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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.