Society 3.0 CongRegation 2020

Reluctantly I publish these words, a kind of a poem. They are not completely envisaged. In my head they are a short video of moving images and spoken word. I just don’t think I can bring it together on time, so I share them here as part two of my submission preparation for CongRegation 2020.

This is a look back over my shoulder at my past, at the Ireland I grew up in, a country I have chosen to remain in despite its flaws, my place of birth, my cultural identity despite everything awful about it. It is the country I have chosen, its landscape and culture run in my veins.

Ireland, looking back over my shoulder

When we reclaimed our right to be Irish, we had to fight for it.
We still exported people,
if you left you owned your Irishness at all costs,
sometimes it was all you had

When we joined Europe they gave us funds bringing us from a wayward funny little rural country to a modern economy,
connecting infrastructure & leaving our traditions behind
Our outward looking vision not recognising our own wisdom
To be honest some of those traditions needed to be lost

We still exported people but now we educated them first
Everywhere else their culture, design, clothing, food was exotic and attainable
we wanted it above and beyond our own

Our immigrants
ghetto-ed, romanticised and
lived Irish memories that those left behind had long let go of,

The troubles rumbled on, violent spilling over, these people with strong nationalist views they wanted something and they were willing to fight for it
We did not all agree, terror was real, it exploded after C.N.D., Greenpeace and along side Apartheid
Was that the start of not identifying with what Ireland and Irishness stood for?

We were peace keepers that blew up our closet neighbours, Northern Ireland and the UK. Not in my name after Enniskillen and Omagh became acceptable. But before that we were warned never to say anything publicly no matter what we believed or thought.
What an irony.

We began to travel, absorbing cultures, marrying them, living in them, still yearning for the green fields of home,
Tattoos of languages and cultural motifs we had no right too
Nothing of our own was good enough
Others adopted ours,
sure everyone wants to claim being Irish especially on 17 March

Diaspora our biggest commodity
We began to see people moving around the country blow-ins, we began to see EU economic migration, be began to see refugees, people displaced
they were not meet with 100 million welcomes but with suspicion, racism, bigotry and exclusion

Then suddenly we had cash, a whole generation did not have to leave. They could afford anything they wanted, not everyone only some of the population. The Celtic Tiger spurred us on, reconnected us with a part of our psyche buried deep. Irish made things were attainable, desirable.
We wanted Riverdance to tap us on forever.
Our diaspora returning home disappointed in what they came back to, missing lives they had built elsewhere.

Alcoholism, incest, good Catholic secrets, squinting windows, oppression, church and state, catholic educators, laundries, the Ferns report, mother and baby homes, Savita, direct provision, mental health, discrimination, racism, othering…
Long shadow legacies.
Yes to non-denominational education
Yes to love, Yes to women’s choices

We bulldoze good agricultural land for urban sprawl
We spray and poison the ground, fell our trees and hedgerows, pollute our waterways
Our green fields still tithed to traditions of race, religion and an Ireland struggling with its own identity. We are complicity no matter if we like it or not

Pushing for growth in everything
Adopting post truth western values at our peril

We are stopped in our tracks,
2020 drops COVID19
5 – 8 years of scenario modelling fast forwarded
an uncomfortable halt, modern society paused, rumbled
Through masks, screens, at a 2m social distance, hand washing and hand sanitisers
Now what exists…
we have time.
Lets ask the questions that reshape Ireland.