Ireland's Moral Identity.

ArtSmart

lot of rhetoric out there, lot of divergent opinions.

but i'm wondering was is the base line in attitudes.

for instance I get the impression America has a love affair with the
'rugged individual' moral base - the sort of John Wayne thing.

Britain seems to hover between the 'stiff upper lip' and the 'bolshie boogie'

Australia is the 'fair dinkum' ie 'act fair' - as does Germany, Belgium, Netherlands.

so what's Ireland's moral identity?

i'm talking in terms of economics / socio-political overall attitudes

eg, 'the fittest survive' etc etc

Mod: Thread should read 'Ireland's Moral Identity.

ArtSmart

LOl. Not one person even looking at the thread. Oh the irony... (or something)

Aka Ishur

Imo its a sort of split personality. On the one hand the Irish workforce is statistically (when at full strength) on of the hardest working/most productive per head in the western world.

Unfortunately on the other we have the 'lets see what we can get away with' brigade.....

snow ghost

Machiavellian survival by sacrificing anyone or anything that can be tossed over our shoulder to pacify the predators on our tail.

Goes back to being a colonised people and the famine, most of the people living in Ireland today are here because their ancestors survived the famine - and they survived the famine by putting others in the firing line and hoarding the last carrot for themselves.

And the government have just scarficed the country.

grizzly

I think it's something like;

"Let's get away with whatever we can – sure we've earned it by now"

O'Coonassa

I always think this description of the Normans by the Eleventh century Benedictine monk and historian, Geoffrey Malaterra has us down to some extent;

Specially marked by cunning, despising their own inheritance in the hope of winning a greater, eager after both gain and dominion, given to imitation of all kinds, holding a certain mean between lavishness and greediness, that is, perhaps uniting, as they certainly did, these two seemingly opposite qualities. Their chief men were specially lavish through their desire of good report. They were, moreover, a race skillful in flattery, given to the study of eloquence, so that the very boys were orators, a race altogether unbridled unless held firmly down by the yoke of justice.

dachubba

work hard when you are being watched,
skive when you can,
something for nothing is a good thing, regardless of what it is,
If you can get away with it, then morality is not included.
drink like pigs because everybody does it and tolerates it.

Helix

irelands identity seems to be enjoy it while its good, get out when it turns bad

which im guilty of

Leiva

I'm afraid we may have lost our identity over the past week or so and now seen as a bit of a laughing stock .
All down to the FF spin & spoofs about not needing a bailout , even when the IMF are in town ???
It reminded me of the Iraqi information minister during the US invasion ... Except he done a better job !









"There are no IMF infidels in DUBLIN Never!"

aphex™

ArtSmart wrote: »

so what's Ireland's moral identity?

i'm talking in terms of economics / socio-political overall attitudes

Most people in business seem to desire to corner the market in a geographic area and price gauge the public. You see it with pubs, convenience and hotels and wholesalers and everybody in between. There is no innovation there in these 'entrepreneurs'.

The ambition of most 'entrepreneurs' in Ireland is to own several pubs and hotels and screw people left right and center. They get to where they are by brazenly ripping off people all along the way. Even the person who runs the smallest of convenience newsagents now drives the biggest of Mercs. Bonus points for a UK reg.

Then they get a bit of land and develop apartments or townhouses on it in the middle of nowhere with leaky roofs and paper thin walls. Then they rent them out to people on rent allowance at top dollar. The government picks up the bill.

Then they get into government and run the whole country based on the economics of the small town they came from, giving huge tax incentives to useless apartments and hotels that just screw the tourists and drive them away.

Then they try and get the multinationals in to employ the middle classes and provide the bread and butter for the economy (and save their skins). Then they put up prices and get the workers to mortgage their lives away for the leaky townhouse miles from anywhere with no services or public transport.

The creation of oligopolies and protectionism mixed with corruption of local government is the main economic ambition of most business people in this country and people for the most part accept it .That's the Irish economic identity. Even the middle classes can do it by joining a union.

That's the Muck Savage dream.

Dorcha

The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists

ArtSmart

interesting posts so far I have to say.

will wait for a few more though.

PeterIanStaker

Ireland's moral identity could be characterised as a struggle between

1)the sense of worthlessness, insecurity and emotional immaturity that religious indoctrination, specifically Catholicism, instils at a young age, and,

2)good old fashioned materialism - he who has the gold makes the rules.

Both need to fall by the wayside, but sadly they're far too ingrained.

GarlicBread

PeterIanStaker wrote: »

Ireland's moral identity could be characterised as a struggle between

1)the sense of worthlessness, insecurity and emotional immaturity that religious indoctrination, specifically Catholicism, instils at a young age, and,

2)good old fashioned materialism - he who has the gold makes the rules.

Both need to fall by the wayside, but sadly they're far too ingrained.

The fascist church of pedophilia is still in almost complete control of most schools. That just about sums up where we are morally. We are nowhere and going increasingly nowhere.

Amhran Nua

O'Coonassa wrote: »

I always think this description of the Normans by the Eleventh century Benedictine monk and historian, Geoffrey Malaterra has us down to some extent;

Ah nothing like justifications for conquest from a race bent on it.

OP you have moral character and archetypes muddled up, they are two completely different things, and there are many of them for any given country - in the case of moral character there as as many variations as there are people. America for example also has the noisy braggart, the wall street broker, the surfer dude, the redneck, the computer geek, and a lot of others.

I find it fascinating how many people seem intent on trying to hang some sort of inbuilt deficiency on Irish people for this mess. The UK had to go hat in hand to the IMF back in 1976, and we have the same sort of people strutting around (an ace away from going to the IMF themselves again) in their press, as if it had never happened.

ArtSmart

by moral identity i mean moral archetype (but without the arche bit )

Inverse to the power of one!

“Other people have a nationality. The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis.”
–Brendan Behan

Love that quote. Ireland has a solid morality, just we don't apply it as well as we should.

Amhran Nua

ArtSmart wrote: »

by moral identity i mean moral archetype (but without the arche bit )

Then to repeat myself, in the case of moral character there as as many variations as there are people.

ArtSmart

too tired to understand.

ok, imagine the Irish population was one person. so question is, what is the moral identity of that person?

rugged individualist/ love thy neighbour/ do on to others/ me first, you second/ live and let live/ etc.

any better?

Amhran Nua

ArtSmart wrote: »

ok, imagine the Irish population was one person.

Lets not, since such a suppostion would be wrong on every level, and therefore an exercise unworthy of the effort.

CrankyCod

In my view the overriding attitude in Ireland is to stay with the herd at all costs- morality is whatever everyone else is doing.

When the church was in the ascendancy, few questioned it and those who did were ostracised. Women were shut up in laundries, children abused with impunity; and everyone knew about it.

Now in liberal circles, the church can do nothing right at all: because nobody in that herd dares disagee.

During the Dirt scandal, everyone thought it fine to avoid tax by whatever means possible.

And nobody is ever to blame for anything.

charlesanto

Arse to "Moral Identity" we are now German

Sardonicat

I think Ireland is in the middle of an identity crisis, moral and otherwise. I don't think it can be summed up simply. There is a definite generational drift between pre and post celtic tiger. What will evolve remains to be seen.
For what it's worth, I don't think we have had any real sense of idenity since independence, other than what we were told we were.

But if I had to typify under duress I would say: Hypocritical Me Feiner

Amhran Nua

Should we rename this thread to "backward stereotypes about Irish people"?