Poems I Journey With 2

Given the hundred year celebrations of that most significant of years in the history of our nationhood I shall  quote in full another favourite poem from that tragic period of bloodshed. I have always loved the writings - prose and poetry, whether in Gaelic or in English - of Patrick Pearse or Padraig Mac Piarais as he is better known in Irish Gaelic. One of my favourite poems of his in the Gaelic is the famous much anthologized one "Fornocht do chonac thú" which we learned by heart when we were at school. If the reader of these lines knows Gaelic at all s/he will appreciate the richness of the language, especially the apt and resounding use of assonance therein. To read it aloud in the Gaelic is to become enthralled and enchanted by the magic and the beauty of the language and also to be carried away with the depths of Pearse's vision of the Gaelic dream of freedom and the thoughts of his own imminent death. The translation that follows is my own:

Fornocht do chonac thú

Fornocht do chonac thú,

a áille na háille,
is do dhallas mo shúil
ar eagla go stánfainn.

Do chualas do cheol,
a bhinne na binne,
is do dhúnas mo chluas
ar eagla go gclisfinn.

Do bhlaiseas do bhéal
a mhilse na milse,
is do chruas mo chroí
ar eagla mo mhillte.

Do dhallas mo shúil,
is mo chluas do dhúnas;
do chruas mo chroí,
is mo mhian do mhúchas.

Do thugas mo chúl
ar an aisling do chumas,
‘s ar an ród so romham

m’aghaidh do thugas.

Do thugas mo ghnúis
ar an ród so romham,
ar an ngníomh do-chim,
‘s ar an mbás do gheobhad.

Some of my pupils who received the national flag for the school from the President

Translation:

Naked I saw you,
O beauty of beauties,
And I shielded my eyes
For fear I should stare.

I heard your music,
O harmony of harmonies,
And I closed my ears
For fear I should fail.

I tasted your mouth,
O sweetness of sweetnesses,
And I hardened my heart
For fear I should succumb.

I shielded my eyes,
And I closed my ears,
I hardened my heart
And I smothered my desire.

I turned my back
On the vision I had created,
And to this road before me
I turned my attention.

I have turned my attention
To this road before me,

To the deed that I see
And the death I shall die.

Patrick Pearse was at once a visionary and a mystic as well as being a teacher and revolutionary. Mystics and visionaries are too often misunderstood and in that misunderstanding of their motives, many can accuse them of being extremists. Unfortunately, many commentators have well and truly made that mistake.  Pearse was enchanted by the vision of a Gaelic and free Ireland, very Romantic and almost Utopian in its vision. And so the apparition of that Ireland, that alluring Ireland, which in the poetic tradition of the Gaelic language would always have been visualized as a young woman who is oppressed and enslaved by the British. (In the tradition of the "Aisling" or "Dream of Freedom" poem, the poet always encountered a "spéirbhean" or "lovely lady of the sky" who is in fact Ireland herself). With this in mind, we can now see the vision that he had to shield himself from, that literary vision of Gaelic enchantment, the lure its literature, the sweetness of its music, the satisfaction of the emotions and the love for its women folk.  However, another more bloody vision of the sacrifice of his life in revolutionary action for the freedom of Ireland beckoned to him - this was the highway to the Uprising, "this road" before him that led to the 1916 Easter Rising and the death of many. 

Like the previous poem, "The Wayfarer," "Fornocht do chonac thú" is suffused with the notion of the transience of life and the reality of human mortality.  However, it contrasts two clashing visions, one of the sacrifice of death for the victory of freedom and the other, the enchanted world of Celtic or Gaelic mysticism.  Pearse knew he had to sacrifice his life so that his Gaelic vision might be realized.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 10

Can you coax your mind from its wandering

and keep to the original oneness?

Can you let your body become

supple as a newborn child's?

Can you cleanse your inner vision

until you see nothing but light?

Can you love people and lead them

without imposing your will?

Can you deal with the most vital matters

by letting events take their course?

Can you step back from your own mind

and thus understand all things?

Giving birth and nourishing,

having without possessing,

acting with no expectations,

leading and not trying to control:

This is the supreme virtue.

Commentary/Reflections

One of the central problems experienced by the neophyte meditator is that of all the mental distractions that race through the human mind when one attempts to still it.  This is what the poet means above by his term "the wandering mind." In that field of thought called philosophy of mind, there is an interesting question: Do our thoughts think us or do we think our thoughts?  That question never really engaged me early in my life even though I had heard it discussed in that area of philosophy concerned with the nature of the mind. However, it did hit me very strongly and existentially when I had a major breakdown, or indeed a break-through really, at the age of forty - that is, at the time of the typical midlife crisis brought to a point where Yeats says, "the centre cannot hold."  It was then that I experienced my mind being literally hijacked by my thoughts.  The centre could not hold whatsoever: the hub of control had totally disintegrated and the spokes of identity had shattered and scattered into chaos.  Thoughts ran riot in my mind and there was no controlling them.  The nerve-centre of my identity, or if you like, the core of my self had undergone a meltdown.  

Good mental health essentially means that the person is on the way to establishing an identity that is individuated (Jung), integrated (Storr) or actualized (Maslow et al).  In other words the person is as fully their real or true self as is possible: metaphorically we are a series of spokes (character qualities and traits) centred around a hub called the "Real Self" rotating on a unique path. None of us probably ever reaches the acme point in that process. Spiritually, the parallel term in Eastern philosophy would be "the enlightened mind."  The poem above is as deep as can be and has many layers of meaning as the language struggles to express the spiritual quest of life. Quieting or stilling the mind is a wonderful metaphor for getting under the chaos that our unstilled mind can be.  Spiritual writers speak about the task of achieving a Still Point below that agitated surface of existence.  In the above poem, this task is expressed in the words "original oneness."  Each couplet is another way of expressing the search for this elusive Still Point.

If a true pilgrim of the way or a faithful disciple of enlightenment achieves a position of leadership s/he will be able to "love people and lead them without imposing their will."  In other words, their ego will be firmly under control and integrated into their personality. They will have no need for petty jealousies, for "getting their pound of flesh," for settling old scores, for one-up-man-ship of any kind or for any sort of micro-management.  They will be visionary leaders able to bring their staff with them while allowing everyone the freedom to grow and to succeed on their own terms without interference.  Stepping back and not wishing to control things is central to good spiritual and indeed psychological development. We all learn quite quickly that the only people we can change are ourselves, never ever anyone else.  Some of us only learn that lesson painfully and the ego-ridden person makes that mistake all too often. And so, in light of these comments, the following lines from the above poem are worth repeating and reflecting on here:

Can you deal with the most vital matters

by letting events take their course?

Can you step back from your own mind

and thus understand all things?

Another way of saying this is that the person further on the road to enlightenment is getting ever more detached from the non-essential things of life; is getting nearer to that elusive Still Point of being; that primordial state of being our Taoist poem calls "the original oneness."

Journal of a Soul 68

Patterns

A pencil mandala I drew today - an attempt at a pattern in geometric terms.

In my last post in this blog I spoke about our being a meaning-making species.  For us, it is not enough to experience life in all its vicissitudes and vagaries.  No, we have a deep drive to make sense of it, to see some shape or pattern in the course of our worldly affairs.  We believe that everything we do must be meaningful and have some purpose.  We in the Western world seem to be caught up in rationalizing even our moments of joy and sorrow by attempting to explain these by philosophizing, psychologizing, theologizing, sociologizing, anthropologizing and so on and so forth. That is, we try to superimpose the shape or pattern of our own take on philosophy, psychology, theology, sociology, anthropology and indeed any other "-ology" we may know upon those experiences.  Hence, my title.  

We are the shapers and pattern-makers of our lives.  Indeed, one of the core drives in humanity, it seems to me, is the drive to knowledge, or to know more.  We might even describe this drive as the infinite desire to know. (see the work of the Jesuit theologian and philosopher, Bernard Lonergan, 1906-1986) To me this drive seems to be as strong as the drive within us to love others and be loved in return.  In our desire to learn ever and ever more about our world and indeed about ourselves we have discovered much order in the universe - common principles of mathematics, physics, science and technology and so on. And yet despite all our knowledge there is so much more still unknown.  Further there is also much disorder and chaos around us that we are striving to understand.

In this regard, we have also become aware of the seeming randomness of things and the sheer apparent chaos of both the origins and nature of the universe.  So much so that today scientists are exploring this latter through the use of what they term chaos theory. Epistemologically, coming up with a theory of chaos is in itself by association of the very terms "theory" and "chaos" a way of superimposing order on chaos anyway.  In other words, we are searching for a pattern and order in chaos itself.  Now, that to me is simply mindbendingly wonderful.  Only we humans could come up with that. The WIKI has a wonderfully insightful article on chaos theory within which we read about what the author terms "spontaneous order in chaos" of which he writes: "Under the right conditions chaos will spontaneously evolve into a lockstep pattern." (See HERE ) 

In the field of knowledge we try to discover patterns that are there already in nature in general - such is very pertinent to the growth of all knowledge especially in the natural sciences in general - whether that be the theory of evolution, the discovery and definition of gravity, the discovery of electricity and so on and so forth.  The furtherance of knowledge in the sphere of the natural sciences obviously led to the growth of machines and technologies of all kinds. Likewise, empirical or clinical observances and experiments done with animals and human beings have led to the growth of medical knowledge both in its physiological and psychological aspects.  Scientists have a very simple but effective approach to knowledge in general, that is, that all conclusions offered must be based on the sound foundations of scientific method understood in an objective and unbiased fashion.  

I understand the scientific method as being somewhat open-ended in the sense of the Socratic declaration that we must always declare our ignorance first and not be too quick to jump to narrow conclusions.  No scientist should take a very narrow optic on things, but rather be open to being surprised by the wonder of the universe.  In this sense, I am arguing for an open-ended scientific method that in its practice rules out a narrow scientistic reductionism that reduces all mystery and wonder to mere materialistic or mechanistic constituents. I hasten to add here that as a believer in good solid science I also decry a sort of reverse reductionism - maybe an "inflationism" if I may coin a term - like the approach of fundamental religionists and creationists that seek to look at the mystery and wonder of the universe through an equally narrow optic of Biblical literalism. (Here, let me cite the work of The Institute for Creation Research, which lists a good number of apparently eminent scientists on its web page, but starts off with a very narrow premise, namely one of Biblical literalism. Now, how they can square their very unscientific first principles with science is beyond this writer. They are equally as fundamental as those scientists who preach a narrow scientism that has scant regard for any theology or even philosophy , no matter how well reasoned and academically well researched. (See HERE for information on creationism and its efforts to prove God from science.) In my opinion all good science, and any authentic quest for knowledge in any sphere at all, should start from a neutral and objective first principle, namely a sheer openness to describe as objectively and as clinically as possible what it finds before it.  Starting off from a position of "The Bible is literal truth and everything we seek to find must be viewed from this first principle or axiom" is self-evidently unscientific and indeed unphilosophical in the extreme.  Being a believer after-the-fact is more objective and authentic than being a believer before-the-fact in my opinion.

More than the Intellect

I return here, yet again, to an old chestnut that I repeat so many times in these pages, namely that the intellect is just a small, albeit important, element of what goes to make the human phenomenon.  Multiple Intelligences, a broad theory of the nature of intelligence, offers us an important perspective on the mystery of humanity and of the universe that humanity encounters.  This model was proposed by Howard Gardner in his 1983 book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Gardner articulated eight incarnations of human intelligence: (i) the musical–rhythmic, (ii) the visual-spatial, (iii) the verbal-linguistic, (iv) the logical–mathematical, (v) the bodily–kinesthetic, (vi) the interpersonal, (vii) the intrapersonal and (viii) the naturalistic.  To these listed intelligences or kinds of intelligence he later suggested that existential and moral intelligences might also be worthy of being added.  Daniel Goleman, another pioneering and popular American psychologist, has spoken learnedly about what he terms our Emotional Intelligence (EQ). This particular take on the emotions equates more or less with Gardner's Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Intelligences.  There are many other scholars who argue for more intelligences, not the least of which is called Spiritual Intelligence (SQ).  All these categories of intelligence, of course, are an effort to give the lie to the reductionist (another of my favourite terms in these pages, which no doubt the reader is by now bored with to the point of nausea!) pigeon-holing of people by traditional IQ tests as spearheaded by the great 19th century psychologist Alfred Binet and his followers.

More rather than Less

Here is where the proof mentality of reductionists like Dennett and Dawkins and so on can be seen as delimiting. Such philosophers and scientists wish to reduce what the phenomenon of humankind may be to certain categories within a narrow vision of what science and indeed knowledge itself may be.  They would be working from a very narrow take on intelligence, I firmly believe.  They show scant regard for either a philosophy of science broadly understood or a broad take on epistemology. For them epistemology is largely a quaint take on linguistics that is nothing short of meaningless.  The "how" question features largely in their vocabulary to the detriment of the "why" question.  Indeed, some of their number positively avoid the latter question.

Again, Dawkins et al  seem to give short shrift to the concept of holism, that the whole might be greater than the sum of its parts, that the network or grid of connections in the universe just might be more rather than less.  Apologies if this journal of the soul is getting lost sometimes along the back-roads and sometimes veritable labyrinths of theology and philosophy, but once again if we are to take holism for what it truly means we must always stretch for what is more in the human person at all times and this may mean journeying down those by-ways as well as the more obvious highways. 

It is salutary to call to mind that the very term "mind" is in itself a commonly accepted one that refers to a very abstract reality that we intuitively assume exists.  We cannot see it or prove that it exists per se or in se and yet we believe it exists as it gives us a way of describing what the human phenomenon entails.  In fact, many of our human sciences are based on the assumption that it exists: psychology and psychiatry are two major ones that so depend.  We also assume that the mind somehow resides in the brain - at least that was the general assumption until in more recent years research has shown that the mind may also encompass much of the nervous system itself.  There are even those philosophers who maintain that all of human information is an extension of the human mind and so on and so forth.  Here, needless to say, we need to employ the fields of epistemology, philosophy of mind, the psychology of consciousness and so on again.

That anyone of us can assume that either we or our fellows within our various disciplines have a monopoly on knowledge or indeed on how we may find it is sheer arrogance in the extreme.  What's needed here, again, is a Socratic ignorance, or what St Augustine termed a "docta ignorantia", that is a "learned ignorance," an epistemology that leaves us open to greater discoveries and to the sheer wonder of the universe.

It is my argument here the the notions of personality, "the self,"the "soul," "the heart" and the "spirit" are all equally intuitive assumptions akin to that of the mind and symbolise realities we intuitively assume exist.   They are, in my opinion, equally valid working assumptions that make life more livable and more humane. Admittedly, they are terms that may be hijacked by the lunatic fringe which we will always have with us.  That they are easily so hijacked is no reason at all to jettison them from either our vocabulary or our deeper beliefs.   

A Hymn to the More 

A coloured mandala I drew today - the magic and mystery of geometry

Let me here end on a more poetic or soulful note.  Let me sing a hymn to the mind, to the self, to the soul and to the spirit, acknowledging their intuitive presence and their similarities and differences.  Let me sing a hymn which intuitively acknowledges their presence or at least my experience of their presence.  Let me sing a hymn to the "more" in humankind, to its possibilities, to its hopes and desires, to its limitless possibilities and to its dreams and visions of a better world for all, for a greater peace than that which we know now. The hymn that I sing is one that acknowledges so much beyond my limited and finite ken, that bows down in wonder as a minuscule dot on a minuscule planet orbiting a Sun that is itself minuscule in infinite space.  This is a hymn that notes that I am a grace-filled being that experiences his little life as a gift beyond his own making.  Truly mine is a poetic yet humble spirit gifted with a life I am so thankful to live.  My little mind is overwhelmed by the beauty and the wonder that surrounds it, a mind whose desire to know is infinite, that in stretching out its puny boundaries against the huge weight of the universe is awe-struck even that it exists to know anything at all.  This is a prayer of a small mind with an infinite desire to know.  It is a mind that prays the traditional prayer of the old sailors in Brittany long ago "Oh Lord, thy sea is so great and my ship so small."  This is a mind even that allows that this quoted prayer may be metaphoric and not literal, and yet it is a mind that needs to pray, that needs to acknowledge its littleness before the awesome mystery of life and of the universe.  This is a hymn to the "more" in the phenomenon that is human life. This is a hymn to the self that I want to be, to the dreams and visions of the True Self, of the Real Self that resides in the depths within.  This is a hymn to the "more" that is the soul whose home and habitat lies somewhere in the mists of mystery, in the highways and by-ways of an identity greater than the individual, whatever that might be.  This is a prayer that acknowledges the "more" of the great Spirit of the universe that astounds the little self  with its awe and beauty.  This is a hymn to those grace-filled moments of encounter with the "more" which some dare call God.                                                                                                                                          

Journal of a Soul 50

Introduction: Towards the More in Humanity

Our winning all-Ireland Science debaters! Towards the More!

I've been arguing that the phenomenon of our consciousness in itself is a greater entity than the mere sum of the signals or perceptions we register on our brains.  Indeed, I have also been arguing that the mind in the sense of consciousness is also greater than that organ known as the brain in which it is said to mainly reside.  What our personhood or selfhood may be is also somehow linked to our consciousness of what or who that person or self may be.  These are major areas that can be learnedly discussed in philosophy, philosophy of mind, psychology, philosophical psychology, anthropology, philosophical anthropology, neurology and indeed in psychiatry and cognitive science. (I'm sure there are many other learned areas of study in cognate areas that I have not listed here!)  Indeed, the arts in general explore that complex area of self-identity through all the various creative media: painting, sculpture, architecture, music and writing in all its incarnations.  Come to think of it, we should not leave the sciences out either. After all, they too, share in the creative impulses that make up our human consciousness.  Maths, Engineering and Technology also capture on the one hand the beauty, magic and brilliance of the human mind as well as its sheer practical application to human affairs on the other.

In my last post, I spoke about human passions that mark us out as different from the other animals in the Animal Kingdom.  I referred to (a) our desire for knowledge, (b) our desire to love and (c) our desire to be loved as demarcating qualities.  There are others, too.  I briefly referred to our desire for peace and justice.  As Pope Paul VI put it rather pithily, peace is the work of justice.  Let me turn to this last desire or passion here as a demarcating trait of the human person.

The Desire for Justice

One thing that has always inspired me about human beings is their idealism that is shown in many ways, and most especially in their desire to see justice done.  That we are instinctively drawn to causes which promote justice is certainly undeniable.  The Civil Rights Movement, headed up by the late great Martin Luther King Jnr., great prophetic figure, is an excellent example of this human trait I am describing here.  Then, closer to home, we had the Civil Rights Movement in the North of Ireland which sought to do the same for the Roman Catholic population of North of Ireland as its sister movement had achieved for the black population in the USA.  People gave their lives, and still do give their lives in great numbers in all parts of the globe for causes that promote justice for all.  And why do it?  Why put your life on the line for the cause of justice among others, especially when you yourself have those rights that are denied to those for whom you fight?  Why?  Because you believe that there are some values that are universal, and that those values point to what is great and good in the human being; that those values transcend the person and are interpersonal and even trans-personal;  that they somehow point to an author of values beyond us, to an horizon of meaning beyond us*, and perhaps point to some Giver of values beyond us... perhaps.  I will leave these thoughts open to a possible greater meaning or horizon of values above and beyond us.  I will stay with that tentativeness because I just cannot prove this last observation one way or another.

In the wake of the Nazi atrocities committed against innocent people before and during World War II, it was hard for the Allies to convict the accused before their courts of justice at Nuremberg without appealing to a higher court than those of mere mortals.  It has always appeared to this writer here that without the atrocities committed by both Hitler and Stalin; that without, as it were, falling into the pit of sheer atrocity and knowing the sheer depths of depravity to which we humans can descend; that without plumbing the depths of human evil we should never have been inspired to conceive of, write and agree to the International Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.  Article 1 states:

• All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

We are all endowed with reason and conscience.  As to the nature of conscience the Declaration, needless to say, has nothing to say.  After all it is a international document listing and declaring solemnly the rights of all men and women everywhere in the world.  As to where that conscience comes from, this document does not state, nor should it, indeed, as it is neither philosophy, theology or ethical theory.  Perhaps like Newman, and Kant before him, that conscience could be the voice of a higher power, an author of such universal human rights, before whom in conscience we stand accountable.  Perhaps.  I'm not saying, obviously, that this is definitely so.  I am merely stating it and leaving it out there as one of some few main propositions on the matter.

The Power of Vision

The power of vision: St Vincent's celebrate victory in our School

Another characteristic that describes humanity, both in its essence and in its actions, is that of having a vision of how things could be if we dream big dreams of progress, not alone in technology per se, but in technology which has an ethical and humane dimension to it, namely to improve the lot of other human beings.  Undoubtedly, this is linked with the desire for justice, but here in this paragraph I wish to emphasize the visionary aspect of the desire, rather than the work of justice itself.  In other words, I am talking essentially about the same thing, but from a different perspective.

Vision belongs equally to the engineer the technologist as it does to the poet and novelist.  It belongs to all peoples, to all cultures, to all faiths and to all colours.  In short, it belongs to the man and woman in the street, no matter what their profession, or indeed, their lot in life.  Here, I am reminded by those wonderfully apt words composed by the great Irish writer, socialist and dramatist,  George Bernard Shaw (1856 -1950) in Back to Methuselah (1921): ' "You see things; and you say 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?' '  For me as an Irishman, the first time I heard these words was in the famous speech of John F. Kennedy before the Irish Parliament or Dáil in June 1963.  In the context of his speech, he was highlighting the very heart of justice, which is essentially the work of democracy.  Both he and his extended family have not alone been associated with the Democratic Party in the USA, but with the work of justice on an international level in an effort to bring about world peace.  That the Kennedys passionately believed in the work of justice as central to the democratic process is without doubt.  That John F.Kennedy openly embraced the vision of The Civil Rights Movement and of its prophetic leader Martin Luther King Jnr is also beyond question.  That JFK's brother Bobby was the bearer of his brother's beacon of justice for all after the latter was assassinated is a question of historical fact.  However, that Bobby Kennedy was perhaps the more courageous and more passionately driven of the two is not without evidence.  That the two were assassinated for their beliefs in peace as the work of justice can never be denied.  Their assassination as the asssassination of Mohandas Gandhi, Ruth First and Martin Luther King Jnr., just to mention a few, happened because their outspokenness for justice and equality for all stepped on the toes of those powerful interests within all societies that look to exploitation of the weak and poor for their selfish aggrandisement.  This is all incontrovertible.  The human drive to a vision of how things could be, the innate drive for a Utopia almost lies at the very heart of human dreaming, it seems...

And yet, history teaches us the very sad lesson that while we have such visions of how things might be, in reality wars and injustices abound.  However, without such visionary drives in humankind as witnessed in the lives and sacrifices of great prophets for peace as the work of justice, we should be in even a worse state of moral disintegration.  There are so many prophets of peace who have paid the ultimate price for their vision besides those few whom I have named above, and, indeed, many of them are unacknowledged and many more unknown.  Their sacrifice has not been in vain, as many countless others have benefitted by their sacrifice by either achieving their freedom or in escaping from injustice with their lives.

A Final Word

And lastly, dear reader, how do we account for the courage of heroes putting their lives at risk for those of others?  Where does that fit into an atheistic or indifferentist scheme of things or in an agnostic Darwinian structuralist view of what we humans really are?  Or push the idea of heroism further, and one comes up with the actuality of someone sacrificing their lives for those of others, many of whom are unknown to the hero or sacrificial victim to put it in more religious terms, as it were? How do we explain this in the overall scheme of things? These are all big cultural questions, all big philosophical and anthropological questions. Perhaps they are even spiritual and religious questions.  One thing is sure, they are not cold scientific ones at any rate.  Whoever we are essentially is a work in progress, and sadly we find out more and more about that essence by experiencing how low at times some of us can stoop.

Journal of a Soul 36

As if People Mattered

People who matter: Two of our Spanish students at School

If the reader has been following these musings in this blog, s/he will know that the above title is in fact the subtitle of a book alluded to in my last post, viz., Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (1973). In Ireland, at present, we are facing into yet another austerity Budget on Tuesday next: our Minister for Finance Michael Noonan has said €2.5bn is to be taken out of the economy in the Budget and not the projected €3.1bn. This is, of course, no reason to celebrate because, after five years of austere budgets and growing hardships, the Irish Exchequer is still spending a billion euro more every month than it is collecting in taxes.  Whatever way one looks at it, these figures simply don't add up. It is, indeed, hard to square this huge economic circle.  And yet, it is important to state loudly in answer to the contention of the late great Brian Lenihan, Jnr., our erstwhile Minister for Finance,, that many of us simply did not party while The Celtic Tiger was roaring.  However, it is also unquestionable, indeed, that many others did party.  Some "Paddy Irishmen" took to their new-found wealth through unlimited credit and unsecured loans like a an addict to alcohol or drugs.

Can Economics be Ethical?

People who matter: Myself and two senior students at school

Human beings are more than economic units, much more.  There is more to happiness and success than the amount of one's earnings or the size of one's bank account.  That money does indeed buy privilege of all sorts goes without questioning.  Middle class parents can buy their children grinds for State Examinations and they do so readily.  One young boy I know had five separate teachers coming to his house to get him through his exams.  Now he did, indeed, get the results.  The point I'm making here is that the children I teach who attend a disadvantaged inner city school can often not afford the price of their school books, never mind pay for grinds. The Vincent de Paul often advance some of our pupils the money to go on school trips or tours, and the ones we go on are not terribly exclusive.  However, the real fundamental question behind all these anecdotes I am recounting here is the question in the above sub-heading: Can Economics be ethical.  Our Uachtarán, Micheál D Ó hUiginn believes it can.  Speaking at a public lecture (Wednesday September 11, 2013) in Dublin City University on the topic of "Toward an ethical economy," he stated:

(M)y Presidency.... seeks to develop an ethical discourse that places human flourishing at the heart of public action.... I would like – tonight – to focus in particular on the relations between ethical reasoning and economic thought...

This speech proceeds like a third level lecture, replete with learned quotations and references to contemporary academic sources.  That it was delivered before a university audience is possibly the reason.  Our President, or Uachtarán is a scholar and academic as well as a former (Labour Party) Minister. He has always been renowned for his commitment to social equality issues and for his defense both of civil and human rights.  He is also a very passionate individual who speaks with compassion and conviction as well as with erudition and reason.  He continues in this lecture to adumbrate his concern for the well-being of citizens.  To this end he praises Martha Nussbaum's exposition of the teachings of the Greek philosopher Aristotle, especially his ethical teachings as they appear in his Nichomachean Ethics. I have mentioned before in this blog Aristotle's defining "happiness" as "eudaimonia" as the "flourishing" of the human person.  Such flourishing is above and beyond mere economic concerns, while firmly based on such concerns.  Let me add to our President's reflections by suggesting a Maslowian hierarchy here.  Once a human being's economic needs have been met, and this is the firm foundation, other more human concerns are further solidly built upon it.  However, what happened to us Irish during the Celtic Tiger era was to continue greedily to remain at that foundational level only, forgetting all the other human values which both sustain and enhance the human enterprise of "flourishing."  It is, then, that I was somewhat overwhelmed by the President's call for Philosophy to be a subject on our curricula at school.  Perhaps.  However, I'm more convinced that adding a philosophical dimension to each subject might be more beneficial, given the overstretching of today's curricula.  Anyway, let me quote him more fully here:

Our schools’ curricula and pedagogical methods reflect the kind of humanity our society seeks and nurtures. The society we so dearly wish for will not take shape unless we acknowledge the need for an education of character and desires, the need to encourage and support critical reflection and a more holistic approach to knowledge. Specifically, there would surely be considerable merit in introducing the teaching of philosophy in our schools, which could facilitate the fostering of an ethical consciousness in our fellow citizens. (See President )

He then proceeds to quote professor Kathleen Lynch and her colleagues from the School of Social Justice in U.C.D.  These latter put great emphasis on the provision of care for the person in any human community.  That cold Economics allows for this depth of care is a question for disputation.  In any civilized society it certainly should.  Let me quote from the President's speech once more:

As Lynch puts it, “bonds of friendship or kinship are frequently what bring meaning, warmth and joy to life… They are both a vital component of what enables people to lead a successful life and an expression of our fundamental interdependence”...To reflect on the demands of care, love and friendship is to replace the categories of utility, efficiency and self-love with the values of mutuality, long-term commitment, trust and responsibility. It is to conceive of the Other as an end in himself, as a source of non-reciprocal responsibility, in the sense of Emmanuel Lévinas. (See link above)

The President's lecture continues on with multiple references to other learned scholars, but his contention that all human beings have a right not alone to endure on this wonderful blue planet, but also to flourish in the broadest meaning of that concept.  The reification of human concerns by a focus on an Economics, which is heartless and soulless, must be surmounted if we as a community of caring individuals are to do more than merely surviving, if we as a community and as individuals are really to flourish. 

Finding Meaning:

I have stated here many times that we humans are meaning-making creatures and our goal is our self-shaping which we can really only do within the mutuality of a community.  Such meaning can only be found if we work for our mutual flourishing.  This essentially entails that we have a vision for our future; a real hope in the possibilities of tomorrow; a true concern for the well-being of all sentient creatures as well as that of our beautiful Blue Planet, Mother Gaia; a passion for our work to bring this vision about; a conviction and a belief in the worthwhile-ness of the human project, which is always more than mere survival, more than a mere river of genes that flows ever onwards into an unknown future.  No it is more.  It is a mystical, mythic and visionary dream of what we can be, and no less real for all of that: the flourishing of a human community, replete with all those human values that cold economics can not envision, though enhanced with values, can certainly support.