’, Irish Times, 6th of April, 2015, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/how-harry-gleeson-was-wrongly-hanged-for-murder-in-1941-1.2165731, accessed 22/11/18.

    [ii] DPP v JC, Judgment by Hardiman J., [2015] IESC 31, http://courts.ie/Judgments.nsf/bce24a8184816f1580256ef30048ca50/285b25317187412480257e280050f5b4?OpenDocument, accessed 22/11/18.

    [iii] Streletz, Kessler and Krenz v. Germany, ECtHR, 2001, http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-59353, accessed 22/11/18.

    [iv] Chris Arsenault, ‘Only 60 Years of Farming Left If Soil Degradation Continues’, Scientific American, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-farming-left-if-soil-degradation-continues/, accessed 14/11/18.

    [v] Untitled, ‘11 Forest Facts and Quotes to Tweet or Share’, April 20th, 2015, Worldwide Fund for Nature,  https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/11-forest-facts-and-quotes-to-tweet-or-share, accessed 22/11/18.

    [vi] Gary Jonathan Bass, ‘Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals’, October 29th, 2000, The New York Times, https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/bass-vengeance.html, accessed 22/11/18.

  • A Decision to Emigrate

    I quit. I had wanted to say those words for a long me and that day they arrived. Leaving a job during the Irish recession, being mum to three children under six and having a husband who worked for himself – circumstances were such that it was neither the easiest move nor possibly the wisest decision to make. But I made it.

    I texted my husband saying what I had done. ‘Great!’ was his reply.

    That evening I put Yazz, ‘The Only Way Is Up’ into the Spotify search bar and turned it up loud.

    Over the following two months, we decided to move to Oslo, Norway. The main reason we decided to leave Ireland was economic. Before leaving my job we had applied for a mortgage for a simple property in a rural town in the West. We were turned down. Our housing options seemed small and not very inviting. To stay in mediocre rented accommodation, paying more in rent than we would have been paying for a mortgage did not make good sense. I felt stuck; we were paying high taxes and yet my son went to school in a dingy prefab, playing on the tarmac during the lunch break with not even a swing in sight let alone a playground. The school property was surrounded by barbed wire. Poor quality and very expensive childcare was a constant topic of conversation and anxiety between parents with young children; we had an employment system which made it near impossible to place the care of your family first. This low quality of family life all fed into the decision to leave our homeland.

    I was brought up to be proud of Ireland, and yet I felt the needs of my young family – the future generation of Ireland – were being ignored. They weren’t even being given serious thought, let alone priority. As parents, we bring up our children to be purposeful, clever and compassionate citizens, yet in our case, Ireland won’t reap the benefits of these good souls.

    Ireland was not able to hold us. She lost us. And not just us, but so many more. Figures show that at the time that we left for Norway, summer 2013, ten people an hour were emigrating – that is one thousand Irish citizens per week leaving the country.

    Until I was one of those people who had decided to leave I had no idea what a challenging decision it was to make. Nobody can know until they do it themselves.

    Deciding on where to go came easily enough to us; Norway made sense as we have good friends there and, thankfully, the country’s economy was booming. Plus, it is only a two-hour flight from Ireland, so the distance wasn’t too daunting.

    ‘I became an expert in car boot sales’

    Our move relied on getting rid of as many possessions as possible. When we had edited our life, we were left with a stack of cardboard boxes on 2 pallets – that was all our budget could allow. We rang around transport companies to see who could give us the best deal and most importantly, whether they delivered to Oslo.

    To edit one’s life means getting very familiar with car boot sales, Buy and Sell, Facebook and learning how to stage backyard book sales. All of those things I had held on to over the years were fair game. This included the the kitchen table, a treasured gift from an old family friend. That piece of furniture I bathed my three babies on is now in a coffee shop in Athlone. I sold vintage typewriters, writing desks, my great aunt’s wedding dress; anything that was no use to us in our new life didn’t make the cut to get on the pallet.

    Each Sunday on the run up to our departure my mum and I were to be found at the Carrick-on-Shannon car boot sale. We would pack the car to the brim the night before, make a flask of tea and head off at the crack of dawn to ensure a good place, one where you would get the most footfall.

    I became a pro at selling and sealing the deal, but it took a while. At first an array of emotions came up:. Did I look desperate? Had it come to this, trying to get at least a tenner for my 5-year-old’s bike? We decided that all of the money we made would go towards our petrol. We would drive from Carrick-on-Shannon to Oslo. We’d put the children in the back, the dog in the boot and off we would go: Wales, England, France, Belgium, Germany, Denmark and finally the ferry across to Oslo.

    Claire and husband Gordon Ryan with their three children

    I became a natural at the car boot sales. I remember the people I met: the Latvian father of the toddler who got our children’s entire DVD collection for five euro. The wheeler-dealer guy who craftily whittled me down to a bargain price for a never-used picnic basket straight from Avoca. The fastidious grandmother who denied herself a hand-woven lace tablecloth for fear that the guests would notice the stain in the corner. The old farmer who examined a pair of black leather shoes that I’d bought in a panic on the way to a family wedding. He looked at the soles, holding them away from himself for a better view until finally he said ‘I’ll give you a fiver’ … ‘Done’, I said! I wonder, to which special occasions in his life has he has worn them? Will he be buried in the pair of shoes he bought from me at the Carrick on Shannon car boot sale?

    The day came to leave, but on waking we still had 2 futons, our own handmade double bed frame and a drying machine to get rid of. A post or two on Facebook and by that afternoon all was gone.

    As well as stuffing our Volvo to the brim with clothes for a family of five to last us the journey, our beloved 9-year-old springer spaniel Sage Huxley needed space. She had her passport and all the necessary vaccinations. It broke my heart when my mum looked at us all and said, you cannot bring her with you. The fact was there was simply no room for her. I knew my Mum was right. The memory of saying goodbye to Sage, not sure of when we would see her again, can still bring me to tears. My Mum and Dad looked after her with such enthusiasm and grace that I will be forever grateful.

    Our families waved us off from the pier at Dun Laoghaire harbour. The sun was high; it was a stunningly beautiful July day. Looking back I see how I was very much in coping mode, staying focused on the tasks at hand. I did not cry until my Dad pressed 50 euro into my hand and said ‘Get yourself something nice on the ferry’.

    Settled above on deck, an older lady struck up a conversation with my six-year son asking him where he was going. ‘We are emigrating’, he told her. And there it was. As the Stena Line ferry pulled out of the harbour and our parents stood to wave us off, we emigrated.

    We drove for thousands of miles. I say ‘we’ but it was my husband driving while I sat shotgun. My visual was mostly fast-travelling juggernauts loaded with metal freight containers overtaking us on four-lane motorways. I would hold my breath and pray – all I could do was pray. Passing through Northern Germany huge industrial landscapes crowded the view, the inner sanctum of our Volvo the reverse of what was going by our window. We listened to Danny the Champion of the World on the car CD player, the children chattering away in the back. There we were, our family car keeping up at the breakneck speed expected on those roads, listening to the sweet tones of the narrator, a pocket of our familiar life traveling away from all that we had known as home.

    A well earned coffee for the journey

    After overnights in England, Belgium and Germany we made it through Denmark in a day. We woke that morning in Hamburg and Gordon said ‘I want to get this done today. I want to be in Oslo tonight.’ I looked at the map and thought he was crazy but could see he had decided. Gordon had his first motorbike at 14; he is well-used to road trips. During our courtship we rode his BMW R60 from Leitrim to Granada, Spain travelling through the winter, a journey that I remember fondly. That morning in Hamburg as he went to check the car and get ready for the journey, I knew there was no arguing, I knew that, God-willing, we would make Oslo by the following morning.

    We arrived in Northern Denmark and took the ferry to Southern Norway. On the ferry, we found a spot to sleep. Exhausted, the three children and my man promptly fell asleep. I remember that evening with clarity; I was not sleepy: tired yes, but not sleepy. I cozied my brood and kept watch on that ferry crossing. I had recently read Star of the Sea by Joseph O’ Connor and my heart now turned to those poor souls who had also left their homeland in search of a better life. We were in an incomparably better situation, but I felt that I could empathise, knowing now what it is like to feel it necessary to leave your homeland, finding that your dreams were not to be brought to fruition there.

    New activities

    For the first time during the journey, I let my mind reflect. Apprehensive thoughts came quickly. My children would grow up Norwegian; they would not know their grandparents in the way that their cousins would. The place they would call home would be different from mine. Before now these were everyday expectations that I had taken for granted. One big fear of my own was to do with the landscape. My Dad being a forester meant I had grown up being told that all of the forests of Ireland were mine. What a fabulous gift to bestow upon a child and thus I had always felt very at home in the woods, in the countryside. Irish land was my land, I recognized her landscape, her trees, her plants, her animals. She was my solace. I was nervous that on moving to Norway this familiarity with the landscape would disappear. This frightened me. I remember Googling to see if Norway had Hawthorn trees.

    As we disembarked from the hull of the ferry, a huge electrical storm blew in. The sky crackled and flashed, and I tried to see it as a good omen, a display of the wonderful energy and celebration we would find in our newly chosen land. Leaving the port behind, we saw our first road sign for Oslo – 250km away.

    The children settled into sleep again, Gordon and I enjoyed the aftermath of the storm. Our music for that part of the journey was Daft Punk; their words from ‘Get Lucky’: ‘we have come too far to give up who we are so let’s raise the bar’, kept my spirits in form.

    We made Oslo at sunrise, pulled the car in upon a hill that overlooks the outskirts of the city. We got out and gazed. We held each other’s hands tightly. There it was: the city of Oslo that was to be our new place to call home.

    Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’

    Claire McAree lives in Oslo with her husband, three children and their seven-month-old Springer Spaniel, Blue Huxley. Claire has been producing cultural events, including Irrgønn literature festival, as well as curating Future Library. She currently manages new product development at Expology, an experience design studio based in Oslo and Stockholm.

  • In the Eye of the Storm

    Breathe. Focus. It’s the biggest rapid I’ve ever run. I’ve spent half an hour scouting and visualising the perfect line. I’m as fit and sharp as I’ll ever be. Still the doubts enter my head. Why am I even doing this? The adrenaline has made me feel nauseous, and I try not think of the consequences.

    Everything has been checked and double-checked.  I splash water on my face and launch my kayak into the river. Two or three strokes and I’m committed. Then it flows. The fear stops. Everything is in fine focus, each stroke in high definition. The thinking mind stops: in its place comes complete presence in the moment. Everything happens in slow motion. I find the perfect line and, at the bottom, elation.

    I’ve been trying to write these words for nearly two years now. It is hard to write when you know what you want to say runs against the current. I’m thirty-nine, and the days when adrenaline and risk ruled my life seem from another lifetime.

    For a decade, pushing my limits on Class 5 whitewater was what I lived for. I spent two seasons as a river guide on the Zambezi river in Africa in the late 90s, at a time when the sport being revolutionised.

    For a decade I chased my dream around the world, pushing my personal limits. I took more than my fair share of risks. I kayaked with many of the best in the world at the time, did exploratory first descents and participated in expeditions to Iran, the Indus in the Himalayas and Blue Nile.

    The line between the best day ever and the worst is a thin one, and is one I came to know only too well.

    That stage of my life ended about ten years ago, and since then I have taken a different path, embracing meditation and yoga, even though the river still calls me.

    II

    You never feel so alive as when you are close to death. Time and again I would hear the same refrain from friends, all around the world, that ‘kayaking makes me feel alive’. It does make you feel alive, that beautiful flow state connection when time stops, the conscious mind is stilled, and you move into an higher state of awareness, totally present in the moment. The river saved me at times when everyday life seemed just too mundane, confusing or painful.

    In twenty-five years of whitewater kayaking I have lost many friends to the river. I would like to say they made worse decisions than I did, but in reality, it probably came down to luck.  Where once I only saw the incredible life-affirming power of adventure, I now see the consequences. You can’t teach wisdom, it only comes from experience, but this is the story of how my perspective on risk has evolved.

    My experiences with death affected me deeply. These are names of friends who died on the river, great life affirming people with so much life to live: Dugald Fox Wilson, the warrior Scot and Zambezi legend, who drowned in his kayak on a raging Futaleufu river in Chile in 2003. Hendri Coetzee, the great African explorer, killed by a crocodile on a tributary of the Congo in 2010. My young friend Shane Murphy who was knocked unconscious and drowned while pushing his limits on one of Ireland’s harder rivers in flood in 2014.

    Dugald Fox Wilson

    The toughest loss of all to bear was of my friend and student Conor, who drowned while in my care in a freak entrapment on an easy stretch of the Soca river in Slovenia in 2015. Despite our very best efforts we could not get him out in time.

    I remember with a sickness in the base of my stomach that worst day of my life. Everything again was in perfect focus and high definition, but this time no elation, only despair. Time slowed down. It was like being in an intense, slow-motion nightmare that I couldn’t wake from. Even now, three years on, the memory is crystal clear, etched into my mind.

    The sun shone that beautiful alpine spring day on our frantic, increasingly desperate, effort to free Conor from the tree. His arm was trapped, and head barely submerged: a foreboding of tragedy as the seconds ticked by, the rational mind knowing it was too late. The hopeless feeling of doing CPR for real. The years of training and experience kicking in, keeping calm. Autopilot. Looking after everyone else. The detached objective voice in my head saying ‘I never thought this would happen to me’.

    The terrible logistics of tragedy. Talking to the local police. The air of suspicion. No one wanting to look you in the eye. The unbearable call to Conor’s parents to tell them he was dead. On a trip I was responsible for. The stunned silence at the end of the line. Hearing the hearts break. Nothing can prepare you for that.

    Then the aftermath. Seeing how trauma affects people in different ways. The fear, anger, anxiety, depression. Looking after everyone but yourself will catch up with you eventually.

    I remember too, as much as I try to forget, the chaos and uncertainty of that grim July day in 2007 as we searched the swollen Sjoa river in Norway for the bodies of two Russian rafters and six survivors strewn over miles of flooded river. Victims of bad decision-making and perhaps a cultural machismo towards death. I remember sharing a beer with them around the campsite the night before, all smiles and everyone feeling so alive.

    Ian Beecroft. Niamh Tompkins. Dee Conroy. Brennan Guth. Chris Wheeler. Colm Johnson. Louise Jull. Juan Antonio de Ugarte. Gary Manwaring. Gavin Winsborrow. These are names of some of the acquaintances or friend’s of friends who have drowned on the river over the last twenty years. I could name many more. Often on rivers I had paddled. More often than not, their fate was down to bad luck rather than poor decisions.

    Their tragic demises shared over a late night phonecall, or email, or a social media posting of devastation and loss. Each of their deaths affected me, even those I had never met. The trauma of their loss is like a nuclear explosion to family, close friends and those who witnessed them drown, but the effects ripple around the world.

    Each name does not tell the nightmare of the recovery of the body – where it was even possible – and the challenge of repatriation from remote corners of the globe.

    III

    Death challenges all your preconceptions. I struggled to get back on the river. I would ask myself: what for? I remembered W.B. Yeats’s poem ‘An Irish Airman Foresees his Death’, about a First World War fighter pilot

    I know that I shall meet my fate,
    somewhere among the clouds above  
    Those that I fight I do not hate
    Those that I guard I do not love…
    A lonely impulse of delight
    Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
    I balanced all, brought all to mind,
    The years to come seemed waste of breath,
    A waste of breath the years behind
    In balance with this life, this death

    I do not subscribe to that fatalistic view of life, but I understand it.

    I now know that there is too much to lose. Sigmund Freud, in ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’, refers to thanatos, the death instinct, competing with eros, the instinct for survival. Thanatos drives us to destructive and risky behaviour. ‘The goal of all life is death’, he famously said.

    Agree with him or not, many people at the extreme end of the adventure sports spectrum hold a certain fascination with death. Close encounters with mortality can be very life-affirming. Extreme sports can offer an escape from what is mundane or challenging in ‘real’ life

    Dr. Gabor Mate, who has twenty years of experience working with addicts in Vancouver’s downtown Eastside,  defines addiction as ‘any behaviours in which the individual finds temporary relief or pleasure in –  and craves for that reason, despite negative consequences’. For most people, adventure sports offer a positive and life-affirming outlet, which brings joy into their lives. For some, however, the motivations can become unhealthy and self-destructive.

    I can’t help wondering how different the narrative would be if any of my deceased friends had died from alcohol or drugs. That is not so say any of them were addicted to risk or adrenaline. Most were just unlucky. Some were well within their comfort zone. But a few took risk-taking to extremes.

    IV

    As someone who has worked for 15 years in outdoor education I am very familiar with the personal growth and development that comes from people testing their limits in nature. Crossing the threshold and leaving your comfort zone should be encouraged. The psychological urge for the hero’s (or heroine’s) journey to explore the limits of the known world is as old as mythology itself, as Joseph Campbell pointed out in his Hero of a Thousand Faces.

    Andy Phillips and Benji Hjort on the Teigdalen in Norway, 2005

    Finding your edge is a challenging process often accompanied by fear and anxiety. There is often no edge without an element of fear. In my experience the greater the fear before a new challenge, the greater the learning and reward on the other side.

    The ability to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy fear is of vital importance for anyone involved in adventure sports. Since Galloway came up with the concept in ‘Inner Skiing’ back in the 1970s, sports psychologists have distinguished between healthy legitimate fear that protects us from bodily harm, and unhealthy imagined fear that is really holding us back. In reality the line between the two can sometimes be blurred.

    The paradox is that extreme risk-taking, while often vilified in a modern risk-averse society, is also glorified. In the age of the GoPro hero who earns a living by social media presence, risk-taking is taken to further and further extremes. The current generation of adventure sports athletes have taken both skill levels, and risk-taking, to new levels.

    Each new generation attempts to build on and surpass the achievements of those that came before. The problem is that social status among young kayakers is often based on how hard you can go on the river. Is it possible to separate personal development through adventure, from ego based or unhealthy decision-making?

    Norway, 2005

    Yvon Chouinard, the founder of  the outdoor clothing brand Patagonia, who was influenced by Zen philosophy, had this to say about the upper echelon of adventure sports: ‘I’ve always thought of myself as an 80 per center. I like to throw myself passionately into a sport or activity until I reach about an 80 percent proficiency level. To go beyond that requires an obsession that doesn’t appeal to me’.

    The problem for the current generation is that, in the pursuit of new challenges, they embrace more and more risk. I discussed this recently with my old kayaking friend Steve Rogers in British Columbia. In our early twenties Steve and I worked as kayak guides on the Coruh river in Eastern Turkey. In that wild and free time we took many risks we were lucky to get away with.

    Since then Steve has been a fixture on the British Columbia kayak scene, as well as being for a time the official photographer for Whistler/ Blackcombe ski resort. This has given him a unique vantage, in that not only had he known many generations of the world’s best kayakers, he also personally knew some of the world’s top extreme sports athletes in skiing, climbing and base jumping. All is not as well as it seems in the world of elite extreme sports.

    British Columbia, 2004

    Steve’s take on risk is interesting. Our generation of whitewater kayakers, he said, still had plenty of new rivers to explore. For that reason, it attracted a certain rebellious and free-spirited type, who were interested in exploring rivers in remote locations. We were the last pioneers on many rivers in the early years of the new millennium, before the advent of mass hydro projects and Google maps lessened the opportunities to explore the unknown.

    My own first descents in Iran and northern Norway remain peak life experiences. The feeling of literally paddling into the unknown is something I’ll never forget. Taking risks triggers dopamine release. It feels good. Really good.

    For the current generation, there are fewer and fewer unrun challenges. So instead of seeking the geographical unknown they mostly push the boundaries by going more and more extreme. The new challenge is to run a river at its highest level, or faster than ever before. This, of course, hugely increases the risk.

    I certainly admire their skill: doing multiple laps of formidable whitewater runs in record times on former test pieces like the Stikine, the minus Rapids on the Zambezi, or the Rondu gorges of the Indus, are awesome technical, physical and mental feats.

    My generation ran those rivers too, sometimes at huge flows. But the difference now is the frequency. Those were once in a lifetime experiences for the kayakers involved. Now these river get run at record flows, more often and faster than ever before.

    Social media plays a part too. We generally see highly talented athletes, at the peak of their powers having a good day, making very dangerous things look easy. Less often do we see the crashes and near misses.

    Both Steve and I felt lucky to have gone through our peak years of crazy before the arrival of the GoPro camera and social media. As young men and women we all need to test ourselves as a rite of passage. In the past, manhood was proved by courage in the hunt or on the battlefield. What are our modern day rites of passage?

    A pioneer of adventure education in the UK, Colin Mortlock, has long championed the personal growth inherent in the adventure experience:

    ‘Thirty years of experience with adventure in the outdoors has convinced me, that not only is there an instinct for adventure in the human race, but that failure to provide a suitable outlet for this instinct in the younger generation, has made a marked contribution to the sickness of western living’.

    He identifies the potential lessons when things go wrong, saying ‘the misadventure experience can be a most valuable teacher. Nature teaches in a much more powerful way than a human teacher.’ However, he balances this with the argument that the goal of adventure is not fame or glory, but self-awareness and humility.

    V

    As a recently graduated psychotherapist I have witnessed the mental health challenges from depression to PTSD among adventure sports athletes, as they readjust to a less extreme life. It was only when a caring, wide-eyed Canadian girl asked me, after I had tried to surf a notoriously dangerous Mexican beach break at night after way too much mescal: ‘do you have post-traumatic stress disorder’, that I realised I too might have a problem.

    My own transition out of kayaking was difficult. It had been my life and identity for over a decade. I still kayak frequently, and sometimes challenge myself, but now I enjoy much more just being on the water with my friends, or simply being in nature. A few years ago I solo circumnavigated Ireland by seakayak, an experience that held its fair share of hazards, as anyone familiar with the power of the north Atlantic will attest. But as I grow older an egotistic desire for status and recognition has been displaced.

    That is not to say it has disappeared, for the ego is a many-headed hydra. You think you have chopped it off, then it re-appears in another form. But the difference is that I now kayak for myself. I don’t have anything to prove to myself, or anyone else. I have a few photos and a video from my Irish voyage, for myself, not for social media. It was the best trip of my life.

    Solo seakayaking around Ireland, 2014

    If you push your limits for long enough, you’ll eventually find them. I encountered mine in 2007 on an ill-advised descent of Amot Gorge on the Sjoa river in Norway in raging flood. I came within seconds of blacking out and drowning. The river was way too high, too much water compressed into too narrow a gap with nowhere to go but back on itself.

    Only luck saved me that day, a roll of the dice, a surge of the river and I too would have joined my friends who died on the river. But I lived. The experience humbled me.

    The river taught me everything I know. Eventually even the hard lessons of humility and respect.

    Much as I’d like to say otherwise the fact I am still here, and some of my friends are not, is down to luck. I’d say if they are honest with themselves most of my generation who pushed their limits in adventure sports would say the same. We all had times when we lost control. Whitewater is surprisingly forgiving, until one day it’s not.

    VI

    It is much harder to see the beauty in the everyday. To seek for what great minds of East and West call the middle way, a path of moderation avoiding extremes. Aristotle called this the ‘golden mean’, and Buddha the ‘middle way’. The tale of Icarus who flew too close to the sun reminds us of the perils of excessive risk-taking.

    Our culture rewards being the best, the first, the greatest. People are often conditioned to measure their self-worth against what they achieve, rather than finding an intrinsic value in being themselves. In the testosterone-heavy-environment of my early twenties on the Zambezi, status came from skill levels and courage. I have learnt since then that it is better, and wiser, to value a person for who they are and how they treat others.

    Who cares how good a kayaker/ surfer/skier you are if in your personal life you leave a trail of destruction behind you? After my river years, I ended up living on Maui, Hawaii, the world centre of big wave surfing. My friends there who had firsthand experience with the Mavericks and Peahi scene told me of the dysfunctional personal lives of some of the big wave surfers. On the flat days many turned to drugs to fill the void. I heard the same story when I was in Puerto Escondido in Mexico. The struggles of legendary surfers like Andy Irons and Darryl Virostko with drug addiction are tragic and well-documented.

    Taoist philosophy places a major emphasis on balance and the harmony of yin and yang elements: if you push too hard be prepared for the response. Karma, very simply, means the same thing. Every action has its consequences. Often, people take risks for the sake of short term exhilaration without acknowledging long-term consequences. The consequence of dying young, no matter how gloriously you have lived, is a lifetime of heartbreak for the relatives and friends you leave behind.

    Writing this, I am conflicted. Part of me remembers how good it felt to be that free, to take those risks and feel immortal. I returned to the Zambezi last summer for the first time in 16 years, and running Rapid 9 again still felt like one of the peak experiences of my life.

    Hitting the diagonal on high water Rapid 9, Zambezi, 2017

    I still feel the draw of the river. But I’m older and wiser now: I know the trauma of losing loved ones. I do not regret for a minute the risks I took. But I now realise that the path to genuine happiness lies in balance and harmony, not extremes. That most wise of ancient books, the Tao Te Ching states the ‘sage casts off extremes’, likewise  Aristotle counted ‘him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self’.

    So take risks, explore your limits, learn about yourself by overcoming fear. Be aware, however, that it is not being the best, or going the hardest, that defines you as a human being. Sometimes it is better to walk away. Life is beautiful and very much worth living. A shot of adrenaline is not worth the price of a life.

    Flow state can be found in the everyday, in being present in the moment. The closing words I leave to my friend Hendri Coetzee, the African river warrior, who took more risks than most, and for a time seemed invincible. Before his last, ill-fated expedition to the Congo, the one he would not return from, he sent me an email in which he said it would be his last major expedition. He looked forward to exploring other aspects of his life having ‘finally realized that my search for adventure was a search for the Stillness that I found in the eye of the storm’. That realisation of stillness comes to us all eventually, for some it is just too late.

     

     

    …………………………………………………………………….

     

    A film made by the author of  kayaking adventures around the world 1999-2001

    https://vimeo.com/170783201

  • The Late Risers’ Manifesto

    Automation in a variety of sectors could liberate millions from mind-numbing labour. But despite technological advances workers’ earnings have stagnated since the 1990s, while the rich have grown seriously richer, as we face an unemployment cliff. A powerful remedy to the impending obsolescence of many types of work, and grotesque inequality, could be the introduction of universal basic income. This would provide an unconditional payment to every citizen sufficient to avert poverty, providing an opportunity for individual flourishing, to the ultimate benefit of society. Another appropriate response would be for the law to require all companies to register a defined social purpose, beyond simply the exploitation of opportunity for profit. That way the dynamism of entrepreneurship might be harnessed for the common good.

    With irresistible force the alien sound of an alarm bleeds into my dreamscape. A hand shoots out clumsily in search of the offending contraption – an aged radio alarm clock spilling the flotsam and jetsam of morning news. Woe is this man on a chilly January morning in Dublin! Then silence, as a finger brings a relieving click to the harangues.

    I hide in the womb of my duvet, cowering before the frigid lash of cold air beyond the covers. Plea bargaining begins in earnest: ‘Another hour or two won’t make a difference’; ‘You aren’t productive in the morning anyway’; until finally the imperial self asserts: ‘To hell with this, I am going back to sleep’.

    In response my whole being softens at the unexpected leniency, eyelids resume a stately repose, the pulse slows, and agitation of thought gives way to a free roaming imagination in slumber.

    I have been resisting proverbial alarm clocks all my life, whether calling me to school, employment or binding exercise regime. I bridle – like other independent-minded people I know – at outside agencies determining my hours of sleep.

    Last year, I was put on my mettle when I heard Leo Varadkar’s glib announcement on taking office that he wanted to be a Taoiseach for early risers. Like those guardians of the Ancient Roman Republic I sensed a Rubicon being crossed into my home territory by a recalcitrant general. The battle between dream and reality had been joined, and I would carry the Late Risers’ Manifesto into the affray.

    It is out of stillness – not forcing our thoughts – that creation emerges. Silently, we assemble meaning, deconstruct artifice and forge originality. Brother David Steindl-Rast puts it thus: ‘Communication out of silence is true communication. All else is chitchat.’

    I imagine internal remonstrances are not entertained in the intimacy of Leo Varadkar’s chamber. Excuses for softness, or indulgence of loitering are given short shrift. More likely: ‘Where is my singlet? I need to look sharp for the weekly vlog.’ He wastes no time on idle speculation, vacant imagination is held in check. The ephemera of newscast is devoured. Now attendants are called for. Primed for purpose – carpe diem – he seizes the day.

    From workout to workday: the life and times of Taoiseach Varadkar. Photograph: Laura Hutton/PA Wire, https://www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.3315569.1512416086!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_685/image.jpg

    II

    Leo styles himself a liberal, preferring the state to leave the individual alone, a commendable notion for many situations, but not so where this allows accumulation of vast wealth by a small minority. Economic liberalism is predicated on a shaky assumption that success, measured in money, sex or fame, derives from a single-minded focus on hard work. Such fortune cookie philosophy would explain his veneration for the alarm clock, and attention to scapegoating ‘welfare cheats’ while a minister.

    It’s a grand delusion that early rising and hard work make dreams a reality, at its extreme recalling the banner greeting Auschwitz inmates: arbeit met frei ,‘work will set you free’. A devotion to labour for its own sake is misplaced: it can have the effect of dulling the mind.

    Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, asserted that the tedium of monotonous industrial tasks would render anyone ‘stupid and narrow-minded’; maintaining that the torpor of repetitive labour renders an individual incapable ‘of relishing or bearing a part in rational conversation’, or ‘conceiving generous, noble or tender sentiment’. He asserted that this would come in the way of  ‘any just judgment concerning even the ordinary duties of private life.’

    The Adam Smith Monument in Edinburgh.

    Over the course of the last century especially, workers, including those engaged in monotonous ‘unskilled’ work, joined forces to win a series of improvements to their conditions. These included ample leisure time, giving scope for many among the proletariat to enjoy a reasonable standard of living. This permitted recreation along with access to higher education, a decent life followed for most of us in Western Europe. The decades after World War II are known as Les Trente Glorieuses in France and Il Miracolo Economico in Italy, as salaries kept pace with labour productivity. In large part this was down to the political clout of the Left, including Communist parties.

    But these developments have given way to what is widely regarded as a Neoliberal Order. Since the 1990s real wages have stagnated, while private, and often public, debts have spiralled, with the wealth of a few expanding grotesquely. Tellingly, whereas in the 1950s the CEO of General Motors, then the model of a successful US business, was paid 135 times more than assembly-line workers, fifty years later the CEO of Walmart earned 1,500 times as much as an ordinary employee. Essentially, efficiencies enabled by new technologies are enriching those at the apex of corporations.

    Unions, which were vital for bringing workers’ rights, are now in retreat. Those that remain often only represent employees in privileged positions. A chasm below an unemployment cliff looms in front of us, with little opposition to the new world order.

    III

    These developments are a feature of a technological revolution, especially in communications with the advent of the Internet, which is shattering a short-lived, post-Cold War consensus, and shifting the economic substrate. Moreover, the world wide web has rendered words, video and music virtually uncommodifiable, wreaking havoc upon the livelihoods of independent-minded writers, musicians and others artists, who struggle to share fresh approaches to life.

    Automation looms in a host of industries which will further enhance ‘labour productivity’, at the expense of labour, and to the benefit of capital. The graphic below illustrates what has occurred in Ireland since the 1960s: from the 1990s productivity ceased to be passed on to workers.

    Irish productivity per worker v. real wages since 1960. Source: https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/david-mcwilliams-why-ireland-s-growing-economy-isn-t-making-you-richer-1.3327231

    Our present disorder is comparable to the expansion of the Roman Republic in the first century BCE, when territories to the West and East fell to generals such as Caesar, Pompey and Crassus. These charismatic consuls pillaged unprecedented loot, bringing enormous prestige and popularity that led to an oligarchic triumvirate. This gave way to the Roman Empire in 49BCE, under Julius Caesar.

    Today, we have our own benign despots of Big Data, whose loot would make an emperor blush. Their algorithms convey us from purchase to purchase, intruding ever more into our inner-most thoughts. Most worryingly, the independence of voting intentions are being severely undermined by sophisticated (anti-) social media devices.

    At the outset of a dizzying technological revolution a small number of individuals wield unaccountable power, and as time passes the freedom of the Internet recedes. Just as the Celtic tribes of Gaul cowered before the ingenuity of Roman legions, structures of democratic government – states and transnational bodies – melt before the tortoise formations of the corporations, and their often solipsistic commanders. Of whom it might be said:

    The sense that he was greater than his kind
    Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind
    By gazing on its own exceeding light[i]

    As in another age where the value of men was assigned in conquest, a capacity to appeal to a wide public with a new Internet tool, whether useful or not, has brought mind-boggling fortunes to the founders and shareholders of Google, Facebook, Instagram and the rest. There are few safeguards against truly villainous characters concentrating unassailable political power through vast fortunes. The descent of the Roman Empire into corruption and excess should be a warning.

    Just as Johannes Gutenberg was buried in an unmarked grave while others profited from his invention of the printing press, opportunism rather than ingenuity tends to be rewarded under current economic structures; as with the phenomenon of Trump, who recalls the fiddling Emperor Nero himself. This acknowledged master of the soundbite is the product of inherited wealth, and the redoubtable political nous of Steve Bannon, who recognised the impending obsolescence of the American worker.

    Yet it takes an outlier such as Bannon – whose final solutions I deplore – to lay down a challenge to our New Age consuls: ‘They’re too powerful. I want to make sure their data is a public trust. The stocks would drop two-thirds in value.’ Where are the mainstream liberals we might ask?

    One such, Leo Varadkar, offers no opposition to the current order. Indeed, he unashamedly promotes dominant corporations in Ireland, through low, or non-existent, corporation taxation, which has long been justified by narrow national self-interest. We had an ‘Ireland First’ doctrine here long before Trump invented America’s.

    The Irish state has been reduced to the role of croupier at a casino table where the super-rich trouser their winnings without being required to even tip the attendants. So obsequious is the Irish government that the award of an enormous windfall to the exchequer of the Apple tax bill is being resisted: ‘Would sir like to cash his chips in now or later?’.

    IV

    The impending obsolescence of much unskilled work may provide an opportunity for a fuller flourishing of homo sapiens. Liberation from tedious tasks, such as driving and manufacturing, should provide scope for the development of the “generous, noble and tender” sentiments referred to by Adam Smith. These resources may be shared with the Global South in time.

    A powerful remedy to our present inequalities would be for wealthy federations such as Europe and the United States to introduce a guarantee of universal basic income: an unconditional payment sufficient for every citizen to avoid poverty. It could offer an opportunity for individual fulfillment in various domains, ultimately to the benefit to society. This would require, however, most states to improve educational and cultural facilities, which can be financed by effective taxation of assets, and simplification of codes.

    An often parasitic financial industry must be regulated and taxed effectively, while the sustenance of life: especially a roof over one’s head, nutritious food, and public transport, must all become affordable; if not the cheap air travel to which we have grown accustomed. In many respects a Communist ideal, but with the major difference that the originality and drive of the entrepreneur should be harnessed

    The Financial Crisis of the past decade originated in failings within the banking system, unconnected to what were, in fact, increasing efficiencies simultaneously occurring in the real economy. Rethinking economics in its wake involves questioning theoretical limitations on fiscal stimuli. The value we ascribe money currency is a product of the human imagination, and governments possess a singular capacity to generate more of it through expenditure.

    Recent experience indicates that it is possible to expand the supply of money through our fiat currencies, without generating inflation. Thus austerity measures, which generally affect the poorest disproportionately are generally both unnecessary, and counter-productive. Optimum allocation of government resources should involve a weighting towards provision of basic necessities, which usually sees money being spent within a local economy.

    Aligning policy to the basic needs of the population should be the role of democratic government, but this is often derailed by special interests. Socio-economic rights can be enshrined in European treaties so as to avoid a repeat of the disgraceful impoverishment of ordinary Greek people during the Crisis. But government expenditure must avoid the rampant inefficiency and careerism often found in the state sector, where people often stay in jobs out of fear.

    The great error, and folly, of ‘Bannonism’, which Trump seized on for his peculiar policy of ‘America first’, is to assume that nation-states, even one the size of America, can mount barriers insulating them from the rest of the world. The racist idea of a chosen people singularly entitled to the good life is the source of much of the conflict in this world. We may respond positively to collective identities derived from mythology and literature, but these are imaginary concepts and ought to be acknowledged as such, rather than merged nonsensically with notions of biological inheritance. We are one people.

    That’s my Steve.

    V

    One objection to the idea of basic income might stem from a pessimistic assessment that if not spurred by a need to work, homo sapiens will indulge his vices, especially excessive consumption of drugs and alcohol. Yet it is apparent that the oblivion of intoxication is associated with the end of the working week in jobs that do not inspire. It is also apparent that a sense of worthlessness generates excess, often self-destructive.

    A legal right to economic security would take much of the fear, and even boredom, out of life, while affording the possibility for many to follow their dreams. The pursuit of money as an end in itself, is a lust for power held in common with the warlords of yore. Such moguls are a rare breed requiring containment (who in their right mind would have the motivation to become a billionaire?), and perhaps even compassion.

    Naturally, many of us enjoy the regularity and community of daily work. That is nothing to be ashamed of, and there are numerous roles which will survive the technological onslaught, preserving the satisfaction derived from tasks well done. Home-makers, farmers, carers, and teachers of all kinds will always be required. The pleasure of craftsmanship and joint enterprise can be enhanced, so as to generate greater pride in work. Goods produced in an ethical and sustainable manner should be encouraged through targeted subsidisation aimed at reducing waste.

    Technology professionals are particularly prized in our economy, and their continued usefulness is assured. Many wish to devote their talents towards altruistic goals, rather than work for vampire corporations, which exploit people and the Earth. The model of the open source linux operating system – such I avail of in this programme as I write – shows how a spirit of cooperation endures to make technology a collective resource.

    We might also contemplate a radical shift in company law. The inherent danger of profit-seeking corporations was once widely recognised. Thus, between 1720 and 1825 it was a criminal offence to start a company in England, during a period of rapid economic expansion. In the United States until the nineteenth century there were two competing ideas regarding the purpose of companies: the first involved those with charters restricted to the pursuit of objectives in the public interest, such as canal building; the other regime issued charters of a general character, allowing companies to engage in whatever business proved profitable.

    The latter category emerged triumphant, divorced from responsibility to fellow citizens, and often a unaccountable abstraction with separate legal personality. By altering the nature of the company under law we may continue to harness the thrusting energy of entrepreneurship for positive ends.

    Acquisition of wealth is not the be-all and end-all for most of us, especially if basic needs are met. But we may still have a real dedication to what we do. Changes in company law requiring any company to have a public interest purpose contained in its articles and memoranda of association could prove hugely beneficial.

    VI

    Human creativity is manifest in a wide variety of fields. We may discover different vocations throughout our lives, some economically productive, others seemingly desultory, but perhaps crucial to individual development at particular junctures in life. The technologies we have developed should allow many of us to indulge our passions, which can ultimately be to the benefit of all, if creativity and invention are deployed in the right direction.

    For many of us, the orthodox structure of the working day is unsatisfactory, and diligence occurs in pursuit of self-ordained objectives, rather than via external imposition This may seem like the privilege of an avant-garde, who tend to have enjoyed educational privileges, but many are increasingly imperiled by current economic structures, and wish to stand apart from what amounts to a conspiracy promoting the purchase of property.

    We might draw wisdom from the lifestyle of the early modern craftsman, who was not beholden to a dictatorial clock, which has cast its shadow over the working day since the Industrial Revolution. Households would retire for a few hours after dusk, waking some time later for an hour or two, before taking what was referred to as a second sleep until morning. During this interlude, people would relax, ponder their dreams, or perhaps make love. Others would engage in activities like sewing, chopping wood, or reading, relying on the light of the moon, or oil lamps.

    Nor was the working week set in stone, and the seasons would dictate the extent of one’s labour. Naturally, the number of burghers who dragged themselves out of a generalised misery at that time was limited, but those managing to do so could operate in tune with their own rhythms, not the demands of the omnipotent factory owner who emerged ascendant after the Industrial Revolution. In many respects the cooperative nature of linux programming represents a return to the model of the craftsman, as Richard Sennett has argued.

    VII

    The level of poverty we permit in our superficially developed societies is, simply, unconscionable. Insecurity and fear afflict far more than those living in destitution, and are the silent forces that drive us to the edge of reason. We have our winners and losers, but the number in the former category has declined considerably in recent decades, as the technological race stretches out the field.

    Just as the Roman Empire grew out of economic imbalances resulting from conquest, our own societies confront unassailable capital, which feeds a delusion that chosen people can be saved from barbarian hordes.

    The possibilities for homo sapiens are boundless. But we require basic safeguards to flourish. Companies can operate for the benefit of society as a whole, harnessing the dynamism of the entrepreneur, and working cooperatively as the craftsman once did. Let us avoid the fate of the Roman Republic, and prosper together.

    [i] Percy Bysshe Shelley, Julian and Maddalo, (1819).

    Frank Armstrong is the content editor of Cassandra Voices, www.frankarmstrong.ie.

    Featured Image: Daniele Idini.

  • Culture of Complaint

    Editor’s Note: The presumption of innocence is a hallowed principle central to the Rule of Law. Human rights lawyer and founder of the Innocence Project in Ireland, David Langwallner rails against a culture of Political Correctness that permits trial-by-media of alleged sexual offences, leading to a distortion of male-female relations. He identifies this with an all-consuming Neoliberalism, in which vendettas are pursued through false accusations – often for economic advantage – and where the parameters of permitted behaviour in courtship are sanitised to a point where men are being reduced to automatons. While strongly condemning the behaviour of Harvey Weinstein and his ilk, he argues that many of his accusers were willing participants, and only spoke out when it was to their advantage.

    David Langwallner receiving the prize from Miriam O’Callaghan for Pro Bono & Public Interest Team/Lawyer of the Year at the AIB Private Banking Irish Law Awards 2015.

    The late great art historian Robert Hughes penned an anti-political-correctness polemic in 1980 entitled Culture of Complaint. He argued that America was witnessing a pandemic of false sexual harassment claims, often leveled in corporate or institutional power games. At the same time, David Mamet, the legendary American playwright, wrote his Orleanna, a structured and more nuanced evaluation of the parameters of sexual harassment.

    I despise political correctness, and the dumbing down it has brought to personal relationships and public discourse. In many instances it has marginalised forthright criticism, protecting vested interests, who employ the tactic of character assassination.  Relationships between men and women are also distorted. The slide Hughes and Mamet wrote of in the 1980s, has today become an avalanche.

    No one in their right mind condones acts of sexual violence against men or women, or persistent harassment, whether sexual or not. Workplace bullying, moreover, is not always sexual. At any level, whether sex is the weapon or not, no one should sanction a breach of trust, or an abuse of power.

    We have witnessed all too many ageing multi-millionaire bulldog types, usually from the arts or politics, using the ‘casting couch’ to steer or negate career advancement, especially of women. Though it seems that if a reputation is truly satanic, such as Mick Jagger’s, that individual may escape condemnation.

    It should equally be noted, in the interests of balance, how long bright-eyed starlets were circumspect about blowing any whistle on Harvey Weinstein. It seems some were more than compliant in the toleration of his behaviour, and in some instances his advances, as long as it succoured and supported their careers.

     

    In many instances his accusers lack true moral grounds for condemning him now. Questions of guilt and attribution cuts both ways, a subtlety not grasped by the present snowballing hysteria of outing perverts and harassers. The crimes of the accused, whether real or not, are exposed amidst the hypocrisy of the accusers.

    Michael Colgan, the former Director of The Gate, our latest outing and a more sedate Harvey, is now being thrown to the wolves. In both cases it is noticeable that exposure only occurs once a power base has been eroded: Weinstein, after decades of success in independent cinema loses his Midas touch after a string of flops, and brewing financial difficulties; dwindling audiences at the Gate Theatre, meanwhile, may have contributed to Colgan’s downfall. Of course for some such as Mr. Polanski the glamour never fades and that is, in a perverse way, his protection.

    There is something very unseemly about the sight of this coup de grace ending the career of the ageing male. The final nails in the proverbial coffin. The killing of the once-prized bull by the matador media.

    After all Sir Edward Carson – in even more puritanical times –  and with at least a measure of compassion, refused to prosecute Oscar Wilde after the damage had been done in the civil case, which exposed his gay love affair with Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas; by Carson himself of course, and with a good deal of vindictiveness, from one Trinity man to another.

    “The poor man has suffered enough”, he is reputed to have said. Standards of decency have plummeted since. No doubt a queue of lawyers are slavering at the prospect of successful actions against aging playboys.

    Edward Carson: ‘The poor man has suffered enough’.

    In a different context The French famously say ‘les absents sans toujours tort’, ‘the absent are always wrong’, or translated to this context the disempowered – compulsorily or not – are now easier prey for a slightly hysterical Witch hunt.

    Arthur Miller wrote one of his best plays The Crucible on that them, where religious and sexual hysteria – a toxic mix at work in Ireland – leads to an all-consuming madness of false allegations. Not that Weinstein appears to be innocent, but others may be. The point is that balance is lost once the story begin.

    Complainants who were amenable, or tolerant, in the past now seek to expurgate their involvement, cleansing their souls and conscience by shopping someone. Often, as was seemingly the case with former deputy Prime Minister Michael Fallon in The United Kingdom, to protect their own job. The issues of guilt and retribution are far from clear.

    Motivations are murky. As in the Mamet play, and indeed a Michael Douglas film called Disclosure (1994), sex allegations are often linked to political or corporate power plays. Saying someone has touched your knee inappropriately may save one’s job. It’s kill or be killed in our Neoliberal universe.

    The culture was of course different before the transcendence of political correctness, a greater laxity in personal conduct was tolerated, and both sides often participated in what might be deemed the immoral, generally sexual, pleasures of an uncensored society.

    It ill-behoves one side to scream from the citadel of innocence, and dress in the cloak of victimhood considering their consensual participation, and inculpation in some cases.

    That in no way exculpates, or should lead to toleration of, the practices of Mr. Weinstein, or even earlier, and more notoriously Mr Polanski, whom the French protect, as they seem to, all artists of significance, which is merely to note a peculiar national characteristic. For him, as was said of Benjamin Disraeli, the glamour never fades.

    Thus, the retrospective retributive justice by the kangaroo court of vox populi, and the dangerous menace of public avengers. The Rule of Law is being subverted and due process and forensic truth-seeking replaced with trial-by-media, whipped up by a populist clamour. Prosecution by smear, through innuendo, and ‘no smoke without fire’, even by falsehoods in some instances.

    None of this is helped by the psycho-babble of often pseudo-feminism, including the blathering of Hilary Clinton, reversing the burden of proof, and undermining the presumption of innocence. This antiquated feminist agenda dovetails very neatly with trial-by-media. Guilty in the court of public opinion before any charges are made and– as in the case of Garda McCabe in a different context – the manufacturing of guilt and suspicion by politically-motivated criminal and corrupt public officials.

    Careers are rapidly destroyed, reputations irretrievably damaged, without anything so troublesome as a court process, or even internal disciplinary procedures, where anonymity may be preserved.

    **********

    All of this is leading to a great disturbance and realignment of normal interactions between men and women.  Displays of attraction will be culturally realigned, such that communication of permission and refusal will be increasingly difficult to divine. 

    This will destroy much of the interesting texture of courtship and flirtation, displays of intimacy, and non-intrusive physical contact. A peck on the cheek or hand on the shoulder, may now be considered an act of violation. In American corporations, in some instances, employees who wish to date are required to sign a sex contract, detailing precisely what is consented to.

    This will magnify the mistakes and misunderstandings that often precede sexual congress, complicating the quest for a suitable mate, or ideal match. A sexually-programmed, robotic world beckons, appropriate for the preferred model of serf employees.

    I dislike intensely corporate cleanliness, fused with the family values of the religious maniacs of the U.S. Republican Party. A sexually ‘clean’ Neoliberalism, served up with great dollops of hypocrisy. A Corporatism requiring the worker to comply with stable domestic strictures on fidelity and religiosity.

    Sexual behaviour has been, and always will be, a disturbance of the ordinary and smooth processes of income accumulation. Deviation cannot be tolerated among a malleable workforce.

    Furthermore, in many instances an innocent man is the victim. False allegations against Cliff Richard and Paul Gambiccini nearly destroyed clean-cut, almost asexual, national treasures. It has become a penalisation of success, a titillating feature of the celebrity culture. An allegation of sexual deviancy may destroy a trade competitor, to gain a trifle of public recognition for yourself and reinvigorate a flagging career. A solipsistic ‘Me’ generation demanding Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame.

    In this blood sport, the more talented and renowned the celebrity, the greater prize the scalp becomes. All the more opportunity for faked outrage against a fallen idol from plastic people, who equate success with one’s name appearing in the newspapers.

    It is also, frankly, a society rapidly becoming the obverse of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), a dystopian tale following a Second American Civil War, where women are forced into sexual and child-bearing servitude. The new handmaidens are an increasingly de-sexed and under-the-thumb male population. Today all men except those under total control, display the Original Sin of perverts and harassers.

    Other expressions of public opinion, such as the film Fight Club (1999), have demonstrated this precarious male identity. What escape now for the domesticised American male, drawing his wage in an insidious corporate culture, where any degree of abnormality in courtship is impugned? The Irish equivalents of Fight Club remain the male debating society, binge drinking and that awful sport of rugby. In these arenas male aggression can flow uninterrupted.

    Irish male debating societies.

    **********

    Although Mr Weinstein and Mr. Spacey seem, at first blush, guilty, after trial-by-media, or at least to have a strong case to answer, I fear the whole onslaught will lead to a McCarthyite Witch Hunt, about which Miller’s play based around the Salem Witch Trials is a parable. The present hue and cry and that of over half century ago, are linked by a common plethora of false allegations, stoked by the religious and political Right for nefarious ends.

    Someone needs to turn this ship around, and quickly, before genuine expressions of male and female sexuality are distorted for good.

    Vive la difference as the French say. Not all flirtation and banter is harassment. Not all men are rapists. The pendulum has swung too far, and through the constant recourse to public titillation in the media, important ideas concerning the problems of economic and environmental catastrophe are side-lined. The bread and circus of sexual distraction is delivered in daily doses by red top and broadsheet alike.

    Michael Fallon is no Winston Churchill, but his fate recalls a story – apocryphal or otherwise – told of the latter being accosted under the influence as he entered the House of Commons by Lady Astor: “You are drunk Sir Winston”, she said. “I am”, he replied, “but I will be sober in the morning and you will still be ugly”; an undeniably sexist remark, which, in the present circumstances, would lead to a swift political demise for Britain’s war time leader.

    ‘Who’s a pretty girl’, Winston Churchill and Lady Astor

    This is a plea for moderation and balance, and for an appraisal of the true evils inherent to Neoliberalism; an appreciation that the very difficult road of reason, principle and fairness needs to be traveled; coupled with examination of the often willing participation of those leveling accusations. Too often, we externalise blame, excluding individual and collective failings, which, to reiterate, in no way condones genuine sexual violence or harassment.

    But let us not confuse fakery, contrivance and falsity with reality.

    Featured Image: Daniele Idini

  • What future for Sport?

    Don’t hit your head on the way out.

    Sport is breaking as much as making. The playful testing ground for youth has become an investment vehicle for the idle rich, and is about to come up against the limits of human reality.

    Sport is being tested, in Law and laboratory, for its ability to not only help but harm.

    Thanks to Patrick J. Lynch, medical illustrator

    Concussion is the greatest concern. American Football, Rugby, and Soccer, are all under investigation for short- and long-term consequences of the sudden jarring of brain in skull. Injuries in general worry parents all over the world. Excessive wear and tear on leg joints that will yield early arthritis, surgeries on shoulders, wrists, hands, and feet, dietary aberrations and poisonous supplements, drugs and therapies of dubious efficacy, all and more are suffered to maximise the sporting capability of young bodies.

    Further idiocy is seen in the recent Australian Open where ‘Djokovic said he was “right at the limit” of his stamina’, due to excessive and unnecessary exposure to the sun. There are other types of hurt in Sport. The mental anguish of failure, either as an individual or as part of a team, compounded by the often vitriolic chants and slurs of the audience, can do immense and lasting damage no matter what the age or experience of the participant.

    The same bad behavior is often seen pitch-side at the games of juveniles, with filth-tongued parents hurling accusations and exhortations that in a workplace would elicit a quick call to HR and the Legal department. Even supposedly civilizing games such as Cricket tolerate not only consistent verbal harassment called “sledging”, and until recently could still be deadly as with Phillip Hughes’ tragic death due to a fast bowled cricket ball hitting his head in an area unprotected by his helmet.

    I can make a prediction: The Law will free sport from wanton injury.

    Law is our learning. It’s how we work together to agree on how we may work together, and minimise harm. We know how to harm each other, even in law but especially in reality. We should be able to enjoy interacting competitively without risk of hurting one another, no matter what the shape of the ball or court.

    We must rule out the possibility of suffering concussion as a result of following the rules of a game.

    Certain tackles in rugby, Gaelic football and hurling, heading the ball in Soccer, are all under review

    Boxing? A sport predicated on concussion, horrifically termed the ‘sweet science’, can have no place in civilized society.

    I can make another prediction: Rules of behavior at sporting occasions will be enforced with at least the standard shown in the workplace. When minors are present the standards will be higher again.

    Sport will become what it always is when practiced by the experts: play. Watch children form and reform rules for their games, as they run around in patterns. So it is great sports-people give new insight into their games, pushing past the limits of what we thought was possible. The best show creativity and excellence, in ways that delight and wow us without ever trying to hurt someone else, indeed they are gracious and kind, no matter what happens.

    The idea of Sport as battle needs to die, for it is practicing violence, and we really don’t need to do that anymore.

    Eoin Tierney is an entrepreneur living in Dublin.