National Identity

[irishconfederate]

Hello, just thought I'd try my hand at a poem and want to post to encourage anyone else to , to be part of a cultural revival as we restore the dishonoured and maimed communities we find ourselves in, with the honour and love and dignity that are due to them.........

Come on Cork, you have some honour, that needs to be refound,
Dublin shall not rule you, your intellect confound.

Callan, graceful Callan, they’re selling cakes inside
Your halla an bhaile, that local source of pride.

And poor old Kilbarrack, never seen the light of day,
Civic dignity for you Kilbarrack daily do I pray……..


Free Irishmen, win for yourselves and others your local view of things.
Be proud at the sight of an Ireland, gloriously herself in local rivalries.

Paintings, plays, action, oratory, plans, maps, flags, anthems, folk songs, policies, political parties, institutions, films, adverts, slogans, revived language.....needed

[maolsheachlann]

Do you really pray daily for civic dignity for Kilbarrack?

irishconfederate, I am very torn on your ideas. On one hand, the general idea appeals to me so much that it gets me silly excited, and has done intermittently all my life. I guess I'm a Chestertonian and small is beautiful for me. I would love nothing more than an Ireland of local flags, local songs, local traditions, microcurrencies, and so forth. I am deleriously happy when I hear about road bowling or Wren boys surviving in some locale.

(One thing I would most like to see is a local or even national dress. We dress the same all over the world. It is depressing.)

It's really just a question of priority, more than anything else. A lot of Irish people have been trying to revive our national traditions for over a hundred years and that project, although it has certainly lost steam, is ongoing and has made progress-- in some fields more than others. It seems to me that you have to paint the background before you start painting the details-- we hardly have a national culture, never mind vibrant local cultures. Surely the priority has to be national cultural revival before it is local cultural revival. Our local cultures could only be variations of our national culture, and our national culture is moribund.

(Indeed, in so far as it has revived, it has 'automatically' created local cultures-- look at all the rivalries and local traditions in G.A.A. games.)

There is also the question of critical mass. It seems more feasible to revive or create a tradition amongst millons of people, or hundreds of thousands of people, than amongst hundreds or thousands or even tends of thousands.

Having said all that, I'm certainly supportive of your ideas in general, and I do wish them well. And to show that my heart is as localist as yours, here is a poem I wrote about the demolition of the last tower in Ballymun, where I've lived (on and off) all my life. I posted it on the 'Tribute to the Old Ballymun' Facebook page, which you'll be happy to hear is very popular, and it got a good reception.

Written during the Demolition of Plunkett Tower

The last of the towers is coming down, coming down, coming down
The last of the towers is coming down, and there’s an old song ended.
The last of the towers is coming down, the jewel in the Corporation’s crown,
Old Ballymun is coming down and its last lift has ascended.

The last red light has flickered out, flickered out, flickered out,
The last red light had flickered out, that kept the planes from crashing.
I’d stare at its light as I lay in bed, half-hypnotised by its orangey-red,
But the Ballymun beacons are all gone out, as Time’s scythe goes on slashing.

The shopping centre is full of ghosts, full of ghosts, full of ghosts
The shopping centre is full of ghosts—the ghosts of poor Miss Mary
The Perry’s parrot, and all the rest, they wander the lonely malls, distressed,
All things of the past, like the glimmer man and poor old Biddy Early.

The roundabout is long since gone, long since gone, long since gone
The roundabout is long since gone, where the traffic moved forever.
I would gaze at it from the seventh floor, it seemed as eternal as sea and shore,
But the cars go round about no more, and won’t till the first of never.

The games on the hill are over now, over now, over now
The games on the hill are over now, and Time’s called us for dinner.
‘The next goal wins’ we would always cry, but now that the years have all gone by,
Nobody knows who scored that goal or who turned out the winner.

The last of the towers is coming down, coming down, coming down
The last of the towers is coming down, and a world is disappearing.
And between the long-vanished concrete walls, there echoes the decades-old children’s calls,
And long-ago skipping games fill the air, on the faintest edge of hearing.

[hibernicus]

It could just as easily be argued that the national culture derives from local cultures (though from some more than others).
Dermot Bolger wrote a play some years ago about Ballymun's recent history from village to towers to post-towers. Haven't seen it myself - have you? And there was a documentary a year or two back called BALLYMUN SYMPHONY or some such, centred on a local school choir. Haven't seen that either.

[maolsheachlann]

I haven't seen either that play or that film!

[irishconfederate]

The key of 'what to do' -the key for myself-... is that building local community is attainable in the here and now. We can start right away and it produces an immediate change to our own local environment, where we find ourselves in the world. Then we are making our own lives more meaningful right away. And anyone can do it, young, old, gaelic speaking, not gaelic speaking, very talented, those with latent, hidden gifts....that's the point. To paint one's local railings of ones local primary school which are looking worse for wear, to give a name to an un-named green...to strengthen the local identity and so the roots of the local people....to make them happier....and to build a buttress against all those things that are battering their hearts....depression say...........all this is immediate and doesn't need a political party with a plan or national self-governance to be attained....it is a statement that says 'life is good in the here and now, we like our lives together, we love our areas, and we wish to build them up'..........this ethic translated nationally is to look across Ireland and see other communities and families and persons in them suffering under the non-being of their communities, is to realise that there are forces that are opposed to Ireland living well, and people in the local parts of Ireland living well and being themselves, this ethic translated as a national movement is a liberating movement to set Ireland free from the lie that it is just a mass of individuals who don't need to govern themselves in their localities.....our Catholicism gives us an interesting niche in this movement for we have the principle of subsidiarity which brought into the mix produces a convincing argument for the Church in Ireland, the Body of Christ in Ireland, to throw their lot in with this venture. A convincing argument to give our priests support for this movement.

'Life is good and worth living' 'Life where we are is a good life'...full of the sacred almost in its reality..this conviction in the goodness of our life in the here and now is very much a Christ-like thing, an incarnational view on things.....

Starting up national liberation movements without the local movements generally lends itself to a view that "life is not good where we are now but will be in the future when we....get independence....or when abortion laws are repealed.....',

this kind of national liberation movement ignores the local......continues to see the nation as a mass of individuals.....and does not really change the local, it might give it a simulacrum of meaning, by providing a gloss of national meaning, a simulacrum of community, but really we need to look at the fact, in the clear light of day, that Ireland is a community of communities, families and persons, and it would be great for us if we supported consciously what we actually are, it would make our localities places of being.

Our local community ethic translated as a national movement would mean a large body of people across Ireland who are uniting to make their lives locally, life in Ireland in communities of 0-40,000 people, more meaningful and good...........it would produce a vision of Ireland where the South Dublin government would be seen for what it is, an alien government whose interest are against Ireland living as a community of communities, and we would see how the very structures of this government are alien in that we inherited it from a colonial system which was built to frustrate local initiative -not encourage them and release their potential-, therefore we would seek to continue the Irish revolution by dismantling Dail Eireann and the Irish administrative system, and giving ourselves, finally, an Irish friendly-system, built out of own hands and vision, one which encourage us to be.

Of course the forces that are rallied against the local....are more then the Dublin government,  there is the 'Media' and their need to keep the staus qou, and so on... 

In this vision of humane and just organisation, in this Ireland where all kinds of people can contribute their talent, a great number of people could be drawn into the building, even those who thought they were enemies of the Irish nation....

First and foremost, the people building their local communities and speaking of a flourishing of Ireland would be seen as genuinely concerned for their fellow people, with real self-sacrificing love,

this is the most noble, and most Christian way, of revealing meaning in our common national community which is shared by Christians and non-Christians alike, I think it is a way of Christ in a civic ethic,

"Nor will people say, ‘Look, here it is,’ or ‘There it is.’ For you see, the kingdom of God is in your midst.”  Luke 17:21 

[Young Ireland]

May 29, 2016 21:35:34 GMT irishconfederate said:

The key of 'what to do' -the key for myself-... is that building local community is attainable in the here and now. We can start right away and it produces an immediate change to our own local environment, where we find ourselves in the world. Then we are making our own lives more meaningful right away. And anyone can do it, young, old, gaelic speaking, not gaelic speaking, very talented, those with latent, hidden gifts....that's the point. To paint one's local railings of ones local primary school which are looking worse for wear, to give a name to an un-named green...to strengthen the local identity and so the roots of the local people....to make them happier....and to build a buttress against all those things that are battering their hearts....depression say...........all this is immediate and doesn't need a political party with a plan or national self-governance to be attained....it is a statement that says 'life is good in the here and now, we like our lives together, we love our areas, and we wish to build them up'..........this ethic translated nationally is to look across Ireland and see other communities and families and persons in them suffering under the non-being of their communities, is to realise that there are forces that are opposed to Ireland living well, and people in the local parts of Ireland living well and being themselves, this ethic translated as a national movement is a liberating movement to set Ireland free from the lie that it is just a mass of individuals who don't need to govern themselves in their localities.....our Catholicism gives us an interesting niche in this movement for we have the principle of subsidiarity which brought into the mix produces a convincing argument for the Church in Ireland, the Body of Christ in Ireland, to throw their lot in with this venture. A convincing argument to give our priests support for this movement.

'Life is good and worth living' 'Life where we are is a good life'...full of the sacred almost in its reality..this conviction in the goodness of our life in the here and now is very much a Christ-like thing, an incarnational view on things.....

Starting up national liberation movements without the local movements generally lends itself to a view that "life is not good where we are now but will be in the future when we....get independence....or when abortion laws are repealed.....',

this kind of national liberation movement ignores the local......continues to see the nation as a mass of individuals.....and does not really change the local, it might give it a simulacrum of meaning, by providing a gloss of national meaning, a simulacrum of community, but really we need to look at the fact, in the clear light of day, that Ireland is a community of communities, families and persons, and it would be great for us if we supported consciously what we actually are, it would make our localities places of being.

Our local community ethic translated as a national movement would mean a large body of people across Ireland who are uniting to make their lives locally, life in Ireland in communities of 0-40,000 people, more meaningful and good...........it would produce a vision of Ireland where the South Dublin government would be seen for what it is, an alien government whose interest are against Ireland living as a community of communities, and we would see how the very structures of this government are alien in that we inherited it from a colonial system which was built to frustrate local initiative -not encourage them and release their potential-, therefore we would seek to continue the Irish revolution by dismantling Dail Eireann and the Irish administrative system, and giving ourselves, finally, an Irish friendly-system, built out of own hands and vision, one which encourage us to be.

Of course the forces that are rallied against the local....are more then the Dublin government,  there is the 'Media' and their need to keep the staus qou, and so on... 

In this vision of humane and just organisation, in this Ireland where all kinds of people can contribute their talent, a great number of people could be drawn into the building, even those who thought they were enemies of the Irish nation....

First and foremost, the people building their local communities and speaking of a flourishing of Ireland would be seen as genuinely concerned for their fellow people, with real self-sacrificing love,

this is the most noble, and most Christian way, of revealing meaning in our common national community which is shared by Christians and non-Christians alike, I think it is a way of Christ in a civic ethic,

"Nor will people say, ‘Look, here it is,’ or ‘There it is.’ For you see, the kingdom of God is in your midst.”  Luke 17:21 

I agree with the general thrust of your ideas, Irish Confederate, though I wouldn't rule out working within the system to achieve our objectives: indeed the Constitution explicitly allows for devolved assemblies. As for regulating the media, I think that if RTE were banned from soliciting advertisments and obliged to provide regional opt-outs like their counterparts in the rest of Europe (which would be financed by letting go the station's highest earners), that would go a long way towards creating a vibrant regional/local media scene (as would franchising local TV stations on Saorview a la ITV). Community radio is something else that could be encouraged IMHO. I think that we can achieve our goals without seeking the dismantling of Dail Eireann: the more radical changes we propose, the less likely Irish people will support them, whereas if we work within the system, I think that we can achieve more in the long run.

[irishconfederate]

this needs the gifts and talents in every sphere of all Irish people As more and more people represent this vision in their own words and plough their own God given furrow, this whole movement becomes easier, and easier. The multiple representations, liberate people, help people to have 'good vision'.....which added to and embellished, given depth and historical narrative ( by those with such talents) the whole vision then MOVES a nation, makes it alive, come into being.......wakes it, it begins to change its life, its local and national institutions, it begins to innovate...change the world...........

This vision has been represented by Tom Barrington, Ivor Browne, Chare McCarthy, Seamus Deane, Desmond Fennell, Declan Kiberd.....and others.....

A number of them are known Irish Catholics or were known in their lives as. Our last national movement had its roots in modern nationalism – a protestant/secularist creation- and was first promoted by protestant/secularists......... this is perhaps a truly Irish and truly Catholic nationalism fashioned by ourselves.....potentially it could be used, as a critique and development of the modern nationalism taken up by our ancestors, by us... to make a liberating influence on the world...like the Irish monks did of old....

we could with our vision of nation as a community of communities, families and persons.......strengthened by subsidiarity.....be a great humanising force in the world

[irishconfederate]

I agree with you maolsheachlann I think we could achieve the goals without dismantling Dail Eireann, and work within the system....

As this is my own contribution to the multi-collaborate vision, to its one day rich landscape of thought, I suppose you might say this is my effort to represent one grain in that vision....the grain to dismantle Dail Eireann, move it to Athlone, separating it from our financial capital.

Other grains will probably be stronger and win out

[maolsheachlann]

I didn't say that, Young Ireland said that!

I'm completely on board with devolution in principle, and with local revival and identity, but for my part I am an old-fashioned nationalist who sees local identity as subsidiary to national identity. It would be interesting to hear Hibernicus's argument that national cultures derive from local cultures (I'm not saying there are no such arguments, I'm saying I'm genuinely interested to hear them).

This is an interesting discussion because it is making me examine my own suppositions. Why does local identity seem subsidiary to national identity, to me? I think it's because the very virtues of local identity are also its shortcomings. It would be great if everybody was involved in their local community and knew the place and the people very well, but I feel cultural identity does have to be bigger than that-- the air you breathe, the backdrop of your existence. It has to be 'meta', to some extent, to include places you haven't been and people you have never met, to evoke the atmosphere of the sublime. Ulysses returning to Ithica is certainly coming home in a special sense, but the Greeks who went to Troy with him were his wider culture.

Desmond Fennell himself even hints of this when he uses the phrase 'a representative community' to describe a nation. Local communities are not going to have airports and world-class poets and universities and hospitals and all the things that are part of national life; they will always seem more partial and fragmentary, part of a whole, than a nation. (But, once again, I'm not at all opposed to the project of decentralisation of media and government.)

I also dislike the waste of abandoned projects which don't have to be abandoned. I agree that modern nationalism was a secular and Protestant invention, but I don't have a problem with that. Generations put a huge amount of effort into the project of 'traditional' Irish nationalism, and great gains were made. It seems to dishonour that, in my view, if we decide that old-fashioned nationalism was on the wrong path, especially if there is no compelling reason to do so. I am for reviving that project, which has demonstrated that it can galvanise tens of thousands of people (or more).

So, in brief; I am all in favour of strengthening and promoting local identities, but within the umbrella of cultural nationalism rather than as an alternative to it. If it is done as 'the next thing', yet another form of revisionism, I am even against it. You cannot preserve or create traditions by continually starting again.

[pugio]

One major practical problem with a strategy of prioritising local identities is that cultural resistance to Anglo-American-led homogenisation requires a certain critical mass in order to have some chance of success. In a highly interconnected world, the nation-state is far more likely to be able to provide this.

Also, while this may seem an obvious point, I think it is worth reminding ourselves that while nationalism is a modern project, nationality is an inherited reality. Too often, critiques of nineteenth-century nationalism are so preoccupied with exposing the inauthenticity of some of its outward expressions that they overlook its organic basis. Certainly, in Ireland's case it is perfectly clear that a distinct sense of nationhood was present centuries, at least, before the modern era. Historians have to resort to a hair-raisingly selective use of historical sources in order to deny this.

[maolsheachlann]

Very well said Pugio. The difference between the FORM nationalism took in the nineteenth century onwards, and the basic underlying reality of nationhood, is constantly elided.

[jaykay]

Now, that is a fascinatingly concise post, Maolsheachlainn. Much to unwrap there. I only did one year of history in UCD, but your post reminds me of the sort of topic we'd get for an essay ("discuss") from, say, Mary Daly (I think, it's 35 years ago!). It's still a major interest with me, and my gut feeling is that nationalism became more polarised and toxic, even, as the 19th century progressed. Obviously the gradual freeing of people, in relative terms, helped, I mean both economically and politically. Is it fair to say that British liberal democracy contributed majorly, thereby in a way weakening its own hold, in a way that wouldn't have been possible in, say, Austria-Hungary with its relatively repressive regime? No equivalent of Home Rule bills there! Now, I'm a neophyte, really, and may be off the mark but I think I was unfairly prejudiced against "nationalism", of the Irish variety particularly, for a good part of my younger years and am only now coming to appreciate the genuine qualities of same.

[maolsheachlann]

Well, Jaykay, my own feelings regarding nationalism have changed dramatically through the course of my life. There was a time when i was stridently anti-nationalist.

I am certainly no historian and I could write what I know about the Austro-Hungarian empire on a postcard, but Pugio's point just seems jaw-droppingly obvious to me and his epithet, "hair-raising", for the contortions which writers have to perform to prove that nationalism came into being in the nineteenth century seems entirely appropriate.

All you have to do is read the Bible! It's quite obvious from the Bible that the Israelites, and the various peoples who surrounded them, considered themselves to be nations. What else could you call them? When you have Sir Philip Sidney writing about 'that sweet enemy France", what is he expressing except an awareness of nationality? Apparently the phrase, "Sacsa eile darb ainm Éire" originates from the seventeenth century, and seems to very clearly express national feeling. And it's also obvious that many heresies in the history of the Church, such as the Hussites, were motivated by nationalism.

Obviously, nationalism became codified in the nineteenth century, with the idea that a nation should be coterminous with a state-- not an idea I find particularly essential. And ideas taken from German romantic philosophy seemed to have given the concept a new vividness and force. I also think it moved into the vacuum of growing secularisation.

As I say, I am no historian. I'm sure Hibernicus and others can correct me on many details. But the broad fact seems obvious to me.

Obviously nationalism is a danger when it becomes an idol, like everything else. But it also seems to me a protection against a culturally globalised world. And it's also a great bastion of traditions, and I think tradition is hugely important.

I work in UCD library and you may be pleased to know that Mary Daly is still going strong.

[assisi]

Apologies if I have quoted this before but I think it is interesting.

Scott Hahn from his book ‘A Father Who Keeps His Promises’ notes that the biblical covenants grow in size via particular entities:

Adam/Eve (Couple),
Noah (family),
Abraham (tribe),
Moses (Nation),
David (kingdom),
Jesus (Universal)

[assisi]

May 1, 2016 22:12:41 GMT maolsheachlann said:

I don't understand why you have to have one thing that's a binding factor. It's a potpourri. In fact, I used to be very hostile to multiculturalism, but I increasingly think some kind of multiculturalism is inevitable, and not to be feared. I used to be hostile to multiculturalism because I felt it led to a sameness internationally; but perhaps that doesn't have to be the case. Because no two countries would be the same in their ethnic and cultural and social make-up.

I do think the notion of a Gaelic Ireland, however imaginary that might be, should remain the core though.

The reason I'm not keen on a constitutional nationalism is because I tend to oppose 'gemeinschaft' to 'gesellshaft', and to be very much in favour of the latter. Culture and tradition and shared memory are, in my view, the deep and important aspects of a society; infrastucture and institutions are very much secondary. "Let me make the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws". Obviously, it is not quite that simple.

So whether Ireland is a 'united States of Ireland' or not is rather irrelevant to me. If it leads to a flourishing of regional identities, sure, that can only be a good thing.

Maolsheachlann, I don't think that multiculturalism exists. In my view a nation can only have one dominant culture, not many equally weighted cultures. For example the English will celebrate poppy day and remembrance day officially but will not officially celebrate a similar peace or anti-war day. They will have Christmas as a holiday but will not have an official holiday for, say, Ramadan or Diwali. Yes. people are permitted to do their own thing, have a peace celebration, participate in Ramadan and Diwali, and there may be some coverage of this on various media but their activities are not viewed as mainstream national events.

I believe the great new error that countries such as Ireland, UK and France are committing is to try and market themselves as multicultural. Partly as a rejection of their national and religious history and partly as a means to break down community in a rush to be a secular consumer, novelty driven society.

Their governments, companies and media, if they had any backbone, would conserve and promote the best traditions and history of their own nations. But they don't. Who can respect a country that empties itself of its traditions and bows down to small minorities that complain about aspects of its culture? It's like the school bully, if you keep giving in to his demands he will come back asking for more.

Do the ruling elite in the likes of Ireland, France and UK really want multiculturalism or do they play lip service to it? If we are honest many so called multiculturalists have a very shallow and self serving idea of this concept. Yes they will be happy to take on board the food, clothing, music, dancing and literature of other nations (as these just give them a wider source of pleasure and novelty) but don't ask the elite to accept the religions and social traditions of other nations. In short they want the nice stuff but don't want the difficult stuff.

I think that the difficulty countries like France are now experiencing stems from this attempt to adopt multiculturalism over the last couple of decades. It is doomed to failure. One moment you are proclaiming your multiculturalism and the next moment you are banning the niqab as two cultures clash. Also multiculturalism will give rise to resentment among a sizeable section of the nation that see its own past traditions being whittled away by other more confident and assertive cultures. Even in America where there is the best opportunity to have a supposed multicultural society, it being a relatively young and recently populated country, it could be argued that much of the population, particularly the black population, is ghettoised and there is no real joyous, harmonious melting pot.

My rejection of multiculturalism doesn't mean that I want to see a Western nation rigidly imposing a culture on everyone. All I would commend is that a nation is comfortable and confident in its history, tradition and culture and that it allows others to function within that. If you are confident in your own skin people will respect you for that. If however you are a quivering mass of self loathing jelly who will give in to any demand, you will be trod upon.