Equality and the paralysis of Thought.

It is never an easy thing to be critical of one's own culture or society. There are numerous rather selfish reasons for this. Firstly one's audience is likely to be intolerant of criticisms, particular in the current age of equality and capital-empowerment. Today social  hierarchies, be they of morality or intellect are either not tolerated or are more generally ignored.  These times, particularly in the west, the only hierarchy that really matters is that of wealth or political power and influence.  In many developed countries religious thought and architecture have been usurped by the shopping mall and the more immediate power we derive from money.

There are few priests, no 'wise' men or women and no shamans in society, they have been stripped of their magic and also their perceived wisdom.  This is perhaps a good thing, and if not, at least it may be a first step towards a modern age of enlightenment?  Wisdom and magic are incompatible; and yet the one 'wisdom' is rarely believed without some magic, some pyrotechnics for the masses. Within this very incompatibility of wisdom and magic lies the distance that must be travelled towards any 'new' enlightenment, or palpable evolution in our thought.  

Today, without an old 'wisdom' to contradict, to conflict with,  thought, and even creativity become paralyzed.  This process is nowhere more relevant than in modern Ireland.   Arguably, a decline in the hegemony of Catholic power and 'wisdom'  has been accompanied by a decline in our creativity as a people. Today where are the Beckett's and Joyce's,  the Behan's, O'Casey's, and Wilde's, who might rage against the old wisdoms? 

Some might argue that in  Ireland today; art and creativity are more characterized by mimicry and imitation.  The artist must find  new demons to conquer. The old 'wisdoms' may be dying, and in this respect the fight, the passions the antagonisms (out of which creativity is often born), have paled into parochial squabbles with die-hards of the old faith.

Amidst the decline of  old 'wisdom' in its manifest forms, of religion, priests and shamans etc., a new doctrine of Capital and Democracy has arisen. This new creed  brings power to the consumer and the near ubiquitous belief that social ‘equality’ goes beyond one's 'rights' and extends to the point of  ones own  opinion being 'equal' to everyone else's.   As my American friend reminds me: "Opinions are like assholes: everybody’s got one!".

Today our collective notions of equality particularly in respect of the 'equality of opinions', have arguably extended onto the horizon of what Freud referred to as 'mass psychogenic delusion'.  Today this new equality and independence, manifests in new nationalisms, in 'making America great again' in the independence of Great Britain from the European Union.  As a recent BBC documentary of the same name points out,  this is 'the Century of the Self'.

In reality, opinions are  not all equal, no more than men and women are equal.  The 'wise man' exists despite his banishment, or reluctance to come down from the mountain.  Unfortunately without a supernatural magic, without a 'God' we have  no absolute authority by which to verify his credentials. We have  no universal yard stick for the measure of any wisdom greater than that of  our own inflated sense of self:  the divine afflatus of the self. We give the potential wise men of today a brief perusal before we conclude that they are perhaps little wiser than ourselves, and  we are not entirely incorrect, for only magic can really distinguish a Messiah. 

Without this 'magic',  without the impossibility of a practical a tangible God, to replace the imagined one that is so under siege; we have as yet, no hope of attaining a social or even private equanimity.  The further we move from magic the less likely this might be achieved.  And yet, we need not rely upon magic to humble us. If glimpsed for an instant; our mortality, our inequality, the infinite nature of both our ignorance and our potential, these realities should be magic enough.

"All animals are equal but..." 

George Orwell:  Animal Farm


Notwithstanding the equality of our rights and the right to be heard, some people within society are very stupid and have very stupid ideas. Zizek has stated his belief that "Humanity is OK but 99% of people are boring idiots!"  I would be inclined to agree with his rather flippant social analysis. Stupidity (at least in Zizek's world) is ubiquitous, and he would probably concur that education may only provide a weak and partial immunity, in some cases it might even be the cause of the malaise.  

All too often the real difference between us, this latter-day 'ism', is readily and often dismissed as a; racism, sexism, elitism, intellectualism, or some such. However, 'truth' (that ephemeral contrivance of ours), cares not for the politically correct, and today the truth of our inequality (should it be pointed to) is very often dismissed, and deemed offensive,  particularly by the stupid.  

What often gets confused in respect of equality are rights. One reason our so called ‘inalienable’ rights exist, is indeed because equality is an impossible physical reality. The only occasion when two things are entirely equal is when they are actually one and the same thing.  What our rights entitle us to, is the assumption that the State will in general  not 'see' the inequality between us, and (with the exception of illness or handicap) will offer us equal treatment and consideration at least in respect of justice and entitlement. This is of course the theory towards which the reality ostensibly aspires and limps towards. 

Within the universe no two objects are the same, no two actual measurements are ever precisely  the same, and no two people are the same. Because of this we must strive for the impossibility that citizens might  have equal consideration before the arbiter of the state and the big other of social institutions. There is an important  distinction between the concepts of discrimination and the recognition of difference or inequality. To recognize inequality is distinct from a 'discrimination' which is to apply a value-judgment to that inequality. The value judgment remains apart from the actual inequality, the inequality is the reality, and the discrimination is them imagined relative importance of that inequality. A caveman may have indiscriminately  burned diamonds as readily as coal.

A provocative  example of our modern predilection to render all things equal would be in the context of contemporary notions of homosexuality. Homosexuality has moved from the realm of profanity, mortal sin and even criminality, to that of a superficial or artificial type of equality with its heterosexual counterpart. A suggestion that the two are not 'equal' even upon practical grounds, may bring the opprobrium of the masses and the near immediate charge of 'homophobia'. In the recent past a homosexual male was likely (and still is likely in some primitive environs) to be subject to violence and brutality. The tables have turned somewhat and within the context of contemporary social dialogue a stated distinction  between heterosexuality and homosexuality is now almost equally likely to be the subject of hate and discrimination.

To bring the analogy to an extreme let us consider the following:  Anal intercourse between two males cannot upon its own merits be considered as 'normal' relative to its heterosexual counterpart. This assertion does not mean that one might then 'discriminate' between either forms of intercourse.

Note that the author (me) felt the immediate need to clarify or to distance myself from the readers immediate potential revulsion at the assignation of 'abnormal' to the act of  anal intercourse. It is likely that I as the author of these words, immediately  felt the potential  revulsion of the reader, and thence the urge to apply the subsequent caveat, that 'the assignation of abnormal' does not entitle one to a negative discrimination.

 It is not so much within the dialogue and the language of this particular description that we find the nascent stirrings of a homophobia and or discrimination, but rather in the immediacy of the emotion that is felt upon reading that which is potentially homophobic or racist. Within this reaction this private feeling about the right or wrong of a particular distinction, lies our preconception, the basis for our subsequent opinion (acceptance or revulsion) upon that which we have just read or heard.  It is in the deeper preconception that the racism or the homophobia is born.

In my own immediate  application of the caveat,  and in what I am guessing or conceiving to be going on in the mind of the reader (your mind),  my own particular homophobia is exposed.  In doing so I not only expose my own preconceptions (that which is thought before that which is expressed) but also those of the reader in the context of my having to apply said caveat in order assuage his  ostensible revulsion at his own particular preconception.

Not surprisingly therefore, some of the most racist statements often begin with the assertion, "I am not a racist but...."  The ensuing racist appendage (if there is one) may or may not be racist, however the racist nature of the pre-conception is certain, as it  has been openly declared, in the immediacy of the  initial denial.

Because one is not 'normal', this does not equate with an inferiority that might then give some validation to a discrimination.  The assignation of 'normal' to straightforward heterosexual intercourse is itself  not wrong, nor is the assignation of ‘abnormal’ to anal intercourse, (whether it be heterosexual or homosexual) wrong nor is it homophobic. Certain types of language can no longer be used to describe certain behaviours, because some, may find this language offensive. In this silent restriction upon language we sense the machination of the true fear.  In a pure sense it is not the language that we should find offensive, if indeed it is being used correctly. Rather the 'offense' may often be the veil  concealing that which is truly offensive.

All human beings  like to do, and feel compelled to do abnormal things at times.  It does not make those abnormal things normal if enough people do them. Discrimination is the end result of a preconceived process.  Racism or homophobia do not arise from discrimination, but rather from the preconceptions that give rise to the discriminations. Discrimination only becomes possible when we assign notions of inferiority or superiority to a particular inequality. For a discrimination to actualize it must contain both a perceived inequality and an assignation of relative-merit to that inequality. This assignation of merit arises out of the 'pre-conception', one that is distinct from the inequality itself.  

It is here, within this realm  that the 'ism' the racism or homophobia is founded.  In natural systems such as evolution, the distinction, the inequality the 'abnormality' is essential, and of no lesser or greater 'value' than that which might be deemed to be the norm.   Smoking is abnormal, drinking and eating to excess are abnormal etc etc.  Nature is entirely dependent upon the abnormal as it is the basis of the evolutionary process. In the context of evolution, 'normal' will get you nowhere and thereby equates with paralysis. The attempt to 'normalize' language is the practical application of paralysis to thought.

 Within  the broad social aspiration towards equality, we find an attempt to preserve a silent pre-conception, an innate and inherent value system, that converts the  inequality, into a discrimination, a phobia and an 'ism' of some kind. Contemporary notions of 'equality' encourage this artificial and pseudo-equality between essentially  unequal things. Equality allows us to 'have our cake and eat it too'. Thanks to equality we can readily preserve the preconception of our collective  racism and homophobia, whilst wearing the evangelical garb of the puritan. 

Yet the impossibility of our position often manifests in greater, more complex and more brutal forms of racism and homophobia.  It is not surprising therefore that we in the West should witness the rise of 'ism and phobia' on a scale unseen for almost one hundred years.  Paradoxically, this new and more politically potent 'ism',  arises  out of a modern social dialogue that remains in public opposition to  such discrimination.  The conflict between current American policy towards immigrants, and the rights and  equalities enshrined within their 200 year old constitution, might serve to elucidate the regression.

Within our contemporary notion of 'equality'  is contained a preservation of the innate value system that allows inequality to persist and continually manifest in the form an indefatigable discrimination. 


In truth, outside of conceptual mathematics there is no such thing as equality.  It is not the recognition of inequality that is wrong, rather the hierarchy that we ourselves apply to the recognized inequality.  It is this, all too often private hierarchy, that allows  the most homophobic to become blind to his own homophobia, in spite of his language to the contrary.

It is the reconciliation of the modern media-driven social discourse with the private hierarchy, that has allowed for the reality of a society that, upon the surface appears to be obsessed with equality, whilst on a deeper level, an inverse reality directs our social mechanics.  When it manifests itself,  this deeper reality demands  repeated legislation if it is to be mollified.  Equality in this sense is the itch that becomes more itchy once it has been scratched. The attempt to release ourselves from the problem, is in essence a principle cause of the malaise.  But of course the saint and the bigot will both bitterly complain that we must do something!

Unfortunately there is always a serious lag between our public language and our deeper thinking.  This is entirely understandable as the one is public and the other is private; so private at times as to be unknown even to ourselves.  In this sense, the racist and the bigot are often safer company than their opposite; the former are perhaps merely misguided and honest,  whilst the latter may be equally misguided and entirely dishonest.  In this sense too, having racist bigotry at the helm of a political system, may not be as regressive as it might appear. Leadership within such a society may be the progressive and evolved expression of the mass preconception; an ostensibly just society with an elected but unjust king in whom is manifest the deeper truths that the majority proclaim a revulsion to. Leaders like Putin and Trump are not anomalies, they may perfectly respect an ideology and a thought that is representative of a bigger and entirely deeper social and psychological  reality.

The deeper problem with equality is that the private hierarchies that give rise to the 'isms' and the phobias have been driven underground and are more difficult to see. They manifest in private places and in the privacy of the voting booth.

Whilst on the one hand we wish to be free from the authority and discriminations of the state, we submerge in this fiction of equality and morph it into a notional equality between ourselves, an equality of everything.  In doing so, we have oppressed even further the capacity for impartial judgement and in spite of  our 'liberty and equality' we have become progressively more rigid in our thinking. 

Because of the rise of ‘the equality of everything’, we are now compelled to see inequality in silence and make many distinctions in private, or in the veritas of vino. A rather public  example of this private subversion process can be seen in the use of the word 'nigger'. A white man cannot and indeed should not refer to a black man as a 'nigger'.  However a black man can refer to another black man as a 'nigger' without eliciting the same negative social response. Indeed the use of the slur is all the more acceptable if the black man has an affinity to the other black man upon whom he applies the slur. In many respects the same word if used by a white man is considered a slur and if used in a similar context by a black man to refer to another black man it is seen as a term of endearment. The assignation of the rights and wrong of the application of the slur contain a racism that is deeper and perhaps more universal than we might first imagine. In the assignation of the use of the word to 'blacks only' is contained an inverse racism it is this deeper and more universal racism that is the true evil that should be feared.

Regardless of who should  apply the slur, it carries with it a sad reference to the brutality and degradation that  was endured under slavery. When used between blacks the reference is a veiled reminder to each of their shared history as having once been brutally oppressed.  When used by a white man the word carries with it the reminder that the white man was the perpetrator of a brutal oppression.  Equally to the black and white man, the term itself does not indicate that he or she is oppressed or is an oppressor, (many white men opposed slavery)  and yet for the white man the slur carries the implication that he or she may remain sympathetic with that oppression. Why should this be so? It is only because many (possibly most) white males (despite their language) do still cling to some deeper racisms, that the term is not and cannot be used by others.

It is (in addition to social decorum) a private racism, a mass  pre-conception,  that deprives us from applying the slur with the same sympathy, regret or affection that it carries between blacks. It is in essence  our collective racism that encourages us in our vigilance against the use of the word.

The private hierarchy is reinforced and yet it removes the world from us and makes us more alien and more alone with our thoughts, more obese more anorexic and more unhappy.  Although the 'ism' is publically denied by most of us, it cannot conceal itself when the comedian causes it to burst forth in the convulsion that occurs when a deeper truth is caused to mix with one that we superficially hold to be true. We refer to this experience as  laughter. He who would disagree is the rare creature who has never laughed at a 'joke' that has been constructed upon the foundation of our private 'isms'. The laugh is an affirmation of the incongruity between the public self and private self, the cry is the manifest expression of the loneliness and isolation that lies at the interface between the public and private interface. When we cry we cry alone with the reality of the private self  and the reasoning behind the cry is the painful realization that we are indeed alone. The difference between the  laughter and tears is merely the context within which the experience has occurred.

We are today only beginning to realize the consequence of treating our children equally, of preserving them from the 'harsh' realities of judgement. We see a generation of drug dependence and ennui, arising out of this passion of ours to preserve them from the reality of their inequality, we cosset then from distinction and heap praise upon them for muck and mediocrity, a praise that we may have been denied and only lately come to realize was the spur to our achievement and success.  We may soon realize that we can shield no one from reality, we can merely close our eyes for a moment and await the consequence. We may one day come to inquire of the social consequence of this equality. We might ask if the drug lord or the criminal had been informed of his or her inequality without bias, rather than having been squeezed into the same uniform and subjected to the same curriculum and uniform educative process, perhaps he or she might not have been ashamed by the truth of his inequalities, perhaps the dentist and the drug lord might not then feel the continued need to prove a particular point to themselves and to the world in the collection of wealth of status and of material superfluity. 

To say that in General Asians are more industrious than many other cultures, would not be permitted in polite conversation, and yet in my own work as a physician of some twenty years I rarely encounter Asians seeking time off work on the basis of sickness or illness, or seeking sickness benefit from the state. ( I may be wrong but I doubt if my admittedly  'racist'  observation is unique) There are Asians in almost every town and village in Ireland, and yet they present less to doctors and hospitals because they place a higher value upon work and possibly a lesser value on sickness than do other cultures including our own. Post colonial cultures are somewhat acclimatised to having a master who must be beguiled or overcome. Post colonial nations preserve post colonial mind-sets that transition into dependence upon the new master that is the state, the term we apply to this transition is socialism.

This particular notion, that of distinction between race and culture, despite its validity or invalidity,  must be kept from the social discourse or at least from my own discourse, lest I be immediately be branded as a racist.

Momma says stupid is as stupid does. Forest Gump

When one refers to the paralysis of thought in our society (or any society for that matter), this is, in essence is a euphemism for the stupidity of society. Our collective and individual stupidity; is something that we do not like to consider, particularly in an age that has empowered us with technology, titles, and badges of self importance. It is very easy and very commonplace for us to loose sight of and even become completely blind to our collective and individual stupidity.

Our collective stupidity is vehemently denied, to the point of an angry reception  for any potential reminder of its glaringly obvious existence. In this age of delusion we are at least fortunate to have death and mortality as reminders that the 'power-tools' and the epaulettes of modernity are for the most part illusory.  Yet also in death we attempt to remove the truth of mortality from the horizon of our thought. Women are encouraged to 'fight the seven signs of ageing', and are increasingly incapable of growing old with grace dignity and beauty. Dying is too often removed from the family home and confined to some 'comfortable' medicalised shed for the dying.

Beyond the transience of material possession the only thing that may contain any potential significance beyond the grave, is the time we spend in the cultivation of mind and intellect. We can say with certainty that our material selves and the materials we spend our life accumulating will be of no use when we are dead, and yet even the devoted atheist cannot apply the same certainty to the infinite nature and potential of his or her own thought.

One must recall poor old Socrates when he reminds us that the most intelligent are found amongst those who can at least  recognise how stupid they are, this requires humility and introspection the antithesis of our age of empowerment. And indeed there is an infinity of that which we do not know when we compare it to the crumbs of intelligence and knowledge that we often parade about with the pomp and circumstance of the naked emperor.

"The wisest of you men is he who has realized, like Socrates, that in respect of wisdom he is really worthless. That is why I still go about seeking and searching in obedience to the divine command, if I think that anyone is wise, whether citizen or stranger, and when I think that any person is not wise, I try to help the cause of God by proving that he is not."     Plato

Of course the recognition of ones ignorance does carry with it the injunction that one should attempt to address the deficiency.  Therein lies the ‘will to live’,  Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’ the improvement of ones mind as a purpose devoid of instinct and artificiality and public self' need for belonging..How do we recognise our own stupidity and that  of others?

This is really difficult, not because stupidity is hard to see it is certainly is not, but rather because we are wont to see it everywhere else except at home. Personally I find it most difficult to see my own stupidity.  This is one of the reasons that I remain married to my wife, and it is one of the reasons that I can't understand why she remains married to me (she is probably a bit stupid when it comes to love and relationships?)

Indeed to see it we must define it, and there are many definitions for foolishness. One unsavoury and yet near universal way  to define it would be to equate it with ‘superfluity’.    This is an unsavoury definition because it is perhaps too inclusive, too close to the bone. The superfluities within our lives, the wastes and pointlessness can be referred to as our stupidities. However in order to proceed on this bases we would need a 'point' to our lives beyond the simple application of biological function. Indeed it might be argued that balanced diet, warmth, shelter, some intellectual stimulation, some exercise and a smidgeon of love from or contact with our fellow man might be all that is required in order to live. Another might argue that, the point to life is spiritual or religious. The Doctrine of old Socrates is however universal and beyond argument. A point or purpose to all 'points' is the cultivation of ones mind and in order to fill a hole one must first be conscious of the fact that it is empty and thus capable of and in need of filling. Therefore we might safely assume the universal point to life is the satisfaction of ones instinctual imperatives in respect of survival and the cultivation of ones mind in respect of philosophy. The two are mutually dependent and the cultivation of ones mind will depend upon the satisfaction of ones instinctual imperatives to belong and to live. However the cultivation of ones mind will have an immediate effect upon how one satiates ones instinctual imperatives.  

A more palatable definition might afford one the opportunity to point the finger away from the self. However, if we run with this as a definition, if we then state that the 'degree' of stupid in our lives may be proportional to the degree of superfluity, we might then begin to see the magnitude of our stupidity and that of other people.

To be clear superfluity is a synonym for waste. Something that is essentially pointless or meaningless or unnecessary.  In this respect we all have unnecessary things in our lives, sports, television, fashion and fat etc,  might all qualify as superfluous.  However there are degrees of separation and whilst all of these entities might be considered superfluous to basic human existence and biological function, they may equally be considered essential in some measure. Fat is indeed superfluous but a total absence of same is incompatible with human life.  Therefore in order to determine what is superfluous we must apply our faculty for rational judgement and this capacity is influenced by our philosophy or our wisdom. The wiser we are the greater degree of cultivation that has been applied to the mind the more certain we can be sure that we are deciding correctly upon the necessary or superfluous nature of that which occupies our time and thoughts.

Whilst watching sport might be a superfluous  to ones survival it is conducive to ones social life as such it will permit social interaction, meeting of people, cement ties between people, allow for the release of aggression etc etc. In this respect participation, observation, consumption or enjoyment of some sport can be validated as conducive to a good life. The superfluity lies not merely in the object being consumed but the degree of the consumption itself.  If one garners positive social interaction with ones peers through watching football matches, clearly watching current matches as opposed to matches on different continents by unknown teams would be superfluous to ones purpose and might eb (in the context of ones purpose) safely referred to as stupid. Once again the degree to which one is wedded to positive social interaction with ones peers can be considered superfluous should the consequence of that devotion outstrip other important imperatives such as the attending to ones personal hygiene or the cultivation of ones mind. In like fashion failure to attend to ones hygiene or to the cultivation of ones mind will render it increasingly difficult to achieve the positive social interaction that one has become devoted too and in this sense we see that the cause of much private and social pathology can be traced to the imbalanced satisfaction of instinctual desire.

I have dealt with the hierarchical nature of human instinct in my book Being and Belonging and as such will speak no further on the subject here.

There is a hidden  mean for each individual in respect of many commodities, one that he or she can and will throughout life subjectively and objectively cross.  It is a line that one crosses and un-crosses many times as one fluctuates about this mean.  There are times in the midst of a balanced life when an individual may watch too much sport, too much television or posses too much fat.  When the possible benefits are outstripped by the consumption or possession.  At this point sport becomes superfluous and consumption becomes an act of stupidity.  It is only through the application of wisdom derived from a cultivated mind that the individual might ask himself what is the real nature of the 'need' that remains unsatisfied through the act of eating or watching sport etc, what is the nature of the hole that is not being filled by the excess that is being applied. This is a question that we do not like to ask for indeed our lives are defined by excess of every kind and indeed it is in our excess, our love of the material, our over indulgence in sex food or drugs of some kind or others that we will find the superfluities of our lives, the stupidity of our lives and indeed the doors behind which lie the unhappiness and unfilled misunderstood instincts that lie at the cause of our private unhappiness.

Clothes and attire are principally for the purpose of warmth and insulation from the elements, yet  to a greater or lesser degree we invest identity into the form of our clothes and that of others.  We call this investment 'fashion'.  Some might argue that fashion is  superfluous in its totality and indeed when one considers the actual social, financial and environmental cost of this 'fashion industry' it is hard to argue for a utility in the midst of an overwhelming waste and superfluity.  Whilst there are perhaps no arguments that might justify fashion as an industry that can stand over its overall cost to humanity and the environment;  this reality does not negate the legitimacy of the  human desire to attire ourselves in a manner that is not only warm, cool, or comfortable, but also pleasing to the eye.  Fashion is unquestionably  superfluous, however it is a stupidity to which we are all wed to a greater or lesser degree. The same might be said of sport or music etc. An education system of the future will cause is to enquire into the nature of our desires and to validate them in an honest manner. Until then however we remain oblivious to the reason behind desires and behaviours. We are encouraged not to look further into the desire because economies, capitalism and current social function is entirely dependent upon the continued promulgation of desires that are met by some form of consumption. Consumption is the point at which real stupidity of action begins, for most of us consume without knowing why we consume, what we are consuming for and what is the need we are really attempting to satisfy through the consumptive act.

As such it is not the idea of fashion or its presence in our lives that is stupid but rather the degree to which we commit ourselves to this superficial superfluity.  Once again the arbiter of this need, is the enlightened and or cultivating mind. A sensible wardrobe of  quality attire  that might outwit the pathetic whim of fashion and still remain pleasing to the eye. Such is the wardrobe of the less stupid.  Clothes who's form and function and utility are complemented by each other, clothes that will last, and do not need annual or seasonal replacement  by an army of children labouring  in sweatshops etc.   These would be the hallmarks of one who is relatively less stupid when it comes to the issue of clothing and fashion.   The same pragmatics can be applied to possessions of all kinds, however this is a pragmatism that has little social currency in a world that is becoming increasingly fashion conscious, increasingly desirous of superfluity and as such increasingly stupid.

In this sense also superfluity does subsume those beliefs and ideals that are pointless, unnecessary, and un-true into the realm of the  stupid. Adherence to beliefs that cannot be substantiated is a reflection of our stupidity.   Once again it is not the belief or the untruth, that is the stupidity but rather the degree and inflexibility with which the particular untruth is adhered to. I am not a practicing Catholic, and yet I maintain a vague and unformed belief in a 'consciousness' that is greater than that of mankind. This particular entity is often referred to as 'God'. There are as many Gods as there are minds who might conceive that god, like other Gods, mine is not Universal and is perhaps unique to me. I am not a good Christian yet I believe that there may well have been a good man called Jesus, who indeed was the founder of a pragmatic sort of philosophy that works rather well on the rare occasion that it can be lived up to. Indeed it was Nietzsche who asserted that the last Christian may have died on the cross.  This God concept of mine may perhaps be my stupidity, for I have not encountered any  sound evidence for such beliefs and yet these are beliefs that are important to me. My stupidity comes to life in the degree to which I allow myself to overlook the incompatibilities between my God and the reasoned execution of my existence.

For example I do not believe that this supernatural  consciousness, intervenes in the affairs of man with miracles, bleeding statues and bestowing wealth on one and poverty upon another. Therefore I do not fool myself into believing that my personal wealth relative to that of a hungry Somali, is the product of any supernatural blessings, it is the consequence of artificial borders that have been created by men to ensure that I can legitimise and preserve my wealth from others, in other words my God fantasy does not (I hope) permit me to delude myself about the fundamental immorality of my own private wealth. When I permit my God to allow me to delude myself I make the both of us look increasingly stupid.

All of our sufferings (I believe) are man made. Therefore I am confident  that although  my belief in the magic of a supernatural consciousness is quite possibly stupid, I do not let this potential stupidity evolve into a devotion to miracles and magic.  I admit to my potential stupidity, as I admit that my consciousness of the appearance of my clothes, their fashionableness is indeed a stupidity of mine. My love of coffee is perhaps another stupidity,  Yet  in my defence (if I might have one) in a relative sense I limit my stupidity by being conscious of it, and by allowing my consciousness of it,  to mitigate against its expansion into my life in cancerous forms. In this sense the future (if it is permitted to evolve) will look upon the present form of our education system to be laughable and primitive in the notion that children need mechanically learn anything prior to being taught how to actually think about things. How to understand who they are and what their real needs actually are. This can and never will be accomplished in the company of the reinforced delusion of equality.

As I write these words I can hear the voice of Nietzsche laughing loudly at my naiveté and the earlier suggestion that that which is untrue is necessarily superfluous. He would undoubtedly remind me that we do not place enough value upon untruth, and indeed for all of us we depended upon, we utilise and believe wholeheartedly in a myriad of untruths that are as valid if not more valid than the truth. We believe ourselves to be essentially 'good' people and we remove ourselves from the badness of the world because we assert this badness to be beyond our influence or control.   Only time and future generations will enjoy the privilege of dismissing todays truths as tomorrows fallacy, just as we revile dismiss and  laugh at the follies and fixed beliefs of previous generations.

Perhaps a definition of good sense might include a recognition of those truths that we are endeared and beholden to, that are actually untruths. To do so is not only to see ones stupidity but is to gaze into the future and laugh with the unborn.

Leaving aside the possible merits of today's untruths and our dependency upon them, assuming the objectivity to call untruth 'superfluous' might not be entirely philosophically sound, yet placing value in un-truth as Nietzsche merely compounds our stupidity regardless of the contemporaneous validity of that un-truth. It is merely the position of the truth in time and in the context of an evolution of thought that untruth might appear more important than truth. If we assume (and we can rarely assume) that thought is evolving towards a form that is 'true' rather than false, we can then simply assume untruths to be temporally valid and no more than that. We may presume that thought is evolving from the observation that the process of evolution seems to favour the persistence of truth over un truth and if given enough time true thinking may evolve into a supremacy above false thinking. Therefore  if we can reasonably 'prove' a belief to be untrue, then, for the purpose of our present exercise, we shall remain presumptuous enough to call that belief a superfluous and hence a stupid one. Bearing in mind that in a practical sense adherence to untruths may be essential to social function and or survival within the context of the current state of the evolution of thought.

If one has not yet begun to yawn, one might take the exercise further and bring to trial the sources of our truth’s . There are many beliefs that we hold to be true, but upon closer inspection prove to be the inverse.  The fact that these beliefs are untrue does not bother us, unless this is brought to our attention and we are accused directly or indirectly of being 'stupid', even more so if the accusation is made in the company of others. 

Those like myself who believe in a supreme or more elevated form of consciousness can often become offended when we are faced with the reality that there is little if any evidence to support this claim.  Yet it is one that we will not surrender easily.  I may believe that on balance my life is a reasonably moral one, and yet when I am reminded of my advertant and inadvertent immorality, the superfluous and entirely stupid nature of my wealth, or the unethical nature of my 'environmental foot print', or my failings with my children and people who have loved me etc etc,  I am likely to be offended by same.  The offence arises more out of the truth within the inspection rather than the lack of truth. I am far less likely to feel offended if I am accused of being a milk bottle or a giraffe, than I am if I am accused of failing as a parent. The fact that the truth is offensive to us should not cause us to further explore the truth, but rather the nature of the offense, for therein lies the real issue that is concealed. Often the real or deeper issue is not offensive at all. Yes I have been a bad father at certain times in my parenting career, I have done and said things that I regret, however my fear may relate to a fear of being compared to my own father, or my fear that I might be rejected or looked down upon by my peers because of my admission in respect of my bad parenting. The point being that the truth of my bad parenting is undeniable, yet I am offended by its exposure because of a fear that exposure may have upon what others think of me. As such I am not offended at the reality but rather at how that reality might be perceived by others. Admittedly I live much of my life and hold many of my beliefs to be subordinate to that which I believe to be the feelings of others towards me. Above and beyond 'the truth' is my instinctual imperative to belong to others. My public and much of my private self is devoted to this task, truth and or untruths are merely a side show of sorts.

Thus the exploration of my truths,  is perhaps a journey of personal introspection, one that is best conducted in private.  This of course is a journey that can only take place within the context of my humility, my recognition of the infinite nature of my stupidity and my desire to cultivate my mind so that it might be capable of the task at hand. This may indeed be the only task worth accomplishing within the short period of time that I am to exist for.

There are several types of truths.  There are the truths that other people inform us of , their truths and beliefs. These we often take more licence with, occasionally they inform us to change our own truths, occasionally they are dismissed, and if they concur with our own truths we often consider the purveyor of said truths to have some wisdom. Of course we must be careful in the assignation of wisdom to truths that we already hold because in this instance we are merely insisting upon our belief that we are not stupid. It is more likely that we will find the truth of ourselves in that we cause offence. And then there are the truths that we are informed of by various sources of media, these are arguably the least reliable and yet they are often the beliefs that shape our view of reality and are the truths that we remain committed to, and interested in regardless of their actual validity, their substance or motive. These are the truths of our world and they inform or more correctly they remind us of our assumptions pertaining to our place in the world.

In respect of these media driven truths, in my own case my most recent foray into this realm of 'truth' and 'untruth' began in the shower some weeks ago. We have at home a very nice plastic shower curtain that hangs above the bath. I am fond of it because it depicts a large map of the world with all of the countries named. It is surely not to scale and the continent of Africa takes up a large portion of it. Last week before a shower I watched the news and the on-going discussions about Trump and Obamacare. I also watched an Irish current affairs programme, discuss in detail the policies of Mr Trump his notions about immigrants and his plans to do away with Obamacare.


Whilst showering I considered the reality of how relevant the ideals of Trump are to the greater world, and what use if any the knowledge of Obamacare is to me, or anyone outside of the United States for that matter. As I meticulously attended to the importance of scrubbing cracks and crevices I contemplated the size of Africa indeed the size of the rest of the world as compared to that of the United states. I wondered at the countless millions of children upon the African continent who die each year from malnutrition and simply treatable diarrhoeas, the vast enormity of African problems, and the amount of money a western nation such as my own might spend upon pet food. I then wondered why my mind had been occupied with Trumps plans for the healthcare system of a country that is plagued with obesity and the problems of Western excesses.


I realised that what I had been watching on my media, was not really 'news', but rather a sort of mass entertainment an utterly irrelevant fiction created by those in control of media who wish to portray to people what they feel people might consume as news or current affairs. This had been fed to me in the guise of news and essentially the ultimate motive was to keep me interested enough so that I might also consume the intermittent advertisements that attempted to convince me of the merits of a particular brand of dog food.


Indeed even when I might shift my telescope to view the 'realities', or 'news' of what might be going on in my own nation. I am treated to a debate about ‘whistle blowers’ one that boils down to a tit for tat exchange between government and opposition , with one side trying to hold onto political power and entitlements and the other side attempting to bring the government down. This too is constructed in such a manner that might sell me a particular product or have me purchase the allegiance of a political party that wishes to acquire the capital and power of political office. In the context of the reality of a nation with several million people, with significant problems in respect of health and environment, culture drug dependence and unhappiness I am confident in the assertion that my national news and media is as irrelevant as the international press. I am confident in this assertion because I can recognise that the motive behind both entities (national and international news) is not, my improvement as a human being (of course I am never seen by the entities that are transferring said news) it is merely the motive to sell a particular product of one sort or another. A real and more perhaps relevant news of the day, (of my day) was contained within the consistency of my stool and its relevance to what I had or had not eaten for my breakfast.


I am left with the conclusion that the search for truth and the avoidance of stupidity begins with an introspective analysis of the self and a recognition of ones own stupidities and superfluities, out of this independence of thought should arise the recognition of the 'best way' without an extensive reliance upon guidance from others who's motives can be as trusted as their outward opinions.

To do this I must preserve myself against the equalities of modernity, the instinctual motives behind my own truths and those that I am exposed to. The search for meaning begins and ends with a search for truth. We may each be equally endowed with the potential to search for truth, as we may be each endowed with the potential to begin a journey of some kind. The success or failure of that journey is entirely dependent upon ones preparedness. The water that will sustain one along the way is that of philosophy and the capacity for independent thought. It is these two entities that are most under siege in the modern world and in this sense in this world in this place and time no less than any other the greatest revolutionary act is that of independent thought.

Re-imagine the Rising. Irish Independent 25/3/2016

Reimagining the 1916 Rising

"What's in the pot?" says the brother skipping in from the field with a bee in his bonnet. "Salad for the stools," says I, "and a bit of bacon and cabbage for the day that's in it."

"By Jaysus, we're gonna be in the silk," he says, rubbing his paws together like a March hare. "And how's that?" says I, cutting the heel off the loaf.

Well, declare to God, he upends the place and fires a tomato and a handful of boiled cabbage at the kitchen wall with a bang and a wallop that sends the auld dog across the lino with a yelp.

"Get me the camera from the top of the wardrobe," he roars. "Be God I will," says I, thinking to meself I'd make the call on the way and get the man seen too once and for all.

So in the hall I pick up the phone but had to put it down again on account of him roaring from the kitchen about hypocrisy, revolution and the history of auld Ireland.

"Have you lost your bearings man?" says I. There he was scratching his chin and contemplating the spattered tomato and broken cabbage dripping down the stone, as if he was looking at high art up in the big smoke. "Whisht," says he, taking the camera, "you know nothing of history! Put your paw on the wall there by the tomato for a bit of scale." Says he, "I'm going to sell this picture to the post office for a 1916 commemoration stamp." "Ah," says I to meself, "the poor craytur is gone."

"This little piece of ballistics," says he pointing the crooked finger to a vein of cabbage on the wall, "this here, me boyo, is a piece of our history that has been conveniently forgotten! Washed and hosed clean from the record like dung from the floor of the milking shed," says he.

"How do ya mean?" says I, with one eye for the telephone.

"Well," says he, "when the founding fathers of auld Ireland were hauled from the GPO, 'twas the tomatoes, the cabbages, and the consumptive spits fired at them by the good people of Dublin that encouraged the Brits to give the lead penny to each and all of them. 'Twasn't Britannia's Huns and her long-range guns that put an end to the Rising and sent the leaders to the firing squad, 'twas the tomatoes and the cabbage.

"If it wasn't for the first and more important firing squad of spits and rotten fruit, sure enough Ireland wouldn't be as free and as happy as she is today. Make no mistake, 'tis the tomato and the cabbage that are the heroes of the story.

"With all the shiny uniforms, the marches, the parades and the 1916 speeches, there should be a statue of a cabbage put outside the GPO and a stamp with a tomato on the front of it.

"That would remind us all that in Ireland a sure sign of a good idea is that the whole country will be against it from the start, and a sure sign that someone is telling the truth is the length of the queue that is lining up to give the craytur a hammering!"

Dr Marcus de Brun

Rush, Co Dublin

How the Left was Lost.

Not since the leaders of the 1916 rebellion were pelted with rotten fruit  by the good citizens of Dublin,  has there been a better indictment of the intellectual character  of the masses than the 'Right 2 Water' campaign.

This ostensibly grass roots movement, might be readily dismissed, were it not for the numbers have been taken in by what might be described as an elaborate front for Anarchy Ireland.  

This is not the type of Anarchy that Wilde might have described in his essay The Soul of Man Under Socialism, rather it is the type of anarchy that is defined by violence, by shouting insults at politicians, surrounding their cars at political venues, by threat and intimidation. This type of violence is for its own sake, for the sake of anger and the destruction and vandalism of private and public property.  |It is the same anger that is directed at social housing by many of the inhabitants of social housing, it is an anger at 'the other' the imagined cause of inequality and perceived inferiority. This is the face of Anarchy Ireland. Beneath its banner we find other groupings such as the Anti Austerity Alliance, People Before Profit and others who claim to be representative of the 'left' in Irish politics.

It is the presence of this angry mob, sitting alongside the political wing of the IRA and between them the political face of a corruption  and nepotism that caused our recent economic  collapse that is the current schizophrenic face of contemporary Irish politics. 

In reality when one considers individuals like Jeremey Corbin in the UK or the Gurus of contemporary European Leftist ideology such as Zizek, Chomsky, Renata Salecl and so on, one can quickly realise that there is no Left in Irish politics.  It is this absence of a left that is the cause of our current instability. That is not to say that an entirely Left politics is what is needed, the conflict between left and Right is the fundamental political discourse and it represents the entirely essential thought process that that politics must engage with in order to fairly and intelligently address social, economic, ecological and even humanitarian problems.

If we are to  achieve political stability we have no choice but to live in the old house until the new is built , until we can evolve the mature and viable left alternative that is necessitated by our present economic state and our position within the European Union.  This process may have begun with the trashing that labour has taken in the recent election and a new more left labour is indeed an inevitability.  However, in the interim a dangerous insatiability in Irish politics arises from the fact that the 'right' is not balanced by a left but rather by Anarchy Ireland, Fianna Fail and the political wing of the IRA.



Don't act. Think!

The Fall of Labour

The current lack of 'living leftist ideology' (of the Corbin type) within the Irish labour party resulted in its becoming indistinguishable from, and compliant with  its partner in Government. For this reason it has been dismissed as a Leftist alternative  to the right into which it had morphed.

There is nothing strange in this chameleon like behaviour of Labour.  The cycle of swinging from Right to Left and back again is a necessary oscillation that keeps Labour  in near perfect synchronicity with the political imperatives of the boom bust cycle of modern capitalism. When the economy is booming Labour should be more Right and when it is not booming Labour should be more Left, nothing strange in that. 
 
Unfortunately for Ireland the last election elected labour politicians who were themselves the right wing relics of the boom years, and hence their failure to deliver or champion an alternative to the same old same old. The economic collapse happened too quickly for Labour to morph into is more left wing costume.  Labour was caught with its trousers down and was wearing the wrong underpants.  It is now paying the price and will be shopping for a new costume to wear to the wake of the next government.

Presently the absence of a Left in Ireland is most evident  in our dysfunctional social systems where we encounter the bizarre marriage of extreme capitalism and extreme socialism. A recent European Commission report on the Irish health system points to the fact that second only to Denmark we have the most expensive health system in Europe and yet we are ranked third from the bottom by the OECD. With the longest A/E waiting times in the whole of Europe.

One interesting fact highlighted by the Commission is the fact that the drugs budget in Ireland represents one of our biggest expenses with 80% of our drug spend going to "one supplier". The situation in Ireland is rendered even more ridiculous when one considers that despite the fact that most of our taxes are spent on a public health system, we must pay for that system again at almost every interface. Also the fact that 40% of the population have so little faith in the dysfunctional nature of our public system that they pay for private health insurance ON TOP of their tax spend. is an ongoing indictement of the political establishment.  A major failing here is the influence of the private interests upon the public system, the power of drug companies to prevent the imposition of a state formulary rather than the present situation where 80% of medicines have a single and very politically influential supplier

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/state-criticised-over-healthcare-costs-in-eu-report-1.2560847

One might argue that in Ireland we have never really had a true left, that the state has never truly had the courage to question itself to the extent that a real and visible leftist political ideology might evolve, beyond an imitation of the British Labour movement.  Ireland has never really had a Left because Ireland has not until recently had the economic wealth that ,might allow us to afford ourselves a the  criticism of  capitalism that the left insists upon.
 The tragedy is not  that Labour has been exposed as being as right wing as that which it was supposed to be challenging, but rather in what now remains in opposition to the same old same old. This is Anarchy Ireland, the rise of the political wing of the IRA, thuggery for the sake of thuggery, and the increasingly 'fresh' view which asserts that Fianna Fail were 'not so bad' and whenever they are in power at least 'they do something for the people' like bus passes and more in the pension. 

From this perspective although Left in my own political thinking I feel entirely compelled to leave things in the hands of the Right, of established politics of the same old same old, at least until our new house has been built, or at least until the plans are drawn and we have sourced a builder.

Thus we are presented with a most unstable political system in a time of great international instability and unfolding ecological and humanitarian disasters. Despite a long proud cultural and intellectual heritage, we in Ireland can contribute nothing to the Humanitarian crisis that is sweeping across Europe, we can contribute nothing to the debate on Global ecology despite our being in ownership of almost one quarter of the European Union's oceans.  We can contribute nothing to the global debate on food production despite the fact that agriculture is one of our areas of consummate expertise. We can contribute nothing to the resolution of international wars and conflicts despite the fact that a strong central government with the support of the Irish people could easily and diplomatically  end the refuelling of American War planes in Shannon and send a clear message of peace and neutrality towards the wars and conflicts in the Middle East and beyond.  In short we can contribute nothing to the ills of humanity until we can get our own house in order. Until we can have a balanced political regime with an agreed set of national and international objectives. For this we need constitutional and political reform and for this we need leadership and direction.  Be it left or right, presently we have neither, only an insecurity and political uncertainty that is being capitalised upon by the fringe, by the dark and truly embarrassing elements of the Irish political spectrum.

The regrettable morphing of Labour into the ideology of Fianna Gael, and  the sheer lack of conflict during that coalition of supposed opposites, bears testimony to the reality that the ideological space (as opposed to the fiscal space) is the real commodity that is lacking within Irish politics.  Ultimately what is being exposed is not the lack or the compromise of Labour's left ideals but rather the absence of  intelligent and focused left ideals in the personage of labour politicians. Whilst Anarchy Ireland and Sin Fein can easily mirror back to the electorate an attractive anger and frustration with the same old same old; the formal Left, the Labour party proper has failed to harness that anger to fuel Leftist ideology because it has lost touch with that ideology, and this disjunction between the formal left and the ideology of the Left (as manifest in Europe and elsewhere) has left a vacuum that can now be filled by anger  alone.




As one of our finest and most often over looked social theorist Desmond Fennel often writes, the absentee in Irish society(and political society is no different) is thought or ideology.


In the absence of a legitimate, ideological and educated left,  we remain socially and politically paralysed. Politics must now contend with the rise of an elaborate front for Anarchy Ireland an unproductive mirror image of our own anger and frustration at our national paralysis. That which Joyce referred to as our GPI (General paralysis of the insane).


New so-called  'Lefties' with little to offer other than the time honoured mantra of the confiscation of wealth from the wealthy and its distribution to the less wealthy (an ostensibly attractive ideal stretching back to the stone age) serves now to paralyse the right, which would at least afford us the leadership needed to navigate the ecological, humanitarian and economic crises that are unfolding around us.

 

Press release. Irish Independent 19/2/2016

Did you ever tell a little white lie? .....And then have to tell a whole heap of lies in order to substantiate the first lie? 

Well that's what Party Politics is: the first little white lie.  When a person joins a Party they agree to vote, speak and do as they are told, and in return the Party will look after them in various ways. This is the first little lie and little compromise that undermines our Democracy.  Our problem is that we are concerned with the lies and broken promises that come later.  Rarely if ever do we concern ourselves with the little lie upon which the political system has been constructed.  If we wish to cure the disease we must fix the cause, and that is the first little lie.


Dr Marcus de Brun
Independent Dublin Fingal

Press release Fingal Independent 18/02/2016

Hi John

In respect of a Press release.

The people of Ireland have been conned long enough by both Central and Local Government. The time for change is now. No more clichés and empty promises.  We must recognise that our politics is fundamentally corrupt. Party politicians work for the party, they belong to. The parties pay their election expenses, dish out appointments and Ministerial posts. The parties appoint the board of RTE and that is why independents such as myself have little or no voice in Irish media. Party Politicians are loyal to their party, they do as they are told, they speak and vote as they are told. This is the first and most fundamental corruption within our politics. Politicians are beholden to their Parties and to those who hold influence over the parties.  After the election they may as well stay at home.  All of the parties are correct in that none of them should be in government.  All of them have been in government and ALL of them have failed us.

The first step towards REAL change requires us as a people to recognise that our Democracy does not work in its present form, that it is corrupted. I believe that Ireland should be the most socially, environmentally and technologically  progressive nation in Europe. We own almost a quarter of the EU's oceans. We have a beautiful country and a proud intellectual and cultural heritage. We are a nation of wasted opportunity. We hand over our wealth and our independence to Party Politics, and they sell it, and divide it amongst their friends and sponsors. As a nation we are deprived of our dignity and our independence, we crawl behind the nations of Europe, and yet it is the Irish who have arguably made the greatest contribution to the intellect and literature of western civilisation.

We need to stand on our feet and be proud of who we are. We need to end the refuelling of war planes in Shannon and reclaim our dignity as a nation that stands for something;  for peace, for the environment and an end to war.  We need to take ownership of our identity. We must stand up for ourselves, we need to take the opportunity that our heritage, our wealth and our ingenuity affords us, and apply a vision that will create the finest education system, agriculture, justice and health service within Europe.

We cannot do this as long as we remain corrupted by party politics.  As long as politicians vote for their parties and not for the people whom they supposedly  represent.  We have no democracy, only a sham. A sham democracy and a sham nation.

Let us begin to stand up and take ownership of our independence, to do so we must elect independents. This is the first step towards real change.

Dr Marcus De Brun: Independent Candidate Dublin Fingal

Dear Voter

Little has changed in Irish Politics for many decades. Until recently politics belonged to the ‘old reliables.' Today: ‘The Times they are a changing!’ Ireland may yet reclaim her Independence from party politics and business as usual.

We live in a society where we must still go with ‘cap in hand’ to the ‘Big House’ of Local and Central Government, and appeal to be treated as Citizens. In other European Countries one does not struggle to find; footpaths, street-crossings, clean beaches, smaller classrooms, good planning and a decent health service. These should not have to be begged for, as though they were acts of charity.

Twenty years ago Local Government was responsible for; Waste, Water, and Roads. In recent years each of these have been privatised, and yet the tax take of local government has grown to include the LPT. Local government does less and costs more. Not only should the water tax be questioned, but the TV licence fee, the LPT and more. What do we the public get in return for these taxes?

Something great is happening in Ireland. Independent Politicians who can vote independent of the Party and on behalf of their constituents, are being elected in numbers that will ultimately change the way Politics works in Ireland.

The solutions to most if not all of our problems are alive and are working. They only need to be brought to the table and put into practice. For this to happen we must re-claim our independence. What is the point in voting for a party politician who can hardly think, speak or vote independently? After the Election he or she might as well stay at home.

I will demand policy and politics that makes sense, and is not beholden to party or those who lobby the Parties.


-Accountability and fiscal review of Local Government
-Deliver what we already pay far too much for!
-Community Health
-Community Education
-Social Services that promote Dignity rather than Dependence
-A Justice system that is not simply a revolving door

Party Politicians think and work for the Party.
An Independent Politician works for YOU.
Reclaim our political independence vote DE BRUN

An Apology for Violence

Undoubtedly it appears strange that one as myself a family physician and a pacifist might preach a doctrine of violence. In my defence I would immediately point to the traditional reasoning for violence that wags a crooked finger of blame towards the founding fathers of this or any nation and asserts with confidence that many of these marble and bronze casts were also pacifists at heart. Both history and the revolutionary might also argue (with no less vigour) that true political change can only arise out of a violence of some kind.

It might be said that all change is violent, relative to the rate at which it occurs and the pain that it endures. Doubtless a sneeze is a violent convulsion of the diaphragm, and the relentless and mute passage of time is a violence upon our youth that will leave us; bald, blind, arthritic, incontinent and demented. Indeed there may even be an act of violence in the social repression of violence as the time honoured modality of effective social change. On occasion Christ was a violent man, he was violent in the temple and violent in his indignation before the Roman court. In certain situations such as the silent oppression of thought in Ireland today; inertia, passivity and fear of violence, may be the greatest allies of our greatest oppression, and perhaps the greatest violence against our freedom of thought.

When looking outside our heads at the external real, at the flesh that hangs upon our bones, at the life that clings to the surface of this cooling rock, or the universe within which it floats; we encounter a mix of chaos and order, and we cannot help but desire there to be more of the latter and less of the former. It is towards a particular type of order that the chaos of all violence ultimately strives.

It is part of our make-up to desire order, even the anarchist wishes to destroy the status-quo so that he might impose his particular notion of a new, a better and ultimately more ordered society. In the total absence of law and authority, man would hence be compelled to live in accordance with the extrinsic order of Nature, - like every other animal with whom he shares this earth. This natural order has been in existence long before nature began its present human experiment. Our greater reality is ordered along lines that are outside of our comprehension, and as such all anarchy and violence is transient, delusory, and is subsumed within the greater order of the Universe.

The ideal of total anarchy, of the removal of society's rules and a return to this Natural order,  repeatedly finds practical and more often romantic expression in our notions of the 'noble savage', of the American Indian, or the Frontiersman, who staked out his claim at the edge of civilisation and raised his family by his own moral code and that of a simple agrarian community. Joyce describes our own Celtic ancestors as 'nature's gentlemen'.  Pearse's cottage in Rosmuc, his empty aspiration for a revival of the Irish language, and the reconstruction of our education system, were an appeal to the Celtic and natural order of our pre-colonial heritage.  

Evolution tells us that if any of these models were the 'fittest' they would have survived the passage of time and would perhaps be in the ascendancy today. That these simple, free, nature-respecting and relatively anarchic societies have all but disappeared from the Western horizon is perhaps proof enough of their 'inferiority' and their 'primitive' nature. And yet evolution is not such a simple matter, part of the whole may die in one place so that it's life might spring forth in another, with far greater vigour than before. The sepals of a bud, the first petals upon the stem will die before the flower explodes into being.

Within 'primitive' societies what was primitive was their technology, or more specifically their technology of warfare. It was the repeating Winchester and the pox-blanket that relegated the culture of the American Indian to the pages of history. It was the English army that subdued the Earls, and transformed Ireland into a jewel of the realm. However, whilst a native civilisation may be destroyed or transformed, certain aspects of its culture remain eternal and immune to the ravages of war. That which cannot be overcome by the gun and the plague, is the omnipotent immaterial form of thought.

The Noble Savage
The romantic often asserts that the Indian had no notion of possession, that he considered the earth to belong to all men. Yet their own history of inter-tribal warfare and the reaction that might have been evoked by the confiscation of; his wife, his horse or his britches, would undoubtedly contradict this notion in a  very real way. Our Celtic ancestors would foster their children to different clans, in order to maintain ties and peace with those others. Yet our own pre-colonial history of the feuding and wars between petty kings, attests to the incomplete success of this noble idea. 'Man'- as the gentleman historian Will Durant writes, 'is a trousered ape', it makes no difference if those trousers be of pin-stripped lambswool, or stretched animal hide.

It is highly unlikely that the 'noble savage' was noble enough to have no concept of possession. What is far more likely is that the Native American like all nomadic peoples, looked upon possession and ownership in an entirely different manner. To him possessions were literally a burden that had to be hauled behind the migrating herds whom he followed, and as such he was compelled to travel, and to live without the burden of a superfluity that is passionately pursued today. Likewise if we had to pedal or push our cars to work,  the roads would not be as congested and we would not be so fat. 

Of necessity the Native American had an entirely different concept of possession. In a modern world where man is driven by and towards the possession of superfluous wealth, the superiority, or the truth of the nomadic concept of ownership becomes increasingly valid. Nonetheless, his is a truth that arises out of necessity, and out of the permanence of its own reality, rather than the superior thinking of the 'noble savage'.

The Native American, like the pre-Christian Celt was animistic in his theology. He saw gods in every place, the earth would consume and digest the corpses of his father and mother, and so become invested with the spirit of his ancestors. The river, the trees and plains, would feed him, and these were his gods. Modern man has come to personalize God, to remove him from Nature and transform him into a personal and ultimatly private possession. Modern man has transformed  God from the 'persona of the external real', to an entirely private possession.  Indoing so, Neitzsche may have been correct in his assertion that God is dead, and we have killed him.

Unlike the native, civilisation, seeks continued  ownership of his dead, through the preservation of its corpses in specific social spaces we refer to as 'grave-yards'.  It embalms them and puts them in boxes with brass handles. It also puts grains in the store house, in the market, and on the supermarket shelves.  In doing so, our God has become unseen; a single entity that resides within our head our heart, our immortal soul, or somewhere in between.

God cannot live in the fields when we are fed from the packet and the shelf. The rivers do not flow with the blood of our ancestors when those ancestors are dressed in suits placed in boxes and laid to rest beneath stone slabs. If he wished to remember his father the pre-Christian Celt or Native American would listen to the birds and look to the mountain or the river, modern man searches for a carved stone in a field of many.

In this respect there are aspects of the thought of the Celt or the Native American that will continue to endure, not because he was better than us, but rather his thought remains relevant and current in its philosophy. The contemporary validity of that thought is merely the natural consequence of a more 'primitive' or more nomadic life. The universal 'ownership' of our children, or the eternal truth of a practical and intelligent rejection of superfluity, will inevitably form part of an evolved consciousness;- if man can survive himself, and evolve to this 'higher' plane of thinking. What nature once imposed upon us through necessity will ultimately be embraced through the application of intelligence and the evolution of intellect and reason.

The Native American would have paid a certain price for the emergent sophistication of his thought and his philosophy of living. Doubtless the nomadic life has not persisted because of the hardships it entails. However that is not to say that modern living or 'civilised' life is not devoid of its own hardships. Modern man cannot convincingly claim to be more 'happy' than his native counterpart. In stark contrast to the primitive, modern, particularly western hardships are predominantly self inflicted. Whilst we might point to the Celt or native American and assert with confidence that his life expectancy was less than ours, that his teeth were rotten or his belly often empty; the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the western world are cancers and cardiovascular disease. Disease that is a consequence of fat and consumption. Whilst the Native American contested with nature, with the elements, with privation and conflict, today the struggle of modern man is with the self, with loneliness, ignorance, ennui, with rejection and delusion.  Therefore  only a true primitive would suggest that this modern life is not equally or even  more fraught with unhappiness, danger and despair.

Whilst many if not most practicalities of 'Native' life have given way to the modern,various aspects of his thought persist as those aspects of thought form part of the enduring reality of truth, the timeless philosophic fabric of human existence. By definition wealth or superfluous possession is entirely superfluous. Atheist and theist alike will agree that 'something' beyond us; God, Science or the infinite mystery of the universe, is poetically and objectively manifest in the river and the Mountain. They might differ only in the name and value that is applied to that 'mystery of the real'. The soil scientist the meteorologist and the Shaman will all agree that the dirt and the breeze are infused with the remains of our forefathers, and that the atoms of our flesh and bones were born in stars. In this respect the theology of animism, (or the dust of ancestors being manifest in the reality of nature), is a truth that can be validated upon any theological or scientific level. And so these native truths form part of the enduring truth of an enduring and existential reality.

Ireland was perhaps unique in its revolutionary aspirations of 1916, as the leader of that rebellion might well be described as a practical apologist for the primitive or the native.  Or perhaps it would be more correct to assert that Pearse was an apologist for many of the enduring truths of  Celtic thought. The revolution itself may have been an abject failure, and those enduring truths of language, culture and a respect for the natural order, may have been erased from  Modern Ireland's contemporary social dialogue. However as Christian ideals are immortalised in the person of Christ .  So too are those enduring truths of native Irish culture alive in the writings and ideals of Pearse. Pearese cannot be (although frequently is) accused of wishing to return to the past, rather he was unique in his capacity to recgonise the enduring philosophical truths of the past that need to be applied to Irelands present and Irelands future.  This aspiration particularly manifest in his hope for the evolution of an education system that might unveal these truths in their magesty before what can only be described as our enduring modern intellectual primitivism   It is merely a matter of time before we Irish come to prefer the cultivation of  our intellectual  heritage, our language and the Gods of our natural world, instead of the colonial lords of status and  material wealth. When this day comes the timeless aspiration of 1916 will at least be part achieved. Perhaps Ireland's first Poem was Padraig Pearses last, written on the eve of his execution in 1916:




The Wayfarer

Tbeauty of the world hath made me sad, 
This beauty that will pass; 
Sometimes my heart hath shaken with great joy 
To see a leaping squirrel in a tree 
Or a red lady-bird upon a stalk, 
Or little rabbits in a field at evening, 
Lit by a slanting sun, 

Or some green hill where shadows drifted by 
Some quiet hill where mountainy man hath sown 
And soon would reap; near to the gate of Heaven; 
Or children with bare feet upon the sands 
Of some ebbed sea, or playing on the streets 
Of little towns in Connacht, 
Things young and happy. 
And then my heart hath told me: 
These will pass, 

Will pass and change, will die and be no more, 
Things bright and green, things young and happy; 
And I have gone upon my way 
Sorrowful.

Padraig Pearse (May1st 1916)

The process whereby eternal truths are transformed into applied truths may be defined as social evolution, and Revolution is generally the driving force to that evolution and that inevitable  transformation.

Our Eternal Spirit
The French Philosopher Teilard De Chardin maintains that  man's eternal spirit (what ever that is) is evolving in a manner no different to the evolution of our biology. He offers some moral encouragement to the misanthropist, in that we might better consider society, the self and even the soul, as a 'work in progress', moving towards a single ideal that is one of universal truth or universal love (De Chardin's :Omega Point).  It is a most interesting notion to apply the concept of evolution to the non-material world of  'spirit' and or philosophy.

Indeed, we may in fact be a little kinder and a little more humane as individuals and as a species than we were ten thousand years ago. It may merely be that we sacrifice our virgins and our children in a different more deluded manner? Rather than send them to the factory or down the mine shaft at the behest of necessity, today we abandon them at the crèche, and process them through the 'murder machine' of an education system that will strip them of their self confidence and their intellectual curiosity. Today, instead of openly bludgeoning each other in pursuit of more; we bludgeon the earth and other species from behind the morally sterile interface of our technology.

Alexander's hoards may have raped and pillaged their way across a continent. The army of the federal government may have extinguished a civilisation, the Nazis may have dreamt and applied ways to gas, roast and extinguish an entire race. Today we might dispense a barbarism that is simply more sophisticated in its delusion and apparent sterility. We may equally destroy species and sacrifice our children, we may warm the planet and freeze our souls through the benign activity of the drive to a pointless daily occupation and so on and so forth.

The fact is that even if we are no better today in the evils we perpetuate, we at least perpetuate those evils in a 'nicer' and 'more' sophisticated manner. We may merely wish to remove ourselves from an awareness of the consequence of our behaviour. And yet even in this tiny act of choosing not to see, we are acknowledging (on some tiny level) the immorality of our behaviour. Even in this mute act of predilection for delusion; the spirit lives, and perhaps evolves? If it did not, that same evolution would have dispensed with the delusion and the predilection long ago. That same delusion persists for a reason, in some fundamental way man at least desires a moral order.  If he manages to survive himself for long enough, that same delusion cannot help but evolve, and may ultimately evolve into an applied truth.

It is not much I will grant you that, it is a small a tiny gratuity that we extend to ourselves but we must extend it nonetheless. We cannot with equal certainty assert that man is becoming more barbarous in his dealings with his fellow man. We might only be able to assert that where he is less barbarous towards his immediate neighbours he has merely become more barbarous to the other species with whom he shares this earth. It may not be much, in his turning from beating his wife to beating his dog, he remains a cruel brute, but a brute that is conscious on some level of the meaning or the consequence of the pain he dispenses.

De Chardin believes that this evolution may culminate in a universal love. Something that might approach the ideal that is described in John Lennon's Imagine. Of course it might appear that man has light years to travel the distance from the brute nature of today, to one of universal love. De Chardin was a geologist and a palaeontologist and would undoubtedly have been acutely aware that our ten thousand years of civilisation is but a hairs breath upon the evolutionary road. The question still remains as to whether man can physically survive himself so that his thought might evolve beyond that nature. The violence of revolution may be crucial to that survival.

De Chardin's idea is a beautiful one, and indeed if man does not ultimately destroy the web of ecology that sustains him, he might live to realise this ideal of love.  The present trajectory of civilisation and ecology would not support this hope and this aspiration, and yet regardless of reality it remains a beautiful ideal, one that invigorates and sustains, in spite of the brute and the storm that rages about our heads.

Essential to any future form of universal love would indeed be the physical survival of our species and for this to occur,  radical paradigm shifts and revolutionary change is necessary and entirely inevitable. To prolong or delay that evolution through a fear of violence is to limit the possibility of that evolution, and thus through passivity, to perpetuate a deeper and more far reaching violence, upon the future of man. To stand an assert that one is against revolution, that once is against violence and that one is against change is anti- human and un-deserving of that capacity for independent thought that all mortal men and women have been endowed with.

The task for modern men and women, for pacifists and activists alike, is not to avoid violence, but rather to define how and in what manner  the violence that is intrinsic to change, to revolution; should and must occur. The brute will attach his violence readily to any cause that might pass before his vacant eyes. The brute will enjoy a violence for the sake of violence. We see this brute in the tapestry of Irish politics in the guise of a political left that seeks to rouse the rabble against; water charges, bin charges, abortion, the plight of the Palestinians, or the Spotted Owl ...., and so on.  We see man take the stick from his wife and apply it to the dog who has just come into the kitchen.

Almost a century ago in a little tobacco shop in Dublin a handful of iconoclasts met, discussed and decided upon how a particular and a definitive type of change might occur, and the violence that would be necessary to effect that change. Their task was easier in that the enemy had a flag a uniform by which he might be identified. The violence was agreed upon not for the sake of violence, but rather to escape the ongoing violence of oppression, of dire poverty, of dire inequality and the asphyxiation of a language and a culture. Today we have yet to recognise that the source of our oppression is not our government, the water charges the bin charges or the fleeting causes of the 'looney-left', but rather the primitive, colonial and un-evolved thought that has constructed and constrained our society into its present form.

The stick, if it is to be effectively applied, must be applied to our thought, and to our capacity for thought, not simply to beat it and oppress it even further, but rather to cause it to awaken.

Marx once asserted that 'whilst it is the job of a philosopher to imagine or think of a better society, it is the job of the revolutionary to make society better.' The German philosopher Martin Heidigger famously replied, that before we can change society, we must first change the manner in which we think about society; and that is the job of the philosopher. All revolution is predicated upon a revolution in thought. In Ireland we may have rebelled almost a century ago but we have donned the britches of our colonial master, and in doing so we have turned each other into perpetual peasants.

We are not yet at the stage where we can even see the oppressions of today and consider the appropriate form of violence that is needed to end that oppression. Our politics and our thought remains confined to its colonial horizon and is devoid of ideology, other than the seizing and holding onto public or private power.

Today the functional ideology of all mainstream political parties can be considered upon three distinct levels; firstly the superficial 'tit for tat', point-scoring, struggle for mass sentiment, or media approval, that is the struggle for power.

Secondly there is the silent motive behind that struggle, the need to feed the 'core' of the party, political salaries, pensions, favours, appointments; the sharing of spoils that have been fairly won through the petty contest of contemporary politics.

Finally there is the banner ideology; green, labour, independence, progress, business etc., the marketable posters and ideals that make up the vessel that will carry the rabble-rousers through the gates of the castle and into the kings store house, where he might get his hands upon the spoils.

Outside of this horizon there are currently no possibilities in Irish politics. The absentee in our daily lives and consequently in our politics is thought, ideology, or a philosophy of the future. We see only the familiar colonial mentality transformed into an Irish version of democratic capitalism. We see only the struggle for power and a sharing of the spoils;

With self,- through immediate benefits of power.

With supporters - through appointments, favours etc.

With the middle classes, through a social welfare system that is called 'the civil service' or 'local government'.

With the poor and uneducated, through a system of social dependence that is referred to as their 'dole' and or 'entitlements'.

From the top to the bottom of Irish society this remains the ideological horizon of the peasants who have just burst through the gates of the palace, and are trying on the kings garments and sharing out the spoils of revolution. But as we ravage and plunder the wealth of the king, we do not yet realise that it is our own backs that we are pissing on.

Revolution in Ireland is not to be had upon the streets beneath the various banners of the brute, rallying behind Ireland's contemporary purveyors of  anarchy and of ignorance. Nor is it to be found in the ballot box. Undoubtedly the inevitable form of future government will be one of a combination of 'the same but different' political banners. Sin Fein and Fianna Fail perhaps? Who knows, and who cares? It makes no real difference, as the functional colonial process behind the banner remains the same. Whilst former governments had their pipers and paymasters in the shape of bankers businessmen and developers; the pipers and paymasters of the Shinners, are former provisionals, incarcerated republicans, and those still wedded to the exhausted fantasy of a united Ireland.  One that aspires to be united, but has long ceased to be Ireland.

The big bang. 

If  I could lay my hands upon some of that semtex of the provisional IRA. If I had the wherewithal to wrap it in cellophane and attach the alarm-clock and essential appendages. I would do so, and place enough beneath Gay Byrne's desk at the headquarters of RTE.  If I could be entirely certain that during the dead of night without a scratch or bruise to a single hair upon the head of the army of delicate employees there. I would with great pleasure and delight push the button, ignite the fuse, or pull the switch that would send that poisonous institution into the stratosphere, in a billion particles of dust. For that would be the first step towards our freedom from the greatest of our oppressions; the active suppression of analysis, of creativity, of newness and of independent thinking.

If perhaps you think this to be a ludicrous assertion and insane aspiration. I challenge you now this very moment to turn from this page or this screen, turn on that institution, its radio or televised form, and listen, perhaps for the first time in your life with open ears. I will tell you exactly what you will hear. You will hear and see the metronome of the hypnotist, one who maintains this nation in its intellectual paralysis, its stupor of ignorance and passivity.

You will hear perhaps, Mr Tambourine Man, or Bruce Springsteen singing Born in the USA, as he has been doing for the past thirty years. You will hear this frozen fare of music and paralysed thought, despite and in spite of the reality that the world of music has moved on, and around the world there are artists and musicians producing their art and their music in new and evolved forms. Listen to the presenters; to Joe, or to Marion, or to a perpetually embalmed and resurrected Gaybo, you will hear the thoughts the analysis of thirty and forty years ago. The same good guys and bad guys remain the cause of our problems, and even our problems remain the same problems of  decades past.

If we are ever to have a democracy in Ireland that democracy cannot exist in the absence of a free press. Presently media that must sell its wares.  Through advertising and in deference to the market it  is compelled to appeal to the majority, and to  the lowest common denominator of intellect. It must offer the masses what they wish to see and hear, as opposed to what they might need to see and hear. In Ireland; newness, new thought, new ideas, new art, new music, new social theory...., all of this is an anathema to a market that insists upon a traditional Irish breakfast of sugar and fat, of soccer and sex, of good guys and bad guys etc etc. 

In Ireland we pay a television licence fee in order that we might see and hear advertisements. We wave banners that we might have free water and put no price upon the freedom of our thought. Media is almost entirely subject to the silent censor of the market. Media is perhaps the single greatest influence upon, and manifestation of, the thought of a society. The complete destruction of RTE, and the establishment of a press that is free from the silent censor of the market; free to celebrate new ideas, new art, and the infinite creative genius of the Irish soul,- that would be the beginning of the end of a revolution that began in 1916.

This would be the first and most essential step towards the freedom of thought that might permit us the space to evolve, and begin to consider a better self and a better society. If that evolution, if that freedom is predicated upon a painless explosion in the dead of night,  I applaud that violence and I would be the first to pray for that bang, and to ignite that fuse.