On the nature of sovereignty

On sovereignty, Wikipedia offers the following:

“For centuries past, the idea that a state could be sovereign was always connected to its ability to guarantee the best interests of its own citizens. Thus, if a state could not act in the best interests of its own citizens, it could not be thought of as a “sovereign” state.”

I like this idea of being able to act in the best interests of its own citizens because it broadens the discussion beyond the normal nationalist rhetoric of the Gerry Adams of this world. Their assumption being that our own politicians will always act in the best interests of all of the people, all of the time. Recent history has proved this assumption to be in error. Irish people repeatedly voted for Irish politicians who facilitated a particular group of Irish business people i.e. bank managers and property developers, to make large amounts of money. All based on the false assumption that there is some basis to trickle down economics.

It is actually strange that the group of politicians involved were the very ones who fought so ardently to remove a very similar elite group from Ireland back in the early years of the 20th century. The landlord class were indeed wealthy and operated without much regulation and very much in their own interests. And surprise, surprise, they had a tendency to borrow money to support a lifestyle that they had come to enjoy over time. The Encumbered Estates Act of 1849 provided many a haircut for debt-ridden landlords and men about town.

People behave in more or less the same ways all over the world. We are more alike then different. We should not be surprised that we were, in fact, shafted by our own. The bankers were by and large Irish men. The regulators were Irish men. So it seems to me that at no stage in the last twenty years did this state act as a sovereign nation “in the best interests of its own citizens”. No the state acted in the interests of a small and influential elite.

So I am led to wonder, as someone who considers himself a citizen of Europe, if I could expect a European Union with more fiscal powers to act as a sovereign entity in my best interests. My experience of the degree of regulation exercised by European agencies would lead me to say yes. The Irish state has sought derogation after derogation from European regulations and all in the interests of some small vested interests. Farmers so they could continue to pollute our water ways and builders so they could leave a legacy of poorly insulated houses.

Consider how so many of the rights we now enjoy as citizens were imposed on us because we would never have provided them of our own volition. The system that kept Fianna Fail in power for so long was a system of deference to authority regardless of the source of that authority or indeed of its legitimacy. We, the Irish, kept the Magdalen Laundries open. We, the Irish, knew what the religious orders were doing in their schools and did nothing. We are probably a good fit for the Greeks and the Italians who got rid of their Bertie today. And why, because Europe told them to. Well done Europe.

Let’s not forget that Europe is made up of people too. Except that they have been dealing with vested interests for a lot longer then we have. They have had their Napoleons and Bismarcks, their kings and dukes since the Romans first came calling. They also have a tendency to rise up and challenge the vested interest from time to time. We never had to do that. We had the Brits to blame for everything. That antagonism blinds us to the enemy within, our own human frailty.

So just as I am happy to have the UN keeping an eye on things around the world, I am very happy to have a few technocrats (many of them Irish) keeping an eye on the vested interests in Ireland. I am convinced that fiscal unity is a good idea. Ireland is simply too small to prosper on its own and still too parochial to be left to its own devices. We need to take responsibility for the mistakes we made in the past and pay back what we allowed others to borrow in our name. Yes we need to manage that debt. We need to manage it in the interests of all our citizens and that includes those yet to come.

 

Why now in the Arab world?

I find it interesting that the desire for change has produced a very similar response all across North Africa and the Middle East. That this should arise now rather than earlier when the Palestinian issue has been around since 1948 suggests a more profound change has occurred.

I suspect it is the result of education working its way into a second generation whose parents have been educated abroad or who have had occasion to travel there. The Israeli/Palestinian issue is still basically about land and property whereas the issue now presenting itself is about freedom of expression.

In the past ruling elites have used a common enemy as a way of distracting people from seeing the dust beneath their own feet and this has been the case in the Middle East. Education has given rise to demands for freedom which have in turn been resisted by these same ruling elites. The resistance cannot be blamed on outsiders and as a result the distraction is removed.

I suspect a similar pattern may emerge in the United States where the absence of an external enemy such as Communism, Islamic Fundamentalism or The Chinese is beginning to expose the cracks within US society in terms of the battle between conservative and progressive forces. It becomes difficult to portray Islam as the enemy when they are fighting for democracy and freedom of expression. It becomes difficult to demonize the Chinese when they invest in your factories and provide you with loans.

So “internal” issues within the US, within the Middle East and, in terms of economic sovereignty, in Europe are increasingly coming to the fore as the media and travel expose the lie that is the difference between THEM and US.

On WikiLeaks

I watched with considerable interest the events of yesterday evening as they unfolded. It was certainly exciting from a nerdy point of view as technology was unleashed on a large scale in support of a point of principle. It is even more interesting to see this morning that avaaz.org have taken up the baton in support of WikiLeaks. As the issue rumbles on I suspect that the typical over the top response of usual suspects will cause more and more people to side with WikiLeaks.

The question at the heart of all this is whether a government or a state, as the supposed representative of its citizens, has the right to act in whatever way it sees fit to protect what it sees as the interests of it’s people. For me the answer is no and I come to this conclusion on the basis of a number of realities vis a vie the political process.

Firstly, it is in the nature of democracy that a government does not represent it’s citizens, it simply represents those who supposedly elected them. It is also to be considered whether any election is free given a country like the US where half the population does not vote with 58%  for the last presidential election and that was the best since 1968. The you must consider the intellectual capacity of many of those to consider the issues. Many are fundamentalist Christians and FOX news viewers which must call their ability to choose freely into question. Then you must examine the link between advertising spend and actual vote received and conclude that for the vast majority elections are an emotional experience based on thought processes that would provide years of gainful employment for counselors.  Just look at our own experience with FF over the last 15 years and the current level of support for Sinn Fein.

Next you must consider the deals done by the very politicians when they enter government and the reality that in order to be elected (as in generate cash for advertising) you must demonstrate your support for big business, Christian fundamentalism or Jewish extremism. Although the latter two may not give you money but will quite overtly trash your life, your seed and generation, calling into question the notion of the bible as “the good book”.

Following on with the “it’s all about jobs, stupid” school of politics which we are more then familiar with and any ethical considerations go out the door. Just talk to the Appalachian coal miners or the Construction Industry Federation. There is a reason why petrol is so cheap in the US. That reason is to make money for the oil companies.

Let’s turn to public service recruitment next. I’ll just capitalize the PUBLIC SERVICE bit to be sure you get it. It may well exist in some areas like the Depts of Social Welfare and the maybe the Wildlife service but the notion is completely absent from Finance, Foreign Affairs or any of those areas. This is simply because only those people who accept without question the dictates of their political masters could work in these areas. To work in the CIA you would have to (I assume) believe the things that they believe. And if you believe that the interests of the American People are paramount and superior to the interests of all other peoples on planet Earth then you will willingly do them things you do.

Of course all of this is only possible when carried out in secrecy. The fast majority of people have an intuitive understanding of what’s right and wrong. They rarely have to give any kind of public expression to this understanding because they know that their lifestyles are dependent on pretending that there is no wrong being done in their name. So we have IBEC calling for increased consumption rather than a re-balancing of expectations with regard to quantity and quality. By this I mean that we pay for quality rather than quantity making it possible for less intensive production methods to be used. Meaning we simply eat less and thereby solve the  obesity epidemic. Or we might travel less and reduce the carbon footprint. All schemes of intensive value-added production result in low wages for those at the bottom and higher profits for those at the top.

So if the US government is invading countries and killing hundreds of thousands of people in order to secure market influence for those who fund it’s political system, should we not be aware of it. If policy is being decided by public servants who belief systems serve a particular sub-section of the population should we not be aware of it. In the end there is a fair degree of the emperors new clothes about all this. We are by and large in denial of what is done in our name. The Irish people bare collective responsibly for the activities of the Irish Catholic Church over the last 60 years. The Irish people bare collective responsibility for the financial mess we find ourselves in. And the very last thing we want is to be faced with the realities of what we let governments do in our name. Ignorance may be bliss but it also creates the world we live in.

So whatever the personal motives of people like Julian Assange, it is my belief that greater good is being served by the publication of these documents. My belief is that the extra-judicial actions of the United States government reflects the deep conflict currently going on within the US as the dark, very dark, forces of fundamentalism (both Christian and Jewish) battle it out with the aspirations of the founding fathers for freedom of speech and of expression.

Our lives are structured around lies. Our parents lie to us, our teachers lie to us, our representatives lie to us. They do this and can do it because we are children who refuse to accept responsibility for the world we live in. When we are children such methods have their place but painful and all as it must be, we are obliged to grow up. But we want to believe in paternalistic Gods who will take care of us and keep us in childish innocence. The World Wide Web will make that belief very difficult to maintain. We know from the science of psychology that when dissonance arises between our internally created world view and the reality of our experience, we must either change our internal perspective or disconnect from the outer world. We enter an imagined world that results in constant pain as we smash ourselves daily against the hard surfaces of planet Earth.

Showtime by Pat Leahy

I am no fan of the Fianna Fail party and had been reluctant to read this book when it first came out for fear that I would find it too upsetting. This may seem a strange thing to say but I find it very frustrating to be so out of step ideologically with so many people who over three elections voted for FF and hence tend to react emotionally. Nevertheless, I do enjoy reading history and genuinely believe that it is important to learn from it. So believing there to be now sufficient distance between myself and the events, I started reading.

I am of the belief and have have been for some considerable time, that Fianna Fail represents all that needs to change in Irish society if it is to progress. It is tribalism thinly disguised and Brian Cowens expressed love for his party is at best described as childish, at worst infantile. From Ken Wilber I have learned that an individual or group can be highly developed in some areas but utterly undeveloped in others. So it is with Fianna Fail. As Leahy says FF were excellent at getting into power but had no clue what to do with it once they had it.

This fatal flaw within the FF mindset is best illustrated by their own TDs reaction to the

abolition of the ‘dual mandate’, where many TDs also sat on local authorities, meant that many deputies had resigned but crucially kept to them selves the right to nominate a replacement. In many cases, these tended to be either ultra-loyalists who would never challenge the TD – family members, often – or else, if such could not be found, someone who would make a poor candidate. Headquarters did not hold many of them in high esteem, to put it mildly. Voters evidently shared this assessment.

The party’s customary approach to an election of promising local patronage and spending fell flat on this occasion.

Yet one incident referred to in the book got me thinking in more general terms. In May 2000 the government attempted to appoint a former Supreme Court judge to the European Investment Bank. The same judge who has been involved in the Sheedy affair and who had subsequently resigned from the Supreme Court.

Ahern and some of his ministers couldn’t understand why the public was so exercised by it. The adviser’s nearly screamed at them: because he has already been convicted by the government.

FF history is replete with examples of a capacity to turn a blind eye to past misdeeds. They have to. The party was founded by the very people who chose to take up arms rather than accept the democratic will of the people. Cooper-Flynn, Haughey, Lawlor, Burke and no doubt Ahern all benefited from the party faithfuls capacity to forgive and forget in the pursuit of power.

Yet this same capacity enabled Ahern to spend years in tortured negotiation with people whose misdeeds where far worse than an inability to manage ones accounts with probity. The past actions of Republicans, Unionists and successive British governments are soaked in blood but there is one clear lesson from history and it’s that the creation of peace in divided societies invariably necessitates the overlooking of past deeds. In fact it requires the suspension of any judgements regarding the others past or present behaviour in pursuit of some future goal.

This is not to be confused with an ability to see the big picture for it is in reality an inability to do so. It involves a focus on a single goal, be it peace in Northern Ireland or the winning of an election, to the exclusion of all else. My own suspicion is that, in Aherns’ mind, these two were inextricably linked. If he were to bring about peace, he would be the one to bring about the inevitable United Ireland and a grateful people who would maintain his party in power for ever. It would be the realisation of the aim for which the party was founded.

There is a price to pay for all things of lasting value and we are paying that price now. It could be argued that a successful and progressive Republic would spill over into Northern Ireland making it increasingly difficult for Irish Unionism to be heard above the hum of Electronic Funds Transfers across what would become (and has become) an invisible border. People follow jobs and so does their politics.

So we know how they did it and we know why they did it. Neither of which has any place in the kind of society that I would prefer to live in. Yet my son informs me that his generation will still vote FF if they think they could create another boom. For being the children of a boom, they know naught else. And that’s the way Fianna Fail want it to stay for stupid is as stupid does.

The “whole” person.

US First Lady Michelle Obama, visiting Pascagoula, Mississippi, promised the US government would not forget those affected.

‘This isn’t over yet. And this administration is going to stand with the people of the Gulf until folks are made whole again,’ she said.

I’ve just come across the above quote on RTE’s news website. I assume it’s accurate and if it is I find it quite disturbing. The issue of suicide has been kicking about over the last week, especially in relation to young people and there seeming inability to cope with the circumstances of life. It strikes me that comments like the one above don’t help. The implication is that the people of the Gulf of Mexico are somehow diminished by their circumstances. So much so that they are no longer to be considered “whole” people.

The suggestion is that the way in which one makes ones living is an intrinsic part of what makes you a whole person. It is this very thinking that is at the root of the emotional crisis so many people are experiencing as a result of unemployment or the threat of unemployment. I have some considerable experience with this issue being unemployed now for almost nine years.

My current status is that of Full Time Student (on holidays). This is an acceptable status which would probably classify me as a “whole” person. Unlike the previous eight years for which I was not a “whole” person. Mind you I spent six months with the tax status “self-employed” so I assume that counted as “whole”. Personally I found that period to be particularly unwholesome as I was not very good at it nor employed doing much of anything. But I was trying so maybe that counts for something.

I spent another six months being officially “unemployed” and that must count me as “whole” because I was paid by the state for that. I did even less for that six months but as there was no reduction for all of me not being there I assume I was a “whole” person.

Funnily enough the period during which I experienced wholeness was after that when I ceased to have any status with anyone officially. I was taking care of my kids while my spouse went off to be made “whole” on a daily basis. It was the impending change in that circumstance as the last of my kids went off to college that made me feel incomplete and prompted me to go to full time education.

The really serious point that I want to make is the damage that is done when people in positions of influence make statements like the one quoted above. It is the drip, drip, drip effect of statements such as this that is so corrosive to peoples emotional and mental states. If Michelle Obama had spoken of her confidence in the ability of the people of the Gulf of Mexico to cope in the face of adversity and in their capacity to use their existing knowledge and skills to overcome the circumstances in which they had found themselves, she would have been emphasizing their wholeness.

My son has just reminded me of the U-curve. That representation of the process of learning a new skill where the learner starts by having an early sense of success when learning a new skill only to have it replaced by a down feeling as they realize how much of this new skill they don’t know. Sticking with that feeling (along the bottom of the U) will eventually lead to an upswing as the individual builds on the newly acquired knowledge until they reach the top and consider themselves competent or expert.

He pointed out to me that knowledge of this process is now part of the problem. Knowing what lies ahead emotionally in learning to cope with new sets of circumstances is driving young people to seek alternatives to the delayed gratification involved in learning how to cope. Nothing in their upbringing has prepared them for the emotions elicited by waiting for a process to run it’s course, be it an economic cycle or accumulation of material goods. Some things just take time.

And some things just run out of time. My fathers people were blacksmiths going back eight generations. They are no more. I did a search for blacksmiths on the 1901 and 1911 census recently. County Limerick has some 400 plus blacksmiths in 1901. In 1911 the number was  approx. 350. The CSO websites gives figures for each succeeding census from 1926(?) and it shows a steady decline until by 1976 blacksmiths no longer had a number to themselves and were lumped in with “other metal workers”. By 1976 my Uncle Paddy, a man with consummate skill as a blacksmith and farrier, had become “other metal workers”. Did this make him less “whole”? I think not.

A person is never less than “whole”. The skills they have may or may not be useful depending on the exigencies of the marketplace but as a person, as an individual they are as they were born, a complete and unique human being. We need to stop confusing the work a person has been trained to do with their value as a person. The value of a particular set of skills is quite simply a decision we make. If we value something we pay more attention to it and we are willing to pay more for it. That’s why people of a certain class in society are willing to pay large sums to incompetent bank managers. They value people like themselves.

The real travesty of recent years was the failure of government to value those skills associated with the jobs that would be needed in the future. They stood looking at the ground around their own feet and saw nothing but people like themselves. People who paid other people to do physical labour for them. Not for them the task of managing teams of well educated scientists or software engineers who knew themselves to be every bit the bosses equal.

On Toastmasters

I am no longer a member of Toastmasters and because the only reason anyone ever visits this blog is because of the toastmasters speeches I posted here, I feel a need to explain why I’m no longer a member. I really do believe that Toastmasters is a wonderful organisation that has done and will continue to serve a very important purpose in teaching people how to speak out in public. This is all the more important in Ireland, a country which is in transition from a society beguiled and befuddled by authority and institution, to one respecting the contributions individuals make and which will appreciate those courageous enough to think out loud, to risk being different.

During my time in Toastmasters I have heard many wonderful speeches and listened to some amazing speakers. I really do get it.

The educational program is the heart of every Toastmasters club. It provides members with a proven curriculum that develops communication and leadership skills one step at a time, with many opportunities for awards and recognition along the way. – from the website

But maybe I get it too much because for many Toastmasters the social aspect seems to be more important than the educational aspect. I’m sure there is a balance to be struck between the two but I’m not seeing it. I have a sense that many people who attend Toastmasters meetings have an expectation of being entertained by a speaker but for me this expectation is at odds with placing the “educational program” at the heart of every Toastmasters club. There is one advanced manual on The Entertaining Speaker, only one.

I have discovered I have a knack for picking competition winners. When judging I fill out my guidelines form, marking as best I can according to those guidelines but knowing that the most entertaining speaker (not speech) will always win. Not the most thought-provoking or challenging or best delivered but the most entertaining. I have also come to the conclusion that this is because the people most likely to be running clubs are those who have a vested interest in keeping them going. These members are those for whom Toastmasters is a very important social outlet. They are the ones who are there, meeting after meeting, who see new members come and go but keep the whole thing going, year in and year out. They have probably heard far more bad speeches then good ones and they see the same mistakes made over and over again. But sometimes I am left wondering if the drink in the bar afterwards has become more important than the meeting itself.

Herein lies a problem for the future. We have just come out of a time in this country when image was all that mattered. As long as you looked the part, had the house, the car and did the ski trip in winter, nobody cared. Like the bankers and property developers, we all fooled ourselves into believing that the party would go on for ever and sure we were here for the entertainment and what harm in that. Well we now know that there was harm. There was nothing under the bonnet. Much employment in this country was a one trick pony: construction, flipping houses and buying shares.

We will need people who can speak up for themselves. We will need people who have something to say and know how to say it with conviction and passion. We will need people who can deliver a message that people don’t want to hear. As all the institutions and authority figures of the past crumble to dust, we will need to be convinced that they are not being replaced by a new crop of greedy, egotistical, self-orientated pimps. In parish councils and school boards of management, in unions and company boardrooms, we will need people with the skills to prepare what they have to say in advance, to structure what they have to say in a way that engages their listeners and with the confidence and experience to deliver their message effectively. Because without them, the politicians and the bankers, the Berties and the Seanies of this world will ridicule and disparage those with the courage to seek to show us a better way.

Is the Pope a Catholic?

I have just read the Popes letter to the Irish Catholic Church which is available on the RTE/news/ website. I would encourage anyone who seeks to an understanding of how things are within the Irish and by extension the world Catholic Church to read it. The basic assumption or belief system from which the Pope operates id that Catholics know best. That is the mindset you have to deal with first and foremost. This is a religion based on tradition, myth and magic. I suppose all religions are by their very nature.

No one imagines that this painful situation will be resolved swiftly. Real progress has been made, yet much more remains to be done… At the same time, I must also express my conviction that, in order to recover from this grievous wound, the Church in Ireland must first acknowledge before the Lord and before others the serious sins committed against defenceless children.

No one imagines that this painful situation will be resolved swiftly. Real progress has been made, yet much more remains to be done. Perseverance and prayer are needed, with great trust in the healing power of God’s grace. At the same time, I must also express my conviction that, in order to recover from this grievous wound, the Church in Ireland must first acknowledge before the Lord and before others the serious sins committed against defenceless children.

Here we have a man who believes the issue is first and foremost a sin which has wounded the church rather than a sin which the church authorities have committed against its members. He also seems to be listening to a rather rose-tinted version of Irish economic and social history when he states that:

In almost every family in Ireland, there has been someone – a son or a daughter, an aunt or an uncle – who has given his or her life to the Church.

My view would be that this was the source of the problem and not something to be boasting of. How many joined the religious orders out of economic necessity? The pope rightly calls attention to the selection process involved and the training and supervision of these people. But when you deliberately create a mystique around a particular lifestyle it becomes very hard to reject those who, for whatever reason, offer themselves for that lifestyle.

Most fundamentally, the letter demonstrates the almost insurmountable problem that faces the Roman Church with regard to issues of sexuality. This Pope cannot I fear get his head around the possibility that men might enter the church because of the power it would provide them over peoples lives. These were not failed priests but individuals, for reasons I’m not sure that psychology fully understands, who had certain inclinations which unless controlled by the environment will be acted upon. The institutions of the church, its seminaries and structures, may well have removed the normal controls that exist within the community at large. When it occurred within families or communities, while a source of shame that may have provoked silence at least enabled the perpetrator to be ostracized or at least identified as a danger. The church in its all pervading arrogance insisted that it knew best, that it would decide and that its needs were paramount.

The church created the societies in which the abuse, physical, sexual and mental, took place. The church in its insistence on obedience to authority and its absolute refusal to acknowledge that it is governed and administered by men and not by Gods, creates a hierarchy that by its very nature abuses those at the bottom of the pile. In laying the blame at the door of the people at the bottom of the pile that arrogance is laid bare.

Fast-paced social change has occurred, often adversely affecting people’s traditional adherence to Catholic teaching and values.

It was the tortuous slow pace of social change that eventually cut through the secrecy of the Catholic Church and forced it kicking and screaming into civil courts of law that saved further generations of children from abuse. The heroes are those who left the churches in numbers sufficient enough to empower journalists and some politicians to tell it like it was. Would this Pope wish to return his church in Ireland to the dysfunction of Irish society in the 1950s and ’60s. I suspect so. To his priests he says

I know that many of you are disappointed, bewildered and angered by the way these matters have been handled by some of your superiors. Yet, it is essential that you cooperate closely with those in authority and help to ensure that the measures adopted to respond to the crisis will be truly evangelical, just and effective.

That never-ending invocation of authority. No matter what, obey. In asking this of his priestly class, he asks it also of the ordinary member, obey. And they did. They obeyed the priest, the teacher, the guard and the banker. And it was the church that said the children should obey the adults, should endure the pain, and stay silent.

It is my belief that this letter will be seen for what it is, another nail in the coffin of an institution which has long outlived its usefulness and is now a hindrance to the coming of the Christ (regardless of how possible you may view that reality. I am willing to acknowledge your free will to choose).

Animal Spirits – Akerlof and Shiller

How human psychology drives the economy, and why it matters for global capitalism

This is an excellent book by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller and really up to date having being published in 2009. It is interesting because the authors have an ability to explain things in a way that is understandable to the general reader which helps given the extent to which things economic fill the media. But what is especially interesting is the general approach the authors take. A list of the chapter headings gives an idea of what I mean:

1. Confidence and Its Multipliers
2. Fairness
3. Corruption and Bad Faith
4. Money Illusion
5. Stories

These themes are central to how ordinary people influence the real economy and are affected by the real economy. What does come as a bit of a shock is the idea that working economists seem to be in denial bout how we, the people, make the decisions we make about our day-to-day spending. They would appear to believe that we, the people, make investment decisions each time we consider a purchase. That we rationally weigh the costs and benefits of the transaction rather than simply respond to our emotional state. All you have to do is watch any of the recent crop of property related programmes on TV to see how irrational peoples economic decision-making is. Or indeed a few episodes of Dragon’s Den will let you see many entrepreneurs investing their severance package in mad cap ideas that could never work.

The basic premise of the book is given on page 26.

But the bounty of capitalism has at least one downside. It does not automatically produce what people really need; it produces what they think they need, and are willing to pay for. If they are willing to pay for real medicine, it will produce real medicine. But if they are willing to pay for snake oil, it will produce snake oil.

And as if we still needed to be convinced, in the conclusion on page 172, the authors explain how

this debate [about regulation] has gone back and forth several times since then. The last major shift occurred in the 1970s with the election of Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and in the 198os with the election of Ronald Reagan in the United States. For the previous thirty years, with the general acceptance of the New Deal, the dominant thinking of policy makers had been that government was to play a key role in providing the infrastructure for a capitalist society. This infrastructure consisted of not just physical highways, an educational system, and support for scientific research, but also regulations, especially those governing financial markets. At the end of the 1980s we had an economic system that was remarkably well adapted to weather any storm…

But then—and this is another part of our story—the economy, as it always does, changed. It adapted to the regulations that were in place. With the general acceptance after the 198os of the belief that capitalism was a free-for-all, the playing field may have changed, but the rules of the game had not adapted. This has been nowhere more apparent than in the financial markets. The story we just told about the housing market illustrates this perfectly. In the old days there were natural limits on home mortgages. The commercial banks and savings banks had reason to be careful in their initiation of a mortgage. They themselves would be its most likely holder. But then all that changed. The banks became the initiators, but not the holders, of mortgages. But regulation did not adapt to reflect this change in the financial structure.

Public antipathy toward regulation supplied the underlying reason for this failure. The United States [and Europe] was deep into a new view of capitalism. We believed in the no-holds-barred interpretation of the game. We had forgotten the hard-earned lesson of the 193os: that capitalism can give us the best of all possible worlds, but it does so only on a playing field where the government sets the rules and acts as a referee.

Yet we are currently not really in a crisis for capitalism. We must merely recognize that capitalism must live within certain rules. Indeed our whole view of the economy, with all of those animal spirits, indicates why the government must set those rules. It may be true that in the classical model there is full employment. But in our view the waves of optimism and pessimism cause large-scale changes in aggregate demand. Since wages are determined largely by considerations of fairness, these changes in demand translate not into shifts in wages and prices but into shifts in employment. When demand goes down, unemployment rises. It is the role of the government to mute those changes.

And, to emphasize what we have said previously, in our view capitalism does not just sell people what they really want; it also sells them what they think they want. Especially in financial markets, this leads to excesses, and to bankruptcies that cause failure in the economy more generally. All of these processes are driven by stories. The stories that people tell to themselves, about themselves, about how others behave, and even about how the economy as a whole behaves all influence what they do. These stories are not stable but vary over time.

In this country it was houses, houses and more houses to the tune of some 370,000 that we don’t need. But there was an even more insidious belief undermining our future as a society. The FF belief that “It’s about jobs, stupid.” Instead of encouraging thousands of young people into albeit skilled and semi-skilled jobs in construction, here is what should have happened (pg 142).

A nation’s investment-in new machinery and equipment, new factory buildings, new bridges and highways, new software, new communications infrastructure- ought to matter enormously for its economic prosperity. These tools convert our simple labor into modern and sophisticated output. The better our tools, the better our standard of living will be. If a country imports the most up-to-date machinery and software, or better yet builds it itself its workers are forced into a learning experience that keeps them abreast of the latest thinking in technology. The investment produces hands-on experience with new technology. Careful studies have confirmed that countries that have made more such investments have higher standards of living.

Even so, governments today (with some rare exceptions) do not decide their countries’ investments. Businesspeople do. And while they are constrained by financial parameters, they also have to believe in their investments. Their decision process is ultimately intuitive and psychological. Thus the future of any country is in the hands of the business-people who decide on investments, and it is in large measure dependent on their psychology.

And the psychology of the Irish business-man, ably abetted by government, was firmly stuck in an antiquated belief in the primacy of land ownership and transactions as the source of wealth. They were all, by and large, of farming stock.  John B. Kean’s The Field was adapted into film by John Sheridan in 1990, just as we entered the Celtic Tiger era. Instead of being seen as a biopic of a world that was past, subsequent events suggest that it may have given credence to an idea that should have been passing from the general consciousness but wasn’t. Change comes slowly in Ireland.

The reader will learn a lot from this book and I highly recommend it. You will certainly be able to ask more searching questions of the politicians that seek your vote next time around.

There is trouble ahead

I had a surreal moment yesterday leaving the college car park. I reversed straight back out of my parking space and proceeded to turn left which meant I was momentarily on the right side of the roadway intending to complete my turn and end up on the left side. A car coming from further up the car park realising this slowed and awaited for me to complete the manoeuvre. Meanwhile another car entering from the other end of the car park moved across my path preventing me from going to the correct side of the road, passed on my left, then had to move right to avoid the car behind me.

I couldn’t believe my eyes as I watched this twenty something do a chicane manoeuvre between two moving vehicles. I looked at him as he passed me and it was pretty obvious that for him I simply an object that was in his way. I shouldn’t say “I” really because I suspect for him only the object of the car existed. It never entered his consciousness that the car contained a driver or that that drivers intentions where of any consequence to him.

It’s not my first such incident with young drivers. Once in a garage forecourt having got petrol I was moving away from the pump intending to turn round the pump and park the car. I am pretty sure I looked towards the roadway before looking left and starting my turn left. A car drove in from the road intent on heading to the same carpark. We touch with a few scrapes but no real damage. For me this young driver saw only her objective and nothing else.

You see this behaviour day in day out in college. Young people who behave as if they were the only person on the planet. They block corridors completely unconcerned that the person approaching has no way around them and will simply stand there until asked to move. I have discovered that in order to move about the college and especially if I wish to get through a doorway, I have to simply barge my way through these young people.

So here we have a generation that acts as if it is totally unconscious of the needs and rights of others. A generation that seems incapable or unwilling to take other people moving and living in the same space into account. What implications does that have for the way society functions on a moment to moment, never mind day to day, basis? What implications does that have for ordinary things like the rules of the road, for the increasingly urbanised and population dense environment in which we live?

These young people are not unconscious of those around them neither are they mean spirited. It’s worse then that I think. They treat others the way they do because they believe that they are supposed to. They have been raised by their parents to pretend they don’t care about others beyond their immediate circle in an effort to avoid the emotional implications that such caring would entail.

Imagine if we all really cared about the lives of the others with whom we share this country. Could Willie O’Dea have gotten as far as he did? He still doesn’t get it if his interview today is anything to go by. He believes that saying what he said about Quinliven is not that serious. That settling out of court in order to avoid the truth coming to the attention of the court is not serious. He truly believes that the object of being involved in politics is to have position, influence and a career. He serves his constituency, his group, his circle, to that end. He is not a national politician. He is the quintessential parish pump politician. He sees nothing that is not framed within his world view. He responds to nothing that is not within his world view. He is the reason the boom was busted.

And that attitude is quite common among upcoming generations. They believe that their family, their group, is all that counts. They feel it is unsafe for them to behave otherwise. It is tribalism of the worst kind. In a society that has never cherished it’s children equally nor provided for them adequately we should not be surprised. Yet I sincerely believe  there is a disconnect in place. I believe our young people do care and want to care and most importantly, want to feel cared about. But they have been taught, by the likes of Willie O’Dea, Bertie Aherne, Charlie Haughey, Liam Lawlor and Ray Burke that taking care of your own is all that matters.

Somehow we need to generate an atmosphere around our children within which they can safely care about others without fear of ridicule or derision. We need to encourage young people to risk caring about the world around them, about people they don’t know and about the consequences of their actions for others and for future generations. We need to at least try to instil in our youth a long term perspective that reaches beyond the next election or the next weeks wage.

George Lee rocks

The George Lee story is one dear to my heart for in my own little way I have been that man. I can think of at least five occasions in my life when I have walked away from things because I had arrived at the conclusion that it was impossible to achieve the goal. I had nasty things said about me I’m sure. I was letting people down. I was running away. All the things that are currently being said about George Lee were said about me.

This idea that no matter how badly screwed up things are you just gotta keep working at it is particularly common in Scouting and Guiding. Somebody screws up big time and it’s usually someone in authority and it’s usually because of poor planning and/or unrealistic expectations. Someone gets a notion, goes off half cocked, gets loads of kids involved and it all goes wrong. Then the underlings are expected keep going, sorting, making it work “for the sake of the kids”. The underlings MAKE it work. They do the hours, make the effort and no one is ever the wiser because from the outside all looks grand. But it’s over and everybody goes home vowing “never again”. But nobody is responsible for the cock-up that became the crisis. Everybody looks forward and nobody notices that some of the bodies are no longer around. And the same people are still there because only people who think the way they do stay.

I left a job back in 2001 for much the same reasons. I advocated for change, worked for change, argued for change but they were those who simply did not want change because the status-quo worked for them. I once left a sports club for the same reason. I left a personal development group because it became clear that many of those in the group wanted to keep the group as it was so that they could avoid change.

If we have ever wondered why things are so slow to change in this society it is because there are not enough people in this society  willing to change. This is because there are those who benefit from the way things are. They make money, acquire status or avoid the risk of loosing something, anything. Take the notion of having to serve an apprenticeship as a politician. In order to get selected by a party you have to appeal to those already in positions of influence and authority in that party. You have to offer them a continuence of that influence and power. It’s the old turkeys not voting for Christmas idea. So serving your time in the constituency is a must because that builds relationships locally, gets you elected, and trains you for building relationships in the Dáil. Only people who expect nothing to happen very fast go into politics. Only people who expect nothing to happen very fast go into the Civil Service.

Most shocking of all are the many declarations of how wonderful a career George Lee could have had. Career! George didn’t want a career, he wanted to help with a crisis. But it speaks volumes for the way these people think. If you consider politics to be a career you are ok with waiting years for your chance to come. Someone has to die or make a mistake that means they don’t get elected and you do. Then you have to wait to get into government. Then you have to get into the cabinet. Then have a Taoiseach that supports your ideas. Yes, you need patience and you need to be knee-deep in the system – as it exists. It is not in the interests of anyone in the system to change the system because the object of the exercise is to have career in politics. To last a long time in politics. To have influence among those who decide who is or is not involved in politics.

Such a system cannot change from within. It can only have change forced upon it. It is our job as citizens to force change upon the system. And that means we have to change first. We have to refuse to shake the hands of those politicians who turn up at our funerals. We have to stop inviting these politicians to speak at our club, group or business functions. We have to, as far as possible ignore those politicians who pretend to care about what we want, for they are pursuing a career and not our interests. We have to demand of our civil servants value for the money we pay them, politely and with respect. For it is often the case that it is the career pursuing politicians who have them running from Billy to Jack gathering information to be used as excuses for why nothing ever changes.

Nothing changes because the system requires nothing to change in order to maintain itself. George Lee was right to get out of the system. Young people are right to refuse to stay in institutions and education systems that are designed to maintain incompetent teachers in jobs and prepare an acquiescent population for waiting for nothing to change. The last thing the system wants is people who can think for themselves.

But change will come. Of that you can be sure. The pot continues to boil and the tighter you lock down the lid, the bigger the inevitable bang.