Wilting Shamrocks and Twelve Stars.

Brave Marchers

The combination of religion with nationalistic enthusiasm always made me slightly nervous, even when it was just a matter of St Patrick’s day. At Downside in Somerset where I went to school, the brave contingent of Irish lads would sport their shamrock specially sent from home, likely to be slightly wilting after their journey in a little box; of course this was the occasion of some gentle ribbing, of which yours truly no doubt did his share.

It was not that I wasn’t interested in St Patrick, who indeed might well  have come from Somerset. He was a Romanised Celt, which is an interesting combination for a start, and the poetry of his bits of writing and the story that he was first taken to Ireland as a slave and then returned to preach the Trinity with the little leaves of the shamrock appealed. My dear friend Ken Thompson went on to make a beautiful statue of him as a shepherd, which is atop a column in Westport, Co Mayo. The question was, what had that lark of parading round chilly streets waving flags got to do with it? Half the time it seems to parody St Patrick rather than honour him!

Ken rounded off his career as a sculptor with a magnificent Stations of the Cross for the restored Cathedral of St Mel in Longford, and has just given me a copy of a beautiful book with his reflections on them as well as photographs of them, which is available through Veritas Books. I have only had time to read what he says about the First Station, but I love his comment on Pilate’s question, 'What is truth?' - ‘Significantly he didn’t wait for an answer’.

One often meets people who quite proudly announce that 'they don’t believe in anything!' One has to ask, have they asked themselves that famous question at all, and have they really looked for an answer? It is in the vicinity of such questioning that one can glimpse the difference between mere tribalism and genuine community, indeed the very oneness of truth and love.

Love of course unites; however the first thing our culture does with knowledge is to divide it up into ever proliferating compartments. Along come the educators, often without the foggiest idea of an holistic principle that might enlighten them, and all they do is teach youngsters to assimilate and manipulate information within these compartments, so that they can produce as necessary whatever components that the market may require. No wonder they don’t believe in anything; they cannot even know what believing is! Is it not largely a matter of establishing connections?

When the victims of this fragmenting and compartmentalising education come for instance to being journalists, what language, what terms of reference have they which will enable them to stand up to the newspaper proprietor whose main interest is to exploit the prejudices of the tribe that he targets, for money and for power? Journalists get on who have a good nose for it all. They please editors, and editors get on who please their owners, and one can pick and choose one’s elected ‘facts’ to say just about anything. Even if the journalist has done his best to say things as they are, a cut here and there, a headline and a shift of emphasis can quickly change the sense of his report.

The most obnoxious newspapers are the ones with the most obnoxious owners, whether they are the plutocrats of the ‘free world’ or the dictators elsewhere. Take the British papers advocating Brexit. We know the great lengths some of their flag-waving owners go to in order to avoid paying tax, as well as to evade their beloved fellow countrymen as much as possible.  I might mention the ones who built the mansion on the small island of Brecqhou that I have referred to previously in this blog. Could it be that their patriotic zeal stems primarily from the EU gradually making tax-dodging more difficult? Then there’s all 'that damned continental socialism'!

The Brexit  thing does have a long tradition to build on, notably represented by King Henry VIII wanting to suit himself in the marriage stakes. Once the authority of the Catholic Church was overthrown, the attempts of Britain’s neighbours to ‘put manners’ on the islanders became more and more crude, through King Philip II of Spain, Napoleon and Hitler. Unfortunately nobody had properly figured out the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity yet, and though the founding fathers of the EU sneaked it into its ideology, in practice the said EU does remain somewhat stuck in the over-centralised Napoleonic mode. The disastrous Common Fisheries Policy is a good example.

It’s a pity the French never really repudiated their grand homme, as the Germans did Hitler. Of course the two were not in the same class as to sheer evil. When it came to constructing the EU, it was perhaps only the trauma of the world wars that had sufficient effect to overcome the resentments on all sides. The English had to recognise that after all their fate depended on that of Europe, and the Continentals that after all those maudits Anglais did have their value in counteracting the grand excesses. Now that the memories of all that are fading, it is a tall order to sustain the catholic project for a universal community.

One might ask why it is easier to do so in Ireland and Scotland? I think simply because here it is the English who have not just threatened as they have themselves been threatened, but who have actually carried out the invading. The Celts were not only pushed out of England in the first place, but they were not even left alone in their damp and rocky retreats. That Romanised Celt, Patrick, turns out to have been a very significant figure, a prophet who might have averted much subsequent grief had he been attended to better; you would hardly gather it from the parades, but perhaps he can still do much to help unite the peoples of these islands within the latest edition of the Pax Romana! Let me testify to the fact that while my genes come from both the Celtic and Germanic blood-streams, though marginally more from the latter, my life experience has led me to identify more and more with him. 

Meanwhile, the twelve stars from the crown of 'the woman adorned with the sun and standing on the moon' and giving birth, in the Book of Revelation, make a more meaningful emblem to me than any national flag! If we want the project it represents to have a new lease of life, we need to recall her; we also have to take Pilate’s question much more seriously and somehow find our way back to the only realistic and holistic concept of truth available.

Whereas my mind was nearly splitting with such preoccupations as a journalist, I found fishing for a living very therapeutic. Either one caught fish or one did not; there was the physical reality that could not be fooled and there was one’s own thoughts and actions in relation to it; no room for fantasies and meanwhile one’s mind was one’s own.  But the old thoughts were trundling along in the background.

The Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno said somewhere words to the effect that ‘good writing is the fruit of successful living’. No, he didn’t mean two cars and a nice house. I hope these last fifty years of mine have constituted what he did mean, but what of the fruit? If I don’t do something with my little stock of it now, it will only rot, but I have so far not found a market for it. Technology to the rescue! I for one shall not be crying if newspapers die out, but it remains to be seen where the internet will take us. I wonder where this blog will go? It is easy enough to get it out; the biggest problem is that everyone’s mind is getting saturated. 

It is a bonus that I can monitor where the posts go, but I would like to get more comments back and find out who appreciates what! There does seem to be some interest in the high-falutin' stuff like this one, but others may be relieved when I get back to sea next month!

Where is it going?

'Eft, 'Ight!

I well remember the day when it was definitely proven that I knew better than my father, at the great age of 17. We were sailing back to Cornwall from Ireland, in those happy days before fancy electronics, with only a compass and a patent log as navigational aids, in a 27’ sloop. Walker’s patent log came out of its wooden box, smelling of the special oil with which it was lubricated through a hole in the dial; it was fixed to its little plate on the taffrail, and its spinner was hooked to the revolving disc at the back of it, and solemnly streamed as we made our departure.

So we knew that we were somewhere in the general vicinity of the Scilly Isles or Land’s End, but the visibility was not great. A cliff with a tower on it appeared. “Ah, there’s St Martin’s Daymark, very good!” said Dad, mainly because that’s what he expected it to be. He was on the tiller, and I had the advantage of having studied the chart. “Doesn’t look like St Martin’s Daymark to me!”  And I was right! The tower turned out to be in Cornwall rather than the Scillies, which meant that we had to turn right rather than left. Such choices make a huge difference when one is in a small sailing boat off Land’s End!

I mention this not to blow my own trumpet, but by way of reiterating the truism that youngsters always delight in knowing better than their seniors, and sometimes they may even be right!  Age has its disadvantages, especially when it comes to dealing with preconceptions at a time of rapid change. Mind you a teenager today would probably just take out his smart phone to see where he was, if there was any doubt about it. All you need is the right technology man! So, mastering that, they reckon to be away ahead of the game. Never mind that old stuff about experience and tradition; the machine will keep you right!

For a modern person, the main preoccupation seems to be to get ahold of the right technology for the job in hand. I’m going to do a spot of building here on Sherkin Island  this summer, and here I am digging the footings, by hand! Where's the digger? When I mooted the notion to the guy in the building supplies place that it might not be necessary to have a big truck with a crane on it to deliver some blocks, he looked at me as though I had two heads. It’s rather the same story when I mention to some people that I have no car.

No digger!

If you take the odd break from technology, you will find out to what extent we tend to be conditioned by whatever technology we use. Perhaps it’s partly because you nearly have to use a car to get anywhere these days, and then immediately you must choose one side of the road or the other, that progressive folk in Ireland long for a proper left/right divide in our politics. The lefties are hoping the two ‘right-wing’ parties will have to get together to form a government, so that they can form the opposition, and when in due course it comes to the delightful business of throwing the next government out….

The fact that you really do have to choose one side of the road or the other, if you’re going anywhere by car, does make driving a pretty good image for politics. Democracy after all is a technology, a mechanism for undertaking tasks in common, like the building of roads, and agreeing regulation for their use, a matter that admittedly can assume huge proportions if there happens to be thousands of refugees on them! The word democracy means rule by a demos, that is a people who have more or less common assumptions and objectives. The more they agree and in fact have an underlying love for each other and for life in general, even when they quarrel, the better it works and the  less regulation is required.

Meanwhile, in this world where brotherhood remains aspirational, if you want to engage in politics, you must indeed choose one side or the other, either going to the left or the right. Which way you turn is a matter of where you want to get to, or to get away from. The young are liable to want to turn in the opposite direction to their parents, just to prove they’re their own people, and that more than anything else sets the tone for many people’s politics. My Dad had a saying about anyone under 25 who was not left-wing having no heart, and anyone over 40 who was not right-wing having no head; but it can take more than 25 years to get over the need to react to father!

All this is compatible with love, or at least with travelling in a loving way. But where love fails, one must fall back on regulation, on laws, on force. Whichever side of the political road you are on, if you leave love out, depending more and more on brute force as you go on, you will end up in a similar, nasty, place, commonly known as Hell; witness Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.

It would seem that the place for a sane man would need to be on the left in Nazi Germany, and on the right in Soviet Russia. The important thing is to realise that the left/right thing, though it may be a necessary part of the practise of politics, is far from absolute, and will be irrelevant when we arrive home!

A sailing man like myself is more likely to take the line that if other drivers and the cops are getting even madder than usual, the best thing is to leave the high-road altogether, hoist sail and take to the seas. I cannot claim that this is necessarily heroic. It just doesn’t do to simply wash one’s hands of either politics or religion; they are both inescapable parts of what it is to be human.

Generally we must get along with other people as best we can, so there’s politics for you, with its laws and its compromises. Then there are absolute, transcendent truths in the world. For example, however one travels, patience and respect for others are good, while careering madly on one’s way with utter disregard for them is bad. Such truths, I would suggest, belong essentially to the religious dimension of life; religion when it is about anything worthwhile is about cultivating truth and love. People without any religious language are inclined to end up thinking and acting religiously in the language of politics, as if this could mediate transcendent truth, and they do nearly as much harm as those who act politically in the name of religion, having no hold on the real thing. 

If only get we can the right relationship between the two sorted out, we will have a lot less trouble on our hands. I do not mean to divide them into completely separate compartments. The embarrassing fact (to our secular society) is that the managerial and regulatory business of politics becomes destructive when it loses its basis in truth and love, inevitably pitting people against each other. One would hardly think, from the media coverage, that the outgoing Irish Government's crushing defeat had anything at all to do with its stance on abortion and marriage, though I can think of quite a few voters who turned against it precisely on these grounds.

While it is true that religion has the primacy, whether this is acknowledged or not, it must respect the polis and its autonomy, always remembering that our grasp of absolute and transcendent truth is very much a work in progress. Meanwhile it is good that some people, mystics, hermits, sailors, head off into the blue, trying to get a better handle on it. As one leaves the coast behind, one gets the land into a truer perspective!

Sailing into the Blue.

Let's Make Europe Great Again!

I am on Sherkin living the good life with Fiona, doing a bit of building and a bit of readin’ and writin’, but there are two things particularly annoying me: the gales that keep on coming, and the thought of those refugees out at night in the bitter weather. Furthermore, is it really the best Europe can manage, to be sending those young men back home, bitter, frustrated, unemployed and disillusioned as far as Europe is concerned, to get into trouble there? As for the gales, they are at least a constant reminder of the threat of climate change hanging over us.

A further dimension to the trouble is the possibility of the EU foundering altogether. I see that David McWilliams, one of the brighter Irish economic commentators, writes that he believes ‘the EU is a legacy project that has lost any real meaning or focus.’  He moreover believes that  in the event of Britain leaving the EU, Ireland will be forced to recognise that ‘Our national interest is a special relationship with the UK; end of story.’(1)

It is a fact that the EU always seems to be doing too little, too late. However, I rather thought legacies were precious things, while it seems that for our bright young man, anything from the past is dubious, even its treasures. This particular legacy came to us of course from the near-death experience of Europe in the first half of the 20th century. Guess who wrote this, just before I was born in 1946:- ‘ It (the remedy for the ills of those times) is to recreate the European fabric, or as much of it as we can, and to provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, safety and freedom. We must build a kind of United States of Europe.‘ The answer is Winston Churchill, (2)

He continued: ‘I am now going to say something that will astonish you. The first step in the re-creation of the European family must be a partnership between France and Germany. In this way only can France recover the moral and cultural leadership of Europe. There can be no revival of Europe without a spiritually great France and a spiritually great Germany. The structure of the United States of Europe will be such as to make the material strength of a single State less important. Small nations will count as much as large ones and gain their honour by a contribution to the common cause.’  ‘Great Britain, the British Commonwealth of Nations, mighty America - and, I trust, Soviet Russia, for then indeed all would be well - must be the friends and sponsors of the new Europe and must champion its right to live. ‘

What one mostly heard about from Irish politicians, when we got around to joining the EEC in 1973, was the billions coming our way in structural funds. No attempt to sell the big picture to the likes of young David McWilliams! Now he seems to think that it was only our right to get all that help building a modern infrastructure and so on. Maybe he is not even happy that today we are making a very small contribution to the Eur3billion going to Turkey to help them cope with the Syrian refugees, and the 700million going to Greece for the same purpose? But maybe indeed this does not add up to ‘real meaning or focus’!

Still his complaint is a trifle odd, in that for all his self-proclaimed radicalism, McWilliams seems to be entirely of the political orthodoxy which proclaims that enlightened self-interest is the only realistic and sound basis for human action, perhaps with a vague pseudo-scientific narrative about evolution and the survival of the fittest behind it. That human beings have been working away at the project of discovering ‘real meaning and focus’ for their lives from the beginning does not apparently occur to him, let alone the notion that there might be something to be learned from their efforts. Religion of course is only to be indulged in in private, if one must.

Well, the results are coming thick and fast, with malaise, anxiety and fragmentation on all sides. There’s much talk of cutting bridges and putting up fences. Strange how the conservatives in both Britain and America are so bitterly divided, having evidently forgotten what it is that they are supposed to be conserving. Of course here in Ireland they have been at odds on the matter since the founding of the Republic. Meanwhile we join Spain in dodging on under auto-pilot. Let’s hope the politicians can at least agree who to put on the wheel before they run on the rocks!

Pity the conservatives gave up learning Latin, I say! Not alone might it have taught them something about the derivation of language, but of our Western civilisation, and helped them to think and speak logically and objectively. Come to think of it, it might help the 'progressive' lot too; with their strange and indeed dangerous notion that you can build anything good without reference to the past!

Curiously enough, one has to admit that the one country that does appear to have made some kind of real contribution to peace in Syria lately is Russia, though at a terrible price. She is a danger and yet another cause of anxiety to Europe. Yet it is hard to believe that the Russians will want to get too heavily involved there by themselves. I cannot see any answer but for Europe to take a leaf or two out of Ancient Rome’s book. Supposing Europe, including the Russians, were to train and arm all those frustrated young men in the context of a sort of foreign legion, and direct them in bringing peace and the rule of law to their countries; and most importantly, follow it up by a kind of Marshall Plan for them?

It has long seemed to me that the sun-drenched deserts have an important role to play, producing solar energy for the greening of Europe. If it could not be delivered direct through superconductors, it could be used to make hydrogen and power our vehicles and houses through fuel cells. If only we could find the will and the bold leadership, a huge amount of danger and anxiety could be lifted in one fell swoop; but where indeed are such old-fashioned qualities to be found?

There's an old moon over Horseshoe Bay this morning!

(1)<http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2016/03/03/the-three-most-pressing-issues-that-will-top-new-governments-to-do-list>

(2)<https://www.coe.int/t/dgal/dit/ilcd/Archives/selection/Churchill/ZurichSpeech_en.asp>