My column in The Kerryman. 22 January, 2014

I grew up in Lixnaw, which has a great deal of history. My parents’ house is 100 metres from where the Norman lords of Kerry had their castle. Thomas FitzMaurice was made Baron of Lixnaw and Kerry in the 13th Century. He founded the Franciscan Monastery in Ardfert.

Where the castle once stood, are the ruins of the later FitzMaurices’ stately home. In that big house was born Arabella FitzMaurice-Denny, who founded the first Magdalene institution for ‘fallen’ women. She had a nephew who became a Prime Minister of Britain and gave his name to Landsowne Road Stadium.

Go a hundred metres in the opposite direction and there’s Lixnaw’s GAA ground. I still remember the day the farmers of the parish arrived with tractors and trailers to draw soil dredged from the River Brick to the new pitch. On the day it opened Kerry played Limerick in hurling. I can’t remember who won, but I remember it was sunny.

Hurling has always been the first love of Lixnaw. Three Lixnaw men, Maurice Kelly, John Murphy and Maurice FitzMaurice (great-grandfather to today’s county football manager, Eamon FitzMaurice) played on the side that won Kerry’s first ever All Ireland in 1891. It may seem strange to some that Kerry’s first win was in hurling, but the real irony is that the Lixnaw men played with our fiercest rivals, Ballyduff.

A recent addition to the village is a Memorial Arch erected in memory of the Irish people who died in the Korean War. Close by is the convent school. It once included a secondary school and a school for people with learning disabilities. It’s where I cast my first vote.

Next to the convent is St Michael’s Church, built in the 1865. I may not be a Roman Catholic, but I still have strong feelings about what churches should look like and they should look like St Michael’s.

My old school is a short walk away. It looks much different from when I attended. It has been a nursery for many of Lixnaw’s hurlers these last few decades and it’s where I cast my most recent vote.

One day, when I was in I think first class, we were drawn to the sound of a train going through the village. As far as I know it was the last ever train to go through Lixnaw.
The railway station closed and it’s now a home. It has that Victorian architecture common to train stations all over Ireland. A pity I can’t walk from my house to a train station that could take me all the way to Dublin.

The village also has its ‘ghost estate’; locked behind metal fencing, a piece of new history, our monument to failure.

On the other side of the village is the Community Centre. I remember watching my uncle perched high on scaffolding as he helped to build it.

Beyond that is one of Lixnaw’s bogs, where I sometimes helped my neighbours save turf. From there one can see the bridge over to Ballyduff. It’s the third bridge in my lifetime. Hopefully this one’ll last. Across the river is Rattoo Tower. A round tower built a millennium ago to protect against the ravaging Vikings, ancestors to the Normans.

It’s an interesting experience, being able to see a thousand years from my window.

My column in The Kerryman. 15 January, 2014

There’s this thing that happens when an inspirational figure dies. First the person is elevated to a position above mere humanity, then there’s an unseemly fight for ownership of that person’s memory. When that fight is about someone as exceptional and brave and as young as Donal Walsh was, then things get very serious.

That struggle over Donal Walsh is being waged on Twitter, Facebook, in chat-rooms and on blogs. It’s a war about how we should interpret the words and utilise the memory of Donal Walsh in our attempt to reduce suicide in this country. Unfortunately, suicide is a mental health issue that, like any other health problem, requires a lot of money to resolve.

Donal Walsh wanted to save lives. He wanted to inspire his peers to choose life over death, a choice he was being denied himself. He reacted to a spate of ‘copy-cat suicides’ by issuing a message of such strength and integrity, that he gave some of his peers reason to pause. He may have saved lives, achieving in his short life more than many will ever achieve. For this his legacy should be assured.

The trouble for me is the way his message has been taken up by the HSE and politicians. Worse, the media has failed to bring any level of investigative expertise to this issue and have allowed this purest hero to be used as a ‘poster-boy’ in what seems to me a cheap and inaccurate campaign against the scourge of depression and suicide.

Donal Walsh spoke to those of his peers who may have recklessly chosen suicide as a solution to a short-term problem. He was not speaking to those who struggle with the long-term disease called depression.

Depression is no great mystery. It’s a disease like any other. A certain percentage of the population will contract it. Some will have such mild symptoms, that they may cope without help. Others will need some intervention and yet more will need massive amounts of resources, over a long period of time, to save their lives.

Like cancer, it requires money, money and more money to combat. Medication, residential care, long-term sick leave and talk therapy are all very expensive. They are not available to everyone. And even when they are available, a recent study showed that 60% of respondents would not hire someone with a history of mental illness.

Try imagining everyone who contracted depression receiving the same level of care, support and admiration as we think someone with cancer deserves to get. It’s a pipe-dream because depression is a mental illness so it only merits sound-bytes, empty promises and damaging rhetoric about cheering up.

This dismissal of the true nature of depression means the Department of Health, the HSE and our politicians are not implicated in the avoidable deaths of those with depression who take their own lives. That’s the horrible thing being done to Donal Walsh’s memory.

He is being held up as an example to depression sufferers. They may as well be telling cancer sufferers, be as brave as Donal Walsh, just don’t expect to be looked after.

Donal Walsh deserves better than that. Sufferers of depression deserve better than that. If our politicians want to address suicide, start spending and stop telling ill people to cheer up.

My column in The Kerryman. 1 January, 2014

It might just be me, or the company I keep, the television I watch or the newspapers I read, but no one seems interested in the subject of a united Ireland anymore. That might be a healthy thing. I don’t know. It’s certainly strange when we consider that up to recently, men, women and children were being murdered over this issue.

I think it should be discussed more. I know it can be an uncomfortable subject and it can provoke hatred and nonsense, but discussing Northern Ireland and wondering about a united Ireland is a good way in which we can discuss our own nation and nationhood. To imagine a united Ireland one has to examine the why and the how of a united Ireland. It means deciding on how many compromises we’d be prepared to make.

Before I go any further, let me first get my prejudices out of the way. I don’t care if there’s ever a united Ireland. Neither would I care if it was to happen tomorrow. The status of Northern Ireland has no bearing on my identity whatsoever. As long as it’s a functioning democracy, my only interest in it, is as a way of examining this nation. I’m interested in the process that would necessarily precede a united Ireland.

As a united Ireland is very unlikely in most of our lifetimes, this is all theoretical. I’d still ask that you think about the questions and examine the emotions they may provoke.

If Ireland could be unified by military means, would you support those actions? If Ireland was unified, by military or peaceful means, would you see that as a victory for Ireland and our ancestors? Is it important to your sense of Irishness that Irish people always strive for a united Ireland?

Do you care in the least about Northern Ireland beyond a wish that the people there live a peaceful and democratic life? Are both traditions up there equally as alien to you? Does the notion of taking all that strife onto our shoulders horrify you?

If a united Ireland represents a progression rather than a victory, what compromise would you make to accommodate a very large minority who have a different identity? Would you sacrifice the symbols that the people of this country take very seriously? Are the flag, the national anthem, the status of the Irish language and our relationship with the UK all on the table?

What would the flag of a united Ireland look like? Would we have three official languages? How would we construct a history curriculum that would respect the heritages of everyone in a united Ireland?

Would Northern Ireland remain as a political entity, like it is in the UK, but ruled from Dublin or would the political system of this jurisdiction be extended to include the whole island?

Can we have two public holidays, one that remembers the men of the 1916 Rising and another that commemorates the men who fought them? Will our army be the inheritors of both these traditions?

As I said, a united Ireland is not likely, but the idea of it can help us decide just what it is we value most about our own identity, here and now. I think that a worthwhile exploration and debate.

My column in The Kerryman. 23 December, 2013

I’ve been asked in the past if I celebrate Christmas. Not an unusual question for an atheist. To some, atheists embracing Christmas may look like having one’s cake and eating it. None of the guilt and misery parts of Christianity, but huge bunches of all the fun bits of what is supposed to be a religious festival. Am I big fat hypocrite for loving Christmas? Oh yes I am and I don’t care who knows it.

The adage, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ applies. This time of the year has spawned any number of different festivals down through the millennia, today the season is firmly rooted in Christian mythology. We are supposed to be marking the birth of Jesus Christ. The more pious among us still cling to this ideal, but the festival has morphed into something else.

Christmas no longer cares about your religion. Christmas is at once a vast commercial exercise in flogging overpriced toys to overworked parents for their overindulged children and it is also a memory of childhood that inspires millions of men, women and children, to travel from all corners of the planet, on a vast pilgrimage back to their families and friends.

The numbers involved, the miles traversed, the resources expended, are without precedent outside of war or natural disaster. We do not collectively subject ourselves to anything like this kind of stress and expense for anything else. And we do it willingly, just to have those fews days back home, reliving and recapturing those memories of unwrapping presents, over-eating, family squabbles, television and true belonging.

This festive season generates a spirit of bonhomie, this wonderful unique time of the year inspires people to try for a smile rather than a grimace, just because it is this wonderful time of year. That is why Christmas is irresistible. Even a picky and prickly atheist like me cannot but love this festival’s many charms.

Of course as an atheist, I recognise a political context to Christmas. Living in a Christian country, I know everything operates to accommodate the Christian majority. Little or no thought is put into catering for non-Christians. No other time of year so reminds me that I am part of a very small minority.

Even the use of terms like ‘Merry Christmas’ or ‘Happy Holidays’ can be a political choice. Intellectually I prefer the more secular ‘Happy Holidays’ but Christmas has become something of a victim of its own success. It has so penetrated the lives of every nation and culture with a Christian heritage, that it’s outgrowing its Christian origins. I think the less religious term, ‘Happy Holidays’ may become unnecessary even before it gains acceptance. I am often guilty of saying ‘Merry Christmas’ to other joyless atheists and they have said it back to me. Fortunately no one can be thrown out of atheism, so we can indulge in such heresies.

We indulge because no matter what happens in the future, no matter the cultural progress or regression, no matter the economic conditions or political atmosphere, no matter even the climatic calamity to come, or even because of it, our species needs the grand nonsense that is Christmas. A festival that laughs in the face of our darkest hours would have to be invented, if it didn’t already exist.

My column in The Kerryman. 18 December, 2013

When the best of us leave, as Nelson Mandela has left us, there is a need to remember the greatness that had once been among us. A need to describe both the grief and awe and to take a snapshot of an entire species, reduced. For that is the reality we now endure; he who was the best of us, is no more. We are a smaller people. We are a lesser people.

Mandela was not superhuman, he was not a superhero, neither was he a saint nor a god. He was one of us, so to describe him is to describe us at our greatest. But what is greatness?

I do not trust those who would be leaders, nor do I trust those who would be led. When we elevate one to rule us, we’re saying we are unable to govern ourselves. We’re saying we are children, we are sheep, we are slaves. But there are exceptions. In a time of terrible crisis, an individual may rise. In times of terrible crisis, we may need a single unifying figure, with the intellect, charisma and overwhelming ability to lead. Apartheid was such a crisis.

In ancient Rome when the City was threatened, they’d elect a dictator. He’d hold supreme power until the crisis was ended. The Romans hated a tyrant, but a crisis was a crisis. One of the greatest of these dictators was a man named Cincinnatus. The Romans faced defeat and so granted supreme power to Cincinnatus to stave off this ruin. He mobilised an army and saved the city. He then immediately resigned the dictatorship.

The city of Cincinnati in America was named after this man. They named it Cincinnati in honour of George Washington. He had accepted the leadership of the American colonies in their desperate battle for independence. He could have been a King, but instead he served his term as President and then handed power to his successor.

Imagine the temptation a great person must feel to cling with whitened knuckles and terrible deeds to power gained. Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Mao Zedong, mighty empire builders but unwilling and unable to relinquish power until assassinated, utterly defeated or brought low by ill-heath.

One of the heroes in the defeat of white power in Africa, was Robert Mugabe. No lesser figure than Nelson Mandela, but Mugabe has never seen beyond the thrill of power. He has led Zimbabwe into an abyss to ensure his continued vicious rule. Nelson Mandela would have been an anointed dictator, his undemocratic rule applauded. Instead he chose to serve his term as the democratically elected President of South Africa and then stepped down. He simply refused to take personal advantage of the power he had, nor the devotion and loyalty he inspired.

In Ireland we know how seductive that cult of personality can be. Over the decades we’ve elevated any number of gombeen men, corrupt little people, to the status of demigods, so that we may fawn over them like slack jawed peasants.

I do not trust those who would be leaders, nor do I trust those who would be led, but with the death of Nelson Mandela the best of us that has ever been, ceased to be. We are less. We are less. We are less.