The anger of a lost generation of young professionals will coalesce in demands for systemic change, writes ELAINE BYRNE
BOBBY SANDS was just 27 when he died on hunger strike in the Maze Prison 28 years ago today. He is now dead longer than he lived. That Ireland of 1981 was saddled by black flags flying a corrupted definition of freedom that imprisoned a generation through a renewed IRA campaign.
This generation now identifies the North as a place to exercise monetary self-determination. The shop doors of Newry and Enniskillen are often the only induction to indifferent Southerners reluctant to engage with that place beyond the Border. The desire for economic sovereignty has replaced aspirations for political idealism.
How much things have changed.
Young Irish people no longer carry the inhibitions that historically held our forefathers hostage. Exaggerated nationalism and suffocating Catholicism have been cast aside. Authority, no matter how defined, must now be earned rather than assumed.
Some 2.8 million of us, two thirds of the Irish population, are younger than 44 years of age. Our politicians, civil servants, bankers, business men and women, decision makers and media commentators are predominantly over 40. As Prof Ray Kinsella said on these pages last week: “We have screwed up – that’s the truth of it.” My generation of 20 and 30-somethings do not identify with the tired voices that have failed us and endowed us with a future choked with their mistakes: mistakes fuelled by mediocrity and downright incompetence without consequences; mistakes that are homeless, absent of acknowledgment or apology.
Routinely now, friends go underground and are incommunicado. Highly educated and well travelled, unexpected unemployment induces shock which translates into an abject sense of humiliation and embarrassment. Overwhelmed and frightened of their stolen future, they hibernate with a sense of misdiagnosed shame for months on end.
A lost generation of recently qualified architects, accountants, solicitors, nurses, teachers and IT professionals now ask themselves what they did wrong. Fatigued by denial and consumed by lethargy, their empty frustration has yet to be rendered into anger.
But it will be.
In the 1980s, the traditional safety valve of emigration deflated the potential for unrest. This time around there is no place to go. Political failures can no longer indulge in ignoring systemic bankruptcy.
We are better educated and more informed than any previous Irish generation. In the past the unemployed were largely isolated and without a concerted political voice.
The potential of new social media is not appreciated by those accustomed to buying the daily newspaper and watching the Six-one News. Largely dismissed by that generation over 40, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the blogosphere facilitate real-time interaction which is converting into organised action. The ways in which we communicate and access information will profoundly determine and shape public debate in the coming months and years.
For the time being, our anger has been temporarily deflated, distracted by the protracted politics of another generation’s failures, the consequences of which have yet to be satisfied with outrage. Focused anger is a legitimate and necessary means of effecting systemic change.
Severe underlying problems often go unnoticed over a period of time. We became normalised to a consistent and uniform way of conducting everyday life. Principles from a different time became entrenched and were assumed to be beyond reproach.
We have conventionally defined conservatism in terms of right-wing views. Irish conservatism is the reluctance to support systemic change in government policies unless the existing policies are obviously failing.
Well, guess what? We have to get away from looking at political failure from the luxury of a short-term individual perspective which has the assumption of single problems with single solutions. This cathartic era of transformation offers us the opportunity to reinvigorate our education systems, health systems, political systems, social welfare systems and prison systems.
Systems born in the 20th century must now be made fit for purpose for the 21st century. Old politics, old parties and old policies will be overwhelmed by modern realities. Systemic change promotes the rethinking and restructuring of systems in an interconnected way.
There are four different stages of systemic change: self-preservation, developing awareness, active-reflection and the acceptance of risk.
Initially, focus is directed on maintaining the existing system. Those who have politically, economically and socially invested in the status quo do not wish to recognise that structures are fundamentally out of sync with the realities of present.
Awareness then develops among non-elite decision makers that things as they stand are simply not working.
In the absence of vision and direction, a period of reflection, reassessment and exploration develops. In order for the transition to a new system to occur, a critical number of opinion formers openly commit themselves to change and are prepared to confront and accept the risks of the unknown that this entails.
The legacy of generational failure must be the regeneration of systemic change. If not, another generation will be imprisoned for a generation by a corrupted mindset.