Anam Cara

The things you know before you hear them,

those are you and

this is reason that you are in the world.

There is a massive functionalism at the heart of our times, a huge imbalance in post-modernity, primarily because certain key conversations are not taking place. One conversation that is not taking place is a conversation between the privileged and the poor. We are an immensely privileged minority. We think the Western world is the whole world. Yet, in fact, we are just a tiny minority. The majority of the world is living in the most awful circumstances. A friend of mind in London who has done research on this told me that 80 percent of the people in the world have never used a telephone. It is a sobering statistic. What disturbs me morally is the fact that we are here now in a comfortable setting talking about things we love. At the moment, there is a woman, a young mother, going through a dustbin in some barrio in South America for the tenth time today, for crumbs for her starving children whom she loves just as much as we love our children. The disturbing question is why is that person out there carrying that and why can we be here in comfort? I do not know the answer, but I do know that we are privileged and that the duty of privilege is absolute integrity. That is a huge part of balance, the question of integrity and integration. Without integrity, there can be no true integration.

Another conversation that is not happening, which is a terrifying non-event, is the conversation between the Western culture and Islam. Certain people are making attempts to do it, such as Edward Said, the cultural and literary critic, the NPR reporter Jacki Lyden, the theologian Michael Sells. Yet it is a conversation that is not happening essentially at a cultural level. We have a caricature of what Islam is. They have the same caricature of us. In caricature and false imagery and projection, so much violence, destruction and wars are already seeded. It is bleakly ironic in a culture that is obsessed with communication technology that the actual art and vital content of communication is shrinking all the time. In relation to the Irish context, there is an urgent need for greater dialogue between the forces of city culture and the rural domain. The city has become the power center in Western culture. It is where the most significant powers of media, finance, politics and religion are located. Naturally, then, the media, in reflecting these activities, inevitably does so through an urban filter of language, thought and style. Were one to watch the television every night for a week to see what images from rural life emerge on television, one would find few real references to the life on the land. Also the public language describing rural life is a language determined by the city and it is usually not an understanding language. People who live in the country know that you have to live in the country to know what the country is actually like. The country is not so much a community, it is a network. It has deep, intricate thickets of connection that cannot be seen from outside. Folk-life has depth and shadow that the media never comes near. The language used by the media about the country often reveals its distance from the cut and thrust of the rural sensibility. Even the word “rural” is diminutive. If one looks around for words about farming, to show the beauty and profound dignity of what it is, it is difficult to find any words in the public forum. I think farming is one of the great life callings. It has become very difficult now, but it is a great artistic, creative calling.

To Find Balance in an Ireland of Inner Turbulence