Ideas and action in Ireland - will 2011 bring change?

The Kerry Eagle hears much talk of hardship, unfairness and government ineptitude.  It is a difficult fact to accept but in 2007 the Irish people voted the current administration into power.  All Irish voters are part of this system, some with more power than others. Many people have worked tirelessly for years trying to affect political change but the Irish voter is a sleepy one.

The Irish voter likes to discuss politics. But when it comes to partaking in the political arena there is nothing much done.
It reminds me of a football team who discuss tactics endlessly pre and post match yet when it comes to doing some serious training and hard graft they are found wanting.  Little wonder then, when an Irish team is faced with tough European opposition, that we are pushed over very easily.

The Arena of Political Debate

Perhaps it was the Civil War that branded in the heads of Irish men and women that political action was dangerous, uncontrollable and best left to others.  After all the ideals and well constructed aspirations of the writers and intellectuals behind the Irish culture and political revival from 1880s onwards the nation expected great things. 

Yet a deep conservatism took hold in the 1920s, which spread its hold on the Irish political system in the 1930s and 1940s, on into the 1950s.  The Church took hold of thinking with an iron fist.
The Irish political system developed into a potatoes and meat machine. Rural, unsophisticated and not willing to change. Apart from a new writers and commentators the arena of political thinking was barren.

But the Irish people battled on.  Some ideas were written and spoken of but as abstract nothings, to be admired but without no connection to reality.  Intellectuals were believed not to be important in the shaping of a nation.
As a people we had forgotten the work done by Yeats, O'Casey, Pearse and Connolly.
 
The Church fills the vacuum

The church filled the arena of thinking with their strong religious ideas.  It had taken a hundred years.  During The Famine the Catholic authorities in USA were disgusted with the level of ignorance of the Irish arriving on its shores who claimed to be Catholic yet had no idea of Church thinking and practises.  They demanded that the Irish church start getting their house in order.  And so began a concerted effort to bring the church ideas into the minds of the Irish.

The church and their ideas brighten the peoples minds with hope.  They believed in their church, their prayers and their daily suffering for the goodness of the future and their children's future. 

This is not the case now. 

A Lack of Hope
 
Whatever about the lack of money these days there is also a serious lack of hope.  The cornerstone of Irish morality and spiritual practises, The Catholic Church, has been shown to be fundamentally untrustworthy and
deceitful. 

Without hope the people minds' are darkened.

Unfortunately the Irish after Independence put all their eggs into the one basket as regards thinking and ideas.  Institutions of though other than the Church were not fostered.

Non religious aligned writers and intellectuals did not work on Irish ground, they left the country in there droves.

Without a tradition of nurturing ideas that shape a country the current arena of political debate is disdainful of new ideas.  It is deeply conservative.  We have thrown away our reliance on Church thinking yet we hold onto one of its core beliefs;  no change is usually best.

Yet nature abhors a vacuum.  The current ways of doing thinking has been found wanting.  New ideas are needed.

Bereft of ideas that we believed in we have had ideas foisted on us by the men with money from Washington(IMF) and Berlin(ECB). 

The Future

2011 will be an important year.  Important decisions will need to be taken.

2010 was marked by our leaders following a deeply conservative path, of using old ways of things that have not worked.  There is a crisis in many areas of life.
New ideas are needed.  But will these ideas be given a chance to grow?

The team is weak.  The Irish voter favours the strongman who looks after his own and is conversative.  In a time of crisis it remains to be seen will the Irish voter rise from his/her slumber, take a look around at what is happening and engage with the political process in a meaningful fashion.

Will the Irish voter give power to new ideas, to institutions that foster thinking and open up arenas for political debate?

Or will he/she leave this work up to others who they can later criticise?

There is much work to be done.  We live in hope of a bright future.