Too much certainty and sincerity should 'carry a health warning'

Merriman Summer School: The "elevated levels of certainty" evident in modern society came under fire yesterday at the 37th annual Merriman Summer School in Ennistymon, Co Clare.

In a debate prompted by an address entitled 'The Pleasures and Dangers of Orthodoxy' by Prof Ciaran Benson of UCD yesterday, the former director general of RTÉ, Bob Collins, said: "One of the things we suffer from are the elevated levels of certainty apparent in today's society.

"When Ireland is a multicultural community, how would we then react to practices, views, traditions and opinions in this community which are different from those which are part of our own constitutional make-up."

He added: "Based on what we have witnessed in the very recent past, I wouldn't be holding my breath that we would handle them well nor would I be optimistic that we could easily accommodate plurality of views and opinions."

Mr Collins warned: "Islam won't have a reformation in time for us to deal easily with these issues. We have forgotten completely what this part of the world was like before the Christian reformation and we have lost totally a sense of identity of what we were then and what they are now.

"And the question is will the twain meet in time to avoid the kind of rupture that could happen again which happened in the past? We will be challenged fundamentally and I think our elevated levels of certainty will be more to our disadvantage than to our advantage."

Addressing the school, Prof Benson said one of the biggest problems facing modern society was the short-term thinking shown by political leaders. He said: "The decisions that have to be made in relation to the Kyoto protocol are so compelling, the effects are so dramatic, the consequences are so huge that to try to convince yourself that leaders like US Vice-President Dick Cheney understand or care about these issues is a losing battle." Prof Benson said the failure of the notion of utopias in the 20th century was a big lesson for the world today.

He said: "The 20th century found out that utopians are catastrophic. We can't hope for perfection, there are other ways and we make the most of the world according to certain principles and an emerging one over the past 50 years is that of human rights."

Prof Benson also warned of the dangers of sincerity and self-certainty as shown by British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair. He said: "This combination of sincerity and self-certainty in Mr Blair should carry a health warning."