Irish Self-Crticism, an oxymoron?

"For usually people resist as long as they can to dismiss the fool they harbor in their bosom, they resist to confess a major mistake or to admit a truth that makes them despair."

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)

How do Irish people view themselves at the moment and how does that fit with our recent success? We are very critical of ourselves and others, and yet our ability to demand and receive good public services with a fair quality of life in Ireland, is very low.

It can apparently only come from within, as the recent flare up over the German Ambassador’s comments has proved. One of the ways you can offer an insight to this is to look at how we take criticism and what we do with it.

Since the start of the upturn in economic fortunes there have been critiques and multi page spreads about what our new materialist identity is doing to our personalities and how we are changing for the worst. I grew up in the middle of the country in the 80’s and let me tell you it was grim.

On the surface things look better now, but underneath, the old solitary self-loathing has even less chance of being overcome by the positives of social interaction. I envy the way Spaniards construct their lives around social occasions like fiestas, Easter, bullfights, family Saints days etc. A solitary Spaniard is a rare thing.

On the other hand, the little we had before has become almost totally subsumed by the pace of modern life. There has been a reduction in social contact. Where before, the pubs, town field days, church meetings and sporting events would be the main forums of social contact, only sporting events are left, all the others have been diminished as to have no impact. Smoking laws, zero public transport, and long hours have put paid to that.

The only thing anyone is bothered about is ‘road safety’. So why is it not possible to criticize constructively from the very start so that there is at least a fighting chance of developing some self knowledge? A useful way of sidestepping responsibility for inaction is to respond to the man who reflects that sense of deliberate ignorance. FF warned us before the election not to ‘talk ourselves into a recession’ rather like a parent warning a child off its favorite sweet .

The great success of FF in modern times is to capture the great negativity of attitude towards the self which Irish people possess and then reinforce that attitude by guaranteeing us that they share the same low expectation of our outcome and our desire to hang on to what we’ve got and thus that no radical changes will be made to anything, ever. ‘Your ignorance is safe with us’.