What Will It Take?

It's grey, damp, windy and very mild for January on Sherkin. Everyone seems to have coughs and colds, but I am lucky enough to be able to take it easy beside a warm stove. How lucky indeed one is to have a good home, when the wide world hardly bears thinking about! The USA, Britain, Australia, all in trouble, and all places where we have close relatives. 

     The Ducky seems finally to have lost it, demonstrating that in the unlikely event that he does actually keep his word to pack in the Forever War in the Middle East, he will make sure to leave even more chaos, mayhem and ill-will behind. Boris' Blighty is sloping off into a hall of mirrors and Australia is burning. Welcome to the 2020s!

     Denial is a common thread that links these three disasters. We have seen long-term denial that the American 'war on terror' and intervention in the Middle East has overall been one long counter-productive disaster, as has (most dramatically in Australia) the attempt to ignore  climate change - both cases of disasters fertilised by lies, as indeed Brexit will prove, unless I am much mistaken.

     Many people, most notably the Ducky, have tried to suppress all reference to climate change or 'the climate catastrophe'. Now Mr Johnson is even trying to suppress this word 'Brexit'. The hope is that people will not be able to hold them responsible for the results coming down the track, which will all be other people's fault. It makes it very difficult for anyone, especially civil servants, to call out their lies; the merest reference to such forbidden words is put down as divisive, unpatriotic, negative etc. They will even pride themselves on 'avoiding confrontation'.

     But after all, isn't that what we would all like to do? Especially within ourselves? We hear from the Ducky that he doesn't want war, in pretty much the same breath that he virtually declares it, just as we see so many people who want to 'do something about global warming', while living lives that stoke it more than ever, but 'actions speak louder than words'. Meanwhile those who point to the reality of what is being done and expose the hypocrisy of so much that is said are accused of being 'divisive and negative'.

      We Irish are of course pretty good at doing hypocrisy with the best of them. Indeed, can anyone be sure they are free of it, or even survive in a world that is full of it without keeping their mouths shut and playing along for much of the time? On the other hand, to be aware of and to articulate the truth even about oneself is very difficult, though surely it is the first duty for anyone with pretensions as a thinker or writer; needless to say, to do so about others is not a great way to win friends. The world is full of people who prosper by way of telling others what they want to hear - hence the tendency of thoughtful people to shun it!

     Nonetheless, there is no use in 'speaking truth' unless one tries to do so in a way that others may hear.  Gentle and respectful diplomacy is the honourable way to address others and indeed the only way if we are to avoid mutual self-destruction. It would be nice to think that Ireland has a unique and special calling to find ways of speaking to people from opposing camps who are no longer able to hear or to speak to each other, since we have suffered this situation so long and so dramatically on this island. But sometimes such attempts at reconciliation just do not work, and one is left wondering what it will take to bring it about, enabling us to see ourselves and our world as we really are? 

    After a decade in which denial has trumped all efforts to do something about global warming, will even those fires in Oz turn that country around? And what about us? The joy of living on a little island is that it defines a world that one may just hope to leave more beautiful in some small measure than one found it, yet I would not wish our lives to be inward looking. At least let us hope that along with making our corner as joyful as we can, we also find the space to see the world more truly, and to say it more or less like it is! New Year's Resolution - let us try to deal in truth!

The West Room finished and in good use at last!