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• Gladwell and Minister Harney

  April 28, 2010 @ 11:55 pm | by Bryan

  I really like Malcolm Gladwell. I had the privilege of listening to him speak when UCD hosted the writer a little over a year ago. On that occasion, he even kindly answered a question I put before him as he signed my copy of Outliers. Days later, while reading the book, I remember disagreeing with something he had written (the first and only time that I’ve seriously disagreed with Gladwell). Mixed in with stories about Mozart, Steve Jobs, and Korean pilots, while defending his 10 000 hour thesis, Gladwell makes the case for charter schools.

  Charter schools seem to me to be a particularly American solution to poverty. A testimony to the mastery of the market, they demonstrate what can be accomplished given the right incentives. Typically, inner-city American children fall behind their better-off cohorts academically. The root problem is that social issues keep these children from devoting as much time to their studies as others. Charter schools therefore start early in the morning and end late in the day. They also offer shorter vacations since they aim to keep their pupils in active learning for as long as possible. The idea is that if these children are in school for a sufficient period of time, they will cover as much ground as children in better social circumstances and will therefore be more likely to succeed academically. And they do just that, making the schools very popular in poor areas, despite being almost cruelly taxing on their pupils.

  I don’t like the idea of charter schools. An old paediatrician once called me a bleeding heart liberal, but on this issue, I think we would agree. Charter schools, in my opinion, treat the symptom rather than the underlying pathology. If poverty is the issue, I don’t see how allowing a few to keep up academically can be thought of as anything but a temporary bandage. Reading Gladwell hold up this bandage as a potential solution makes me more than a little uncomfortable.

  That same feeling was evoked in me by the minister for health, who wrote:

  …The critical question is how we use all resources, particularly public resources, to help people stay healthy and to get best outcomes for patients from healthcare…

  …It’s a critical question for all developed countries because the hospitalisation model of healthcare is financially unsustainable…

  …I invite people to recognise that it’s more important how money is spent than how it is raised from the public…

  …Our policy is equity of access to publicly-funded health services. We are open to using all providers who meet quality and value for money standards to contribute to public services…

  A comparison between Gladwell and Minister Harney isn’t quite fair. I generally tend to agree with the former while I mostly disagree with the latter. I just don’t share her faith in the market. Gladwell believes in charter schools because he believes that if you spend long enough at something (10 000 hours), you’ll do well at it given some aptitude. Minister Harney on the other hand, from what I can gather, believes in the market.

  But even before we get to the question of service delivery, an important question must be answered. What does ‘equity of access to publicly-funded health services’ mean? We can even simplify that. What is equity? Does it mean that people get what they pay for, such that those who are willing to pay extra are entitled to more or better or faster services? Does it mean that absolutely no distinctions should be drawn between patients, so that regardless of one’s ability to pay, or how expensive one’s treatment may be, each will be treated ‘equally’? Or does it mean that each citizen will be allocated a fixed sum of money, health credits so to speak, and will be entitled only to their fair share such that when those credits run out, they are no longer eligible for state health services? Or that the state’s health services will be structured so as to serve the greatest number; meaning that those whose ailments are expensive to treat will have to access their healthcare elsewhere?

  And what about the suggestion that ‘the hospitalisation model of healthcare is financially unsustainable’? Isn’t it only unsustainable if one holds to a certain set of values? The Cubans (I know, this example is well worn now), seem to value healthcare above modern consumer goods. I imagine that the idea that the hospitalisation model is unsustainable, on a budget of €15 billion, when far greater sums can be found to prop up the financial services sector, would make no sense to them.

  Doesn’t the question of what is or isn’t financially sustainable then really rest on what we take as our foundational principles? Isn’t the same true of what we mean by the word ‘equitable’?

  I suppose what worries me most about the minister’s article isn’t so much the matter of our ideological differences, or my fear that, as Dr Christine O’Malley suggested on radio today, the subtext is a desire to privatise health. No, the real worry for me is that we make Gladwell’s mistake and fight over which bandage to apply rather than engaging in debate over the real underlying issue. What are our views on justice? What does equity look like? Who should get what and why?

  The only way €15 billion isn’t enough to sustain the health of less than 5 million people is when there is an attempt to throw money at the issue instead of directly addressing those difficult core issues.

  Comments (25)

• Solzhenitsyn, Mbeki, X-factor and the rest of us

  April 26, 2010 @ 10:11 pm | by Bryan

  “Even the most broad minded of us,” writes Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago, “can embrace only that part of the truth into which our own snout has blundered.

  ”In the same chapter, Solzhenitsyn describes magnificently how as an army officer, as a member of a privileged group, he was incapable of understanding the perspectives of those not as fortunately situated. It was only when his fortunes turned, when he found himself imprisoned and knocked off his high horse, that his world view began to change. Only when he himself became a wretch did he begin to understand, and empathise with the wretched. But as his account makes clear, even that sort of toppling isn’t enough to change everyone’s perspective. Some will hold on to their views no matter what.

  With that in mind, is the idea of cross-cultural (or cross-anything for that matter) dialogue a farce? Will Kymlicka, a staunch defender of liberal multiculturalism, is essentially of the opinion that immigrants should assimilate into the majority culture, and from within that culture assert their rights and make a life for themselves. Whether he is right is neither here nor there for me right now. What really interests me is that this ‘uniculturalism’, albeit one that embraces the Chinese takeaway and African clay pot, is called multiculturalism. Could the reason be that the farthest we’re willing to go in order to accommodate those whose snouts have blundered into a trough other than our own is to allow them to feed among us, and only when they have learnt to call our take on truth ‘The Truth’, accept them?

  Could this be why many thought that former South African President Thabo Mbeki underwent some strange Jekyll/Hyde transformation upon assuming power? As an activist in exile, Mbeki was dependent on the goodwill of people in nations powerful enough to sway the apartheid regime. He therefore wisely plonked his snout in the right trough and articulated his position in a manner that he knew would be intelligible to those whose support he needed. When he became the head of one of the most powerful states in the Southern hemisphere, he returned his snout into its former trough and became unintelligible to his former beneficiaries.

  But it’s not just Mbeki. Every successful politician seems to understand this phenomenon. Isn’t that why few run election campaigns on substantive issues? If a candidate or party dares to take a position on something, it will alienate all those who feed elsewhere. If campaigning is conducted at the level of the most abstract generalities, this problem doesn’t arise. Take ‘change’ for example. It’s a wonderful slogan. From what, where, when, who, into what? The answers to those question may force a politician to leave world of generalities and lose voters, so they are never answered. The Conservatives, a party named after the concept of constancy, are therefore more than happy to waffle about change. Nick Griffin, leader of a party initially based on the exclusion and, if I am not mistaken, even the expulsion of non-whites, has learnt a thing or two from Cameron, Clegg and Brown. He now refuses to talk in the language of specifics. He rightly assumes that if he doesn’t mention that he might quite like a Britain without blacks or Asians, one or two members of those groups might vote for him! Who knows, in the next decade or so, we might see Griffin on the set of an X-factor-esque show, with the leaders of the other parties, trying to win votes in the most vague terms possible.

  I digress. What most surprises me, with respect to the matter at hand, is that we all seem perfectly content with the current state of things. Sure, we complain. But that’s only because you’re meant to do that. We complain in the same way that we join with Kymlicka in calling for multiculturalism. It’s not like we actually mean it. No, what we really want is uniformity, agreement, conformity … with our own point of view; which incidentally, to borrow Terry Pinkhard’s phrase, we wish constituted ‘authoritative reason’ for everyone else. It just so happens that in any given group, the views of a majority converge to create something like a majority point of view; a consensus.

  So, back to my original question: is the idea of cross-cultural dialogue a farce? Not so long as all those holding minority positions, once they have got their issues off their chests; once they have formed their grassroots organisations and held meetings; once they’ve had parades, shows, festivals and other events; once they’ve had their say in newspapers, on the radio and on television; once they’ve taken money from the majority in the form of government grants; not so long as after all of that, they plonk their snouts where they very well know they ought to.

  Put in simpler terms, of course the idea of cross-cultural dialogue is a farce. We just find the pretence comforting.

  Comments (9)

• On global migration

  April 21, 2010 @ 2:56 pm | by Bryan

  The topic that seems to generate the most response on this blog is immigration. That makes sense, I suppose. There aren’t too many fora out there that facilitate a back and forth between those who are concerned about the consequences of immigration (imagined and real), and immigrants themselves, or those who view immigration in a positive light.

  Although I often refer to the issue, I don’t think I’ve ever explicitly spelt out my own position. Here goes:

  Like most of you, I remember my parents’ painstaking attempts to get me to understand the difference between right and wrong. One of the main pillars of this concept was the idea of fairness. There is something about the fact that just about anyone on one end of the world can visit, or relocate to most parts of the other, while only a very small proportion of the latter can even visit the former, that violates that basic sense of fairness. As I got older, I was taught that life isn’t fair, but that it ought to be just. I was taught that fairness would mean every time my sister got a doll I should get one too, whether or not I ‘deserved’ or even wanted one. Justice, on the other hand, meant that the same concern shown to her would be shown to me. We would be treated in a similar manner, based on consistent principles, and shown the same love, even if that meant sometimes one got gifts, rewards, privileges or duties that the other did not.

  That the rules governing global migration are unfair is in my opinion uncontroversial; they obviously are. That just makes them consistent with life, and I can happily live with that. What I struggle with is the fact that they are also unjust. What has the average Irish person done to deserve the option to visit or relocate to a bunch of different countries should she so wish that the average Tswana, Peruvian or Bangladeshi has not?

  The highly influential political philosopher John Rawls believed the answer lies in political culture. His answer in The Law of Peoples, sounds like a version of a conservative American politician’s self-help, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps, take-responsibility philosophy. The Tswana, Peruvian and Bangladeshi, by this account, need to sort out the political culture in their country because all countries have the resources to reach a satisfactory level of ‘development’, and then they won’t have to migrate. Not only can they then stay put, but once they no longer pose the risk of not returning to their own place of origin, rich countries will grant them the privilege of visiting and spending their money on said rich countries’ tourism sector. I’ve added to it, but that seems to me to be Rawls’ general point, and it’s one that many, maybe most people in the rich world, share.

  I’m all for personal responsibility. And should an individual, a group, or a national culture have negative consequences, then it’s perfectly just to let them have to deal with those consequences. But I struggle to understand how anyone who has ever paid any attention to the world beyond their front door can believe that a nation’s condition is solely, even primarily the result of its culture. Take Ireland for example. It hasn’t been a closed system in which the only things that have really mattered to its trajectory have been internal. Nations are open systems, and a lot of national culture comes about as a result of external influences. And then, as Thomas Pogge brilliantly highlights, the global political economy is such that with all the will in the world, few nations can pursue the policies they want without first taking note of the external environment.

  Maybe that’s where the fork in the road lies with respect to migration and global justice more broadly. Some see the matter as predominantly local while others think the international context is decisive. That most of the former are the beneficiaries of the status quo and the latter the losers is telling of human nature, and that probably cuts both ways.

  So, if the material benefits of human labour are unevenly, and unjustly distributed, if the same is also true of natural resources, such that some places give up the resources around and beneath them for much less benefit than that accrued by those who take them, why shouldn’t people be allowed to follow the wealth? I completely understand and empathise with the concerns that some have over the effects of ‘mass migration’, but frankly, I think the right to follow the world’s resources trumps those concerns (empirical studies show that the average American consumes something like 6 times his share of the planet, the average European 4, and the African less than her full share).

  The real issue, of course, is global distributive and regulatory justice. But until that’s addressed, I can’t see there being a plausible moral argument against the right of the poor to follow their share of planet.

  Comments (21)

• A thought

  April 20, 2010 @ 3:44 pm | by Bryan

  

  The plume of ash from the volcano under the Eyjafjallajökull glacier in Iceland. The eruption resulted in flights being cancelled across Ireland and Britain. Aircraft may remain ground for a number of days. Photograph: AP Photo/Jon Gustafsson.

  When I first heard that volcanic ash had grounded most of Europe’s air travel, I wasn’t bothered very much. While I have a fair bit of travelling ahead of me in coming month, it won’t be the end of the world if I have to delay my plans. Besides, these natural phenomena pass.

  And then a friend asked, “What if it doesn’t pass away soon? What if this volcano continues to spew out ash for another couple of months? Imagine how isolated we will be.”

  I’m sure that won’t happen. I’m sure that before we know it, most of us will have forgotten that there was a brief period during which it was difficult to fly into, out of, or around Europe. That idea of isolation, nevertheless, is a useful one.

  Most of us talk about globalisation without questioning the idea that we live in an interconnected world. We take for granted the fact that in many very real ways, Canada is no longer that far from Ireland. But for the majority of the world, the isolation that some European travellers have felt over the last few days is the normal state of affairs. Yes, the middle-classes in Africa, Asia and Latin America have phone lines, access to the internet, and the ability to travel regionally by road and rail. But not too many of these can afford to fly, and fewer still would get tourist visas to places like Europe, America or Australia (God forbid that they might decide to stay!). Moreover, those middle-classes only represent a small minority of their overall populations.

  It makes you think, doesn’t it? We live in a world where one group of people can be seized by near panic over the loss of something that another group almost never have. Something in fact, that isn’t even at the top of the list of things that the latter would ask for given a magic wand.

  Hmmm….

  Comments (14)

• A final word on race

  April 13, 2010 @ 10:40 pm | by Bryan

  Race is a difficult subject. It is one of those things that members of polite society avoid like the plague. I can understand why. It’s a minefield and too often people have been accused racism when only guilty of indelicacy.

  All of that, I understand. And I empathise with those who are frustrated by the fact that they feel unable to broach the subject without being branded with a swastika. What I don’t get is why there is such an aversion to calling racism out when it clearly raises its ugly head. Why are there so many doubts over the race-based nature of a crime in which an eye witness says the murder drew to a close an episode in which the perpetrators used racist language and singled out that particular aspect of the victims? Do some people really think race was just coincidental, in the same manner that an armed robber might accidentally shoot the person he was robbing? Could have simply been coincidental, the thin veneer hiding criminality that was just waiting for an outlet? I don’t buy it. But even if that were true, were that outlet always or predominantly a person of colour or an ethnic minority, surely we would still be dealing with an issue to do with race?

  There’s more than just a reluctance to discuss race at play here, there’s also a reluctance to acknowledge the presence of racism, which is rife in contemporary Ireland. My Polish friends tell me that in some parts of Poland, gangs of young men trawl the streets for visible minorities to assault. A German friend recently bemoaned the rise of visible neo-Naziam in parts of her country. Ireland doesn’t have those issues, at least not in those proportions, and for that I am incredibly grateful.

  But a few years ago a friend of mine lost an eye, and literally had his skull cracked, as a result of being beaten by a group of young men one evening. His assailants made it clear that his crime had something to do with the colour of his skin. Another friend cleverly explained his inability to get the sort of employment for which he is qualified as the result of ‘not getting the same benefit of the doubt’ as people who did not look as different as he. I don’t think I know a black person here who hasn’t had a racial slur hurled at them. And I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve wondered how long a store would stay in business if the assistants treated everyone with the same disdain shown towards me or my wife. Perhaps some of that is in my imagination, but there’s something about a guard making a bee line towards you and eyeing you like a hawk, while trying to make out that he is sorting out a shelf. Once, I was tempted to ask if he really thought I could stuff a pram under my jacket, and if his time wouldn’t be better spent watching over smaller items. Someone I know of eventually asked the trailing security man to carry her shopping for her if he insisted on being her chaperone.

  I live in the real world and am well aware of the fact that there will be unpleasant people with unpleasant attitudes, regardless of where you are. But what I find incredibly frustrating is what often seems to many of us like the blatant refusal to acknowledge our reality and that of other non-white Celts in Ireland.

  Before starting this blog I was warned by colleagues to expect some unpleasant comments. Though I knew enough not to need the warning, I was grateful for it. To be fair, I receive far fewer aggressive racist comments than I expected. But I do get them. Almost all I delete without reading beyond the words that jump out; the sort of words that even in this context I cannot bring myself to repeat. But the other day, because I felt it was pertinent to the subject being discussed, I approved one of those racist comments. For the most part, the reaction seemed to me to be to laugh it off as some sort of prank or something so far beyond the pale as to not warrant notice or further consideration. Someone even speculated that the comment had been ‘planted’ deliberately to sway the debate. Only, I ‘know’ the person who made that comment insofar as he often has colourful opinions to make about people of my race, collective worth, and his desire to see our mass emigration. I generally choose not to share those opinions. Yet the fact that when I do share one of those comments, it is essentially ignored in the same way that one deliberately takes no note of an ugly pimple, is again, frustrating.

  I don’t think race is the most important challenge facing Ireland at the moment. It is nowhere near that. But the way it is handled – by the average person just as much as by the relevant authorities – is no different to the way more threatening issues are handled: a concerted effort is made to pretend that there are no problems, up until disaster is loudly announced. Schopenhauer held that the will drives action, but I don’t think this is what he had in mind.

  In time, when the dreaded ghettos appear, I can only imagine what excuses will be given, and the degree to which the parties in opposition will blame those in government, with the rest of us nodding in agreement, just as has happened with the current financial difficulties. Unfortunately, that won’t do a single thing to prevent the emergence of those ghettos and the social ills that are sure to follow.

  That’s pretty much all I have to say on this subject. An intelligent writer leaves readers with a sense of hope, or at the very least, shows them concrete steps they can take to address the matter that has been presented. I’m evidently not that. In the words of Lauryn Hill, “Fantasy is what people want, but reality is what they need … and I’ve just retired from the fantasy.”

  The reality is that the fixation with the idea that everything really is okay is problematic. So long as it stands, hope isn’t too far removed from delusion.

  Comments (47)

• Fundamentalists and Pragmatists

  March 29, 2010 @ 3:20 pm | by Bryan

  

  Delegates watch Green Party leader John Gormley’s speech on TV by candlelight to mark Earth Hour. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill.

  In a fascinating episode of Tonight with Vincent Browne, the Green Party, specifically Minister Ciarán Cuffe, were taken to task for what Browne sees as ethically dubious political behaviour. I seem to keep bringing up the Greens in a negative light. I have nothing against the party and my intention is not to unfairly pick on them. It’s just that they raise difficult questions about the nature of social and political change.

  On Vincent Browne’s programme, political scientist and Green Party expert John Barry suggested that what the party was faced with was the reality that politics is ‘the art of the possible’; that realisation leading to conflict between the so-called ‘fundamentalists’ and ‘pragmatists’. On this reading, what may be seen by some as the morphing of an activist party into the very entity it once stood against must be viewed in light of the payoffs that have come along the way. That is, to get things done, one must be a ‘proper’ party, and in order to become a ‘proper party’, certain traits that make the activist party what it is must be got rid of. The ‘fundamentalists’ will be unhappy and may even jump ship, they will hopefully continue to provide something of a moral compass as members of the broader movement, but only the ‘pragmatists’ will be able to effect legislative change. It should therefore come as little surprise that praise from the media that the Greens have matured into a ‘serious’ political entity and have outgrown their ‘quirky’ activist ways will hearten the ‘pragmatists’ while bitterly disappointing the ‘fundamentalists’.

  Maybe my problem is that I’m a ‘fundamentalist’ myself – something of a political purist – but I really don’t buy into the idea that politics is the art of the possible. Rather, I am more convinced by the view that Mark Haugaard ascribes to Foucault: that politics is a continuation of war by other means. And if that notion is coupled to the idea that identity is a crucial battleground in that war, then the morphing of a group, no matter how quirky, into something that sits more at ease with establishment groups represents a significant defeat for the once quirky body and their supporters. I just cannot see how you change the culture of a place by adopting it. Pragmatism may very well be the expedient route to power, but if the person who arrives at that destination is barely recognisable from the one who set forth, what’s the point?

  Which begs the question, should groups like the Green movement even get involved with formal politics? Conventional wisdom is that people should get involved. I give some of my ablest Irish friends a hard time for complaining about things without putting themselves forward as candidates for elected office. I’m not so sure any more. What if engagement necessarily leads to a Green-like metamorphosis? What if the social structure of the political process bends all who participate into the mould of the typical politician?

  Does anyone have George Lee’s number? I wonder if he came to a similar conclusion? I wonder if disengagement, or maybe mass disengagement, can be turned into a means of bringing about structural socio-political change?

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• Reshuffling personalities

  March 25, 2010 @ 4:00 pm | by Bryan

  

  Appointments of Ministers: (front seated) Pat Moylan, Séamus Kirk, Mr John Murray, Brian Cowen, Mary Coughlan; (Back row) Éamon Ó Cuív, Mary Hanafin, Batt O’Keeffe, Pat Carey, Tony Killeen and John Curran. Photograph: Cyril Byrne.

  I have been trying to make sense of the latest cabinet reshuffle and the response to it. To begin with, the response. From Stephen Collins’ excellent report:

  According to Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny – “The Taoiseach has retreated from the challenge of leadership that fell upon his shoulders. He could have been courageous, taken a different approach and from among those on his own backbenches he could have reshuffled his Cabinet so that it would bring some semblance of life to an exhausted group who are fatigued and flattened. They are without ideas, energy, ideals or commitment.”
  Translation, I don’t like the people Brian Cowen picked?

  Labour Party leader, Eamon Gilmore – “Why is the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney, still in office? By any standards, she should be removed from office. While I acknowledge she has been a good Minister in other departments and has made a major contribution to public life, her record as Minister for Health and Children has been hopeless.”
  In other words, I really don’t like one of the people Cowen picked?

  Last but not least, Green Party leader, John Gormley – the appointment of two of his party’s TDs as junior ministers represented a “very successful day for the Greens in Government”.
  That is, I’m delighted that two of my people got picked?

  And then there’s the reshuffle itself. Conventional wisdom would suggest that the guiding principle was ensuring stability, and that by rewarding allies, pacifying wavering partners, and only moving things around so long as doing so did not get in the way of the rewarding and pacifying.

  Is it just me, or do the political leaders all seem to be far more interested in who gets political power than with what gets done with that power? Even the Greens, who probably have the clearest political agenda of the lot, seem more concerned with staying in power than with realising their vision, as if that vision could not possibly be realised without their presence in government. It is easy to pick on the Greens, but I can’t help but feel that everyone else is the same. Had the Taoiseach sacked half of his cabinet, or the whole lot, and replaced them with the most promising and articulate deputies from every party, I’m sure he would have been hailed as a genius. But would that really have been any different from the action he took? Sure, it would have meant spreading the political power around like a good democrat, but what good does it do the country in the long run if the distribution of power is effected for the sake of popularity, legacy or just good naturedness rather than for personal political survival? Isn’t the real issue the socio-economic transformation of the state?

  What I found really sad about the reshuffle and then the terms in which it has been subsequently analysed is that apart from the fuzzy, non-specific talk of innovation and economic recovery, there hadn’t been much in the way of articulating a comprehensive vision for the future. Not by government, nor the opposition. The discussion has been something like discussing the merits of a new football signing without any reference to team he has joined, long term goals, their style of play, their likely position at the end of the season, the competitions in which they will be involved, and so forth.

  I think it’s really sad that whether a politician is a good media performer, is articulate in the Dáil, is liked or otherwise, comes from such and such a part of the country, and so forth, that these things set the parameters of the discussion on political appointments as opposed to questions around where the country is going.

  Comments (5)

• On strike

  March 22, 2010 @ 11:26 pm | by Bryan

  

  A large queue of people outside the Molesworth Street Passport Office in Dublin before lunchtime today. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien/The Irish Times.

  The first industrial action that I came across in this country was the nurses’ work-to-rule a couple years ago. I distinctly remember thinking that if this is how the rich world does strikes, then either it has got something right that my part of the world has yet to figure out, or people here just don’t understand the concept of the strike.

  Leader of the Labour Party, Eamon Gilmore, brought that back to mind. In response to the strike by officials at the passport office, he is reported as saying:

  I full understand the anger of low-paid public sector workers who have had their salaries unilaterally cut twice during the past twelve months, but those who are suffering as a result of action now being taken are not responsible for these pay cuts.

  This is where I suppose the cross cultural misunderstanding sets in. Growing up, industrial action was explained to me as something people did to a third party in order to force their employers to yield in to some set of demands. It therefore goes without saying that those who suffer are not responsible for creating the conditions that led to the industrial action in the first place.

  I don’t like industrial action in general. I don’t like it because I don’t see how it succeeds apart from a complete disregard for the public; and even then success isn’t guaranteed. In order to be successful, it often demands that the aggrieved do, or at the very least be willing to do something egregious in order to demonstrate their right standing, which is just twisted. In reality, that means that unless it were now impossible to obtain a travel document, or Gardaí refused to arrest anyone, or all health professionals decided that they wouldn’t turn up to work, industrial action by any of the above is not likely to be taken seriously. If it is taken seriously, it is most likely to be thought of as an annoyance and unlikely to serve the interests of those striking. Should providers of essential services refuse to work, on the other hand, the public would rightly turn on them and blame them for the ensuing disaster.

  But what’s a trade union to do? I don’t know. But in a country in which people prize their convenience, I don’t think inconveniently highlighting the plight of the low paid worker will win much sympathy. The trade union might win political capital. Politicians will seek to do the same on the basis of their reactions to the situation. But the passport office worker will almost certainly lose out.

  Then again, in this part of the world, you can’t just fire an entire department for going on strike. So maybe there’s hope.

  Comments (29)

• Sources of the Self – Chpt 7

  March 18, 2010 @ 10:51 pm | by Bryan

  

  For Augustine as for Plato, the vision of cosmic order is the vision of reason, and for both the good for humans involves their seeing and loving this order. And similarly, for both what stands in the way is the human absorption with the sensible, with the mere external manifestations of the higher reality. The soul must be swivelled around; it has to change the direction of its attention/desire. For the whole moral condition of the soul depends ultimately on what it attends to and loves. “Everyone becomes like what he loves. Dost thou love the earth? Thou shalt be earth. Dost thou love God? then I say, thou shalt be God” (p. 128).

  I enjoyed reading this chapter. Part of it was to do with a longstanding fascination with St Augustine. But more than anything else, I find myself drawn more and more towards the idea that we become the thing we fix our gaze on, or as Taylor tells us Augustine proposed, we become the thing we love. It’s an idea that I think reality endorses. It’s hard to argue that the love of material possessions has literally turned society into a collection of units of consumption. Margaret Thatcher, it turns out, was a prophet and there really is, in a sense, no such thing as society. She probably just realised long before most that the object of our affection – whether we choose to call ourselves out and out capitalists, Marxists, or something in between – is ‘stuff’.

  Augustine says we become what we love. Were he alive today, he might he to add to the quotation above, “Dost thou love ‘stuff’?” And if we all gave a collective nod of the head? He could, for consistency’s sake respond with something along the lines of “Thou shalt be ‘stuff’,” or, “Though shalt treat each other like ‘stuff’”. But having watched John Hillcoat’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel recently, I would suggest that, “Go and watch The Road to see what thou shalt become,” would be a more appropriate response.

  I haven’t read the novel yet, but I can believe Peter Bradshaw’s claim that Hillcoat’s one fault was in trying to tone down McCarthy’s vision of a post-apocalypse world. I also agree with Bradshaw that The Road is one of those “What if this really happened?”/”This is really going to happen,” apocalyptic films. And while, in order not to scare everyone away, the film attempts to show that humanity isn’t all bad and that there’s hope, I think McCathy’s major contribution is to give us a glimpse of the end result of loving stuff above all else.

  If Taylor has given a faithful account of Augustine’s thinking, and if we really do become what we love, then McCarthy’s work of fiction ceases to look that fictitious. In fact, McCarthy begins to look at least as much a prophet as Thatcher.

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• The brightest and the best, or the rest?

  March 16, 2010 @ 3:19 pm | by Bryan

  Reading through the comments on Declan Kiberd’s Returning to the spirit of Tiger Ireland is pointless. Only a completely new political movement can tackle the challenges, one response jumped out at me. Though his main target was the senior civil servant, Labour TD Joanna Tuffy evidently took offence at the Prof Kiberd’s characterisation of the political system in general, and TDs more specifically, who he referred to as “high-maintenance ward-heelers who open their main shop for business on just 96 days a year.” Part of Tuffy’s contribution to the Kiberd article was to provide a link to her response on her own blog.

  Before I go on, I must issue a disclaimer. I’ve had the privilege of meeting Deputy Tuffy, and since that brief encounter, I have thought very highly of her (a lot of which comes down to her not having come across as a ‘politician’).

  Disclaimer out of the way, what struck me most about the Tuffy response was her defence of the political system. She writes for instance, that:
  Blaming the political system for particular political choices is to buy into some idea that there is no political differences. Contrary to the gist of Professor Kiberd’s article there are alternatives being put forward by the opposition to the Government’s approach and thanks to our political system, the voters will have a chance to vote for or against those alternatives at the next election.  

  She then goes on to note that:
  [Kiberd] suggests we should bring in a superior calibre of politician than the one the voter currently elects. He even suggests they should be paid more! … Does he not remember that it is the voter that votes for our current TDs?  And that they can vote to re elect them or elect different TDs and different political parties at the next election?  His notion of “bringing in” a superior calibre of people to those the people elect smacks of something very elitist and undemocratic to me…

  Tuffy concludes with the observation that it is ordinary people who visit the local TD’s constituency clinic, not those who are powerful enough to lobby government decision-makers. She backs up this point with a comparison between a TD’s interventions on behalf of the ‘poorest of the poor’ and the power bankers were able wield in the form of the government’s Bank Guarantee in September 2008.

  There are two ways of reading this response. One would be to reduce it to the actions of a self-interested individual making a case for the continued existence of her job. There are also slightly more flattering routes to the same conclusion. She could, for example, be a member of a group that has been blinded to the realities of life beyond its professional cocoon – the same sort of condition which sometimes afflicts senior civil servants, hospital consultants, trade union bosses, and even social welfare recipients. Let’s face it, the tendency to see the world solely through the lens of one’s own group, and to be blind to the realities of others, is pretty universal.

  But I don’t think that is what is happening here, at least not primarily. I don’t think Tuffy is defending the current number of TDs and the political system as a whole because she is a shrewd politician. Her position is so out of keeping with the prevailing mood that such a move wouldn’t be shrewd at all. I think she has a fundamentally different philosophic view on governance and democracy to Kiberd. Tuffy doesn’t want elected representatives to predominantly come from the professional classes (of which she is a member). She doesn’t want the ‘best and the brightest’ running things, but regular folks, who are representative of the places they come from. Ultimately, the Tuffy – Kiberd beef is a difference of opinion about the structure of society, and specifically, the structure of the ruling class.

  I don’t completely agree with either. Prof Kiberd is right, in my opinion, to question the overall political system. That said, I’m not sure his conclusions are consistent with his criticisms. He goes after the idea of an almost omnipotent senior bureaucrat, who is removed from the day to day experiences of the professional on the ground he or she dictates to. I’m not sure that getting rid of that bureaucrat and then replacing her with politicians from the various professions solves the problem. Even if doctors run the health ministry, if they don’t talk to other health professionals on the ground, if they don’t talk to patients and relatives, there will still be the problem of a distant, unresponsive, non-representative managerial class. On the other hand, I think Tuffy’s partisanship keeps her from seeing that the status quo is far from the representative ideal that she aspires to. I think she places too much stock in the difference between Labour and the parties in government, and exaggerates the substantive degree of choice that is afforded to voters.

  Be that as it may, we have a substantive debate on our hands! Granted this particular one is between members of two fairly unrepresentative groups (an academic and a politician). And it is being mediated by a newspaper. It’s still far from being a spontaneous thing that occurs in the work and marketplace. But it is still a real debate about something that matters. That’s something.

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