OPINION:Enlightened self interest, moral imagination and social responsibility can help economic recovery, writes ELAINE BYRNE
‘PANDORA TRIED to clap the lid on the box again, but it was too late. The happy childhood of mankind had gone forever, and with it the Golden Age when life was easy . . . Only one good thing came to man in the box and remains to comfort him in his distress, and that is the spirit of Hope.”
According to Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman on earth and sent by the gods to punish man. She is deftly doing her duty. Pandora’s name denotes the “one who gives all gifts” and her gift is the curiosity to open the box, although it certainly does not seem like that right now.
The consequences of the failure of traditional authority in Ireland are such that we are fighting for our economic freedom. Unemployment is approaching half a million and whispers of potential civil unrest grow louder. Hope will not be found in politics, banking, business, the professions, the church or in our other flawed institutions. We have been looking for her in the wrong place.
Depending on your dictionary, there are over a dozen separate definitions of hope. This expectation that things will turn out for the best is an abstract idea, because it depends on whether or not you choose to believe in hope. You have to hope for yourself.
Only in his early 90s, Studs Terkel understood this when he penned Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times. The Pulitzer Prize winning author, who died last October, wrote that “Hope has never trickled down. It has always sprung up.”
The Ideas Campaign, (www.ideascampaign.ie), launched last week, is confirmation of this change in thinking. This “campaign for citizens, by citizens” seeks to promote innovative and creative ideas to stimulate economic activity. Nonetheless, it would be constructive if “regulation”, perhaps the single greatest deficiency that led us into the crisis, should be added as a suggested topic of endeavour.
Hope will come from enlightened self interest, moral imagination and social responsibility. The elevation of ourselves beyond ourselves. The confidence to trust in yourself and in each other to create social capital. It has been convenient to scapegoat weakened traditional values and the onslaught of modernisation as reasons why a loss of trust in the integrity and capability of Irish public life has occurred. Our values are not in decline, but in an electrifying process of clarification. My PhD thesis examined The moral and legal development of corruption in Ireland from 1800 - 2000. In essence, it analysed how and why Irish political culture changed over a 200-year period.
Momentous political change in Ireland has always been accompanied by corruption, moral and legal, in public life. (Or is it the other way around?) Indeed, such was the pace of political change in Ireland during the 19th century, that more anti-corruption legislation was introduced here than in any other part of the United Kingdom.
The evolution of Ireland’s relationship with authority evolved from a traditional patron-client relationship to a machine politics model and is now in a process of transition to a civic-culture system.
In the 1800s, politics was conducted through absolute reverence to powerful protectors. The landlord or the church provided access to the state. The weak legitimacy of the formal political system ensured weak identification with the state.
The advent of Parnellite organised political party and post Civil War politics heralded the political boss as the new intermediary between the individual and the State. The character of the party machine was now determined by electoral convenience. Political patronage was distributed as a self-serving means to stay in power, in return for blind loyalty. In this way, our political structures evolved to create a system wholly out of kilter. Local politicians are local administrators, national politicians are local politicians and government representatives juggle the duties of national office and local responsibilities. In a time of economic war, as it is now called, our Minister for Finance is still expected to be available for weekly constituency clinics.
Is this not self-destructive pyrrhic behaviour? In a civic-culture based system, citizens do not consider it necessary to go through an intermediary to access the state’s resources. Competing legitimate means exist to access the state directly, such as citizens information centres. Loyalty is given not to the landlord, the church or the politician, but to the state.
This is known as article nine of the Constitution: “Fidelity to the nation and loyalty to the State are fundamental political duties of all citizens.” This is the shift that is occurring in public life, the transition from narrowly defined self interest to public interest.
JG Swift MacNeill would have been 160 tomorrow. The Irish Protestant nationalist MP for South Donegal wrote several books on Irish corruption in the 1800s. Frustrated by the public lethargy in accepting this behaviour, he addressed the Trinity College Law Students Debating Society with these words: “In some instances public opinion rapidly ripens, in others a great length of time elapses between the discovery of the need of reform by precocious genius, and its adoption by the public vote.” You won’t have to wait much longer, Swift MacNeill.