Text mob may decry our lack of French-style striking but ultimately what should we rail against – our own lack of judgment? asks SARAH CAREY
TELEVISION IS pretty confusing these days. Reality and entertainment have merged to the point where they are indistinguishable. The X Factoris a real competition with real competitors but with supposed conflicts contrived to improve the entertainment value.
In France, those are real people throwing real rocks at shop windows. But there’s an air of contrivance about it all too. We are so familiar with both the ritual and the outcome that it’s hard to take the whole thing seriously. Just as in Greece, the riots will change nothing. The pension reforms will be made because the bills have to be paid, including the ones to clean up the post-riot mess.
However, Sarkozy is a dislikeable git who has just demanded that his salary be doubled. With his rock chick wife and high heels, I can understand why he’s driving ordinary people to radicalism. But the French people need a reality check too.
A report on RTÉ television's Prime Timeon Tuesday night revealed that in 1981 the retirement age in France was 65 and the average male life expectancy was 70. Now the retirement age is 60 and life expectancy 78. They've gone from paying pensions for five years to 18. How on earth is that to be paid for? It can't.
This seems patently obvious to us but France is a socialist country where the state’s cradle-to-grave obligations far surpass our expectations of care. The government exercises control from an early age when children go into state creches. They learn one way to do things and will not change. That’s great when we can go there on holidays and marvel at their quality of life.
But it’s self-destructive when the air traffic controllers go on strike again and people think twice about their holiday destination.
We assume that because France is a secular society, its people are more liberated than the Irish who are still recovering from Catholic authoritarianism.
But in France the state simply replaced religion. It teaches dogma concerning every facet of daily life – principally through the schools. “They even have the same handwriting,” observes a friend who lives there. We can admire their obstinacy when it comes to ignoring the same EU directives that oppress us, but nothing good comes without a cost and the French will have to pay, riots or no riots.
So when people say: “Look at the French – that’s what we should be doing,” I find myself eye-rolling. One week the text messages to the radio shows demand that politicians get together to agree the cuts and the next the vox populi demands we should oppose the politicians, preferably violently. The inconsistent mood of the texting mob shouldn’t be indulged by broadcasters but I suppose the question is worth considering: why aren’t we rioting?
One reason is that we know it won’t change a thing. This could be termed either paralytic fatalism or common sense. We know the jig is up and we’ve known that for quite some time. We could riot but all it would do is ensure that the International Monetary Fund came in and made the decisions for us. Protest would probably make things worse not better. The hope that a different government would change the outcome is slim enough.
But there is also the uncomfortable factor of our own complicity in the crisis. As much as we have been let down by the regulatory and political system, ordinary people can’t deny their participation in the creation of the bubble. I’m not going to use the dreaded “we” when it comes to talking about what “everyone” did in the boom.
There were many people who didn’t over-borrow or over-spend and only 40 per cent of the people voted for Fianna Fáil and its pro-developer policies. But there were enough who did.
When I hear stories of 23-year-olds with no savings who bought a €500,000 apartment and will never escape the consequential negative equity, I have to ask how that person could take to the streets to protest?
What would they be protesting against? Their own bad judgment?
Yes; there was hype, both politically and by the property-porn writers in newspapers. Yes, there were financial institutions willing to lend people multiples of their income and yes, the State delighted in collecting the taxes. But whose signature is on the mortgage application?
The individual in question made the decision as a mature adult in a free world. That’s not going to make them feel any better about their situation, but it does mean they have to accept – and, judging by their silence, do accept – their own culpability in the appalling mess that has resulted.
I wonder is there an element of masochism too – aided by our familiarity with the concept of penance?
It’s not simply a question of accepting one’s own guilt in the matter, but that a price must be paid for our hubris. You could throw in a touch of national low self-esteem too – maybe we never deserved the good days. Rather than waste time rioting, a lot of people are thinking long and hard about the values they embraced temporarily.
It might be too late to spare ourselves punishment in this cycle, but that doesn’t mean it’s all lost on us. Sufficient reflection might – just might – spare us a repeat performance. That’s an exercise that in the long run might be worth more than protest today.