How would you characterise the Irish?

did anyone mention filthy

Wibbs wrote: »

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The irish have a much reduced culture when compared to many in europe. We have little in the way of a national cuisine, never mind a local one. Our architectural heritage is sparse. The vast majority of towns look and act the same. etc We are a very homogenous culture, more driven by outside influences. That's increasing not reducing too.

You compare that to Italy or Spain or France or Holland or Germany or....? No comparison. Even a tiny population like the Icelandics have a more diverse culture.

We tend to run ourselves down, has anyone mentioned that yet.

I wouldn't agree with the comment on us being tight, I worked in sales for a company selling to the UK and Ireland and I always prefered dealing with Irish peope - the English people especially where tight cnuts, the Irish could allways be brought around to your way of thinking if ya know what I mean.


Does that make us foolish?



Probably.












But we're all great for it.

I would also point out that culture is not synonymous with cultural trappings or historical hallmarks (somebody mentioned "cuisine" in a very weird post above). Culture is a more nebulous concept and certainly a vitally immediate one, perhaps influenced by but certainly divorced from history and antecedents.

WhiteWashMan wrote: »

indeed. although, im not sure how one catagorises a culture as pragmatic?
do you mean that it just gets up and does stuff without thinking it through or something?
i find it amazing that someone would try use personification on something like culture. it just doesnt work.

The people here are more pragmatic. That is realistic, professional and efficient. I'm not sure where this "does stuff without thinking it through" business comes from.

i have no idea what a human development scale is, but id like to subscribe to your newsletter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_development_index
It's a measurement of not only economic proficiency but also the many social variables that supposedly constituted a more rounded and functional society and economy. We're currently third in the EU, fifth worldwide. In comparison, France is 10th, the US is 12th, Spain 13th, the UK 16th and Germany 22nd.

is this a characterisation of the irish?

It is reflects my initial statement, yes.

cost of living my friend is outrageous. and one would think that the cost of living for those towards the lower income end would be harsher.
ive lived in several countries, and with the exception of denmark, those bastions of socialism, ireland is the most expensive country i have lived in.

If you're earning overseas and living here, perhaps. But the combination of free education and healthcare, very low taxation and high earning overwhelm the somewhat higher inflation here. Urban sprawl around Dublin is a little problem for buyers, coming from Berlin where they're basically giving property away. However, the situation remains far more favourable than in London, for example. Other than that, assuming you're not unemployed I don't see how pure cost of living can be effecting you so much. I will own, a night out is a little on the expensive side compared to the new Eastern European destinations, but nothing incredible.

ah yes, that good irish culture of clubbing and pissing about.

It is the culture of an entire hemisphere. It's not different or better overseas.

and irish people being more open minded?

are you sure youve been to ireland?
i have found that many irish people are insular and closed minded.

I'm not sure about your own situation but I've found meeting new people here to be incredibly easy compared to elsewhere. In general, I think a lot of people find it jarring when trying to speak to new people abroad. I find Irish business people incredibly accessible and reasonable compared to the hoop-jumping, general aloofness and occasional irrationality of those in the UK. Given my age, I was expecting work to be quite difficult but in Ireland people were happy to listen to the pitch, while in the UK I was constantly fielding questions about youth.

percieved virtue?
youre not a foreign student going mad with a dictionary are you?

Well, I'm a student I guess.

????

self reflection?
self loathing more like it.

Maybe on the internet.

But in the wider media there is a ton of, just as I said, self-reflection and self-interrogation.

now i know youre taking the mickey.
seriously.
you are in fact basing everything youve said about ireland after a bottle a tequila and a viewing of darby o gill and the little people.

You're basing your view on an overly negative fantasy, whereas mine is derived from unbiased observation and fact. This is Ireland in 2008, not Siberia circa 1952?

realism and rationalism has nothing to do with approachability.

That wasn't really my point but I disagree all the same. Approaching somebody with a wealth of preconceptions and a closed mind is not going to get you very far.

the irish business sector is not fantastic. capitalism and corperations are fantastic.

Irish entrepreneurs do exceedingly well, both inside and outside of the country. The business sector is doing incredibly well, you need only observe the health of the economy and the capacity for our financial services sector to basically emerge from the credit fiasco unscaved.

seriously, you do know this is ireland youre talking about, and not any other country on the planet?.

Do you?

im sorry. can you say that in english so we can understand what youre saying?

In brief, culture is not defined by history.

im not sure what your point is here.
is this some sort of validation for ireland being a country of begrudgers?

It's that if the entire country is going around lamenting the fact that there are so many "begrudgers" around, not only is it indicative of a cultural rejection of such an ideology but also that the problem is not quite as innate as you would be led to believe. Also, only the term is unique to Ireland, the phenomenon is worldwide. By virtue of rejecting it in such visceral terms is the country not perhaps more palatable than, say, the England and its acceptance of a tabloid culture?

i actually cant think of a single country where begrudgery is encouraged or prized. its not a pleasant trait. in fact, ireland is the only country i know where begrudgery is a common trait.

Observe every nation in Europe with, let's say, a deep anti-EU or anti-immigration sentiment, or still holding a grudge against old rivals for trivial reasons. In many corners, such feelings are expressed openly and prized. In fact, it's widespread throughout most of Europe. I'm not saying such sentiment does not exist here, merely that it is less acceptable, contained in a firm minority and almost universally condemned by legitimate media.

Affable wrote: »

I know I'm asking for generalisation.

But if you had to describe things that are unique about the Irish, for someone who has not lived in the culture, what would you say?

That's just it, I don't think you CAN generalise. You can't generalise any nation or people. Sure, you can find common behavioural traits with groups of people, but those groups relate more to what the person does for a living, what kind of wealth they grew up with, what social 'class' they belong to...etc. The same 'groups' exist in all countries and are pretty much all the same.

Some people are friendly, some are unfriendly. Some people are softly spoken, some are loud mouths. I could try to imagine Scotland (I've never been there), and I could think of haggis, kilts, caber-tossing, bitter red-haired people whining about the English. I could think about Al Murray's "Four types of Scotsman" routine.

Or, I could be intellectually honest and realise that Scotland is made up of the same groups as any other land in the western world (i.e. Soccer moms, yuppies, chavs, loud mouth hard men, quivering wimps, conservatives, liberals...etc)

Some people in Ireland may want to label themselves as one thing or another, and insist there is an associated culture. In the North, you may have Loyalists and Republicans. In the south, I imagine it's mostly Republicans and Dontgiveash1t-icans (I'd be the latter).

But I think it's time the world stopped trying to generalise, as I think it's the source of many of our problems. I don't care if people have 'positive' generalisations either - a few times I've heard English people say, "Oh I like Irish people, they are friendly", and I thought to myself "well, you haven't met every single Irish person". Am I to believe that after one or two bad experiences they would be saying, "Irish people are unfriendly bastards"..? See, it's a stupid thing to do, whether it's positive or negative.

As for 'culture' - what IS that anyway? And who's allowed to take part in it? Means nothing to me TBH.

Wibbs wrote: »

If we're so efficient and professional, how come there isn't a single part of our infrastructure that we can single out as not being fúcked? And this is after a time of unprecedented wealth in this society. Sorry I don't buy it. Couldn't organise a píss up in a brewery springs to mind.

What exactly about the infrastructure is so horrible? We import and export an extraordinary ammount every day without fail, our electricity and gas lines are well maintained, public transport is fine (the universal "these damn buses" whinging aside) air travel is grand. Trains are ****e, fair enough, I'll grant you that. Our transport services aren't near that of Japan or Germany but for a small island nation we're... fine. I mean, that's about the meat of it. Our infrastructure is perfectly fine. If you want to spend a ludicrous ammount of money on supertrains to go from Dun Laoghaire to Stillorgan then go for it.

Sorry you're living on another planet. Utterly. The quality of our healthcare and access to said healthcare in this country is farcical. People are dying on trolleys on a daily basis for want of a hospital bed. The whole structure of our healthcare is an unmitigated farce. Do you not read the papers? Jeez. I have seen up close the health service of this country and the french system and the spanish system the differences are staggering. The chances of dying here from diagnosed breast cancer are far higher than in france as an example.

I never said anything to the effect of the healthcare system being quality, merely that it provides a free service which reduces financial concerns for people enormously. I've experienced the health system in France and Canada, two lauded as the among the best worldwide, and the people there have the same complaints we do. There needs to be sweeping reforms to national healthcare, but that seems to be an international trait resulting from an antiquated regulatory system to which there is much internal resistance for reform.

Education is in crisis in many areas too.

Additional primary funding is required and an increase in urban population is causing problems. However, from an international perspective, Irish schools are among the best run and maintained. Again, that's not to say they are as good as they should be (they absolutely aren't), merely a comparative statement.

Those two examples alone suggest to me you must be living in some ivory tower(economic or other) where this is not affecting you. I presume you've not been sick or have known someone close to you that was, or you don't have kids. Ask anyone with aged relatives or kids, how good our health and education system is. In the 80's here when economically we were boned, you could at least get a hospital bed.

I was educated at two Dublin public schools, I've had a few minor surgeries through the healthcare system, seen my grandmother have a brain tumour removed and another family member go through protracted heart problems. If healthcare hadn't been free I wouldn't be able to go to college.

In the 80s hospital beds were in abundance because everyone was leaving the country. And in the 80s, FYI, the healthcare system was appalling.

You're having a laugh. A little problem? People are struggling on a daily basis just to keep their head above water on mortgages alone, if they can even get on the property ladder.

Well, firstly, I totally reject your characterisation. The foreclosure rate on mortages has been below the international average since the 1990s and, though it increased with the subprime mortgage crisis over the last year, it remains comparatively very small versus the rest of the world. Even if I accept your characterisation that things are especially tough on families (which I don't) it would be as a result of the international credit situation affecting the entire western world. In our case, the impact of this cumulative debt is minor. That people are living beyond their means is not the product of a failing economy, simply the product of readily available financing.

It's incredibly expensive for food here as an example. I've done a weekly shop in both france and spain and the difference is large. Very.Damn near double that of spain and a good third more than france(and that was paris ffs). A night of entertainment in paris is cheaper than here by a long shot.

True, but you earn a lot less overseas, making the difference in cost of day to day living (in terms of income percentage) negligible between most European countries. That we have such incredible buying power throughout the rest of the eurozone proves the point that our economy is healthy.

With the exception of britain, the culture of drinking and entertainment is radically different elsewhere.

I would strongly disagree, but no matter.

True. You may have to eat those words sooner rather than later. We are incredibly dependent on outside investment, particularly from the US. We have to make the change and quick to an information based economy and fast or we'll get left behind because of cheaper labour elsewhere. The IFC is another country in so many ways.

There isn't a single western nation in which commentators don't lament that "we're so dependent on foreign investment." It's a globalised economy, all investment is transnational. It's ridiculous to assume whole industries will up and leave as it would be internationally unprecedented move. Certain jobs are always lost to outsourcing, but other jobs are always being created, typically more advanced positions within the same industries. This doomsday scenario has been announced repeatedly since the late 90s yet our jobs market has been steady and progressive all the while.

Actually it is. Pretty much. Damn near every aspect of irish culture is defined through the prism of it's history ancient and recent. Culture doesn't pop up from nowhere you know, unless you think it's in the DNA.

Irish culture today has more to do with developments in the last 10 years than anything that has taken place in the distant past. I fundamentally disagree here and I think you're defining culture in historical rather than literal terms.

We have tabloid culture here. Indeed it's growing.

I'm not sure if it's growing, but it's openly despised and criticised by the overwhelming majority of the media and the public in general, whereas it's almost an intitution elsewhere. Here, when you read a tabloid, it's like you've been watching professional wrestling. In England you're just reading the paper. Every news program (even the prominent ones) are influenced by tabloid reporting, often working in goofy graphics and commentary frequently failing to address anything beyond the surface of an issue.

I saw Newsnight superimpose the faces of two British cabinet members onto an only fools and horses graphic a while back. I cried.

I'm not talking about legitimacy I'm talking about diversity. Diversity = better, more adaptive culture.

I have no idea what you mean by this. What do you mean by diversity, why is it "better," what is it "better than," what is an "adaptive culture" and why is it prized?

You are having a laugh or have no idea about what constitutes culture and it's influences. That's an incredibly naive and basic view of culture. It doesn't spring from nothing overnight. Yes it evolves and refreshes in the present, but based on the past and new

If you define culture as the manner in which people socialise, produce and consume art, generally conduct themselves in a public setting or in the ideology that they exhibit, then you would be extremely hard pressed to tie much, if any, of modern Irish living into a historical context. It's especially trying here in which there is such a division between modern youth culture and the culture of twenty, thirty and forty years ago. If you define culture as the material artistic output of a society you may have a case (maybe) but that isn't the term we're dealing with here.