Grumbling while rome burns

Matthew, Mark Luke and John, all them prophet’s are dead an’ gone. We’ve been having some revelations, haven’t we? You betcha. It’s like the bleedin’ gospels, version after version, one Messiah after another carrying their crosses, eating the dust awhile before being crucified. Yup, that’s the way it is! You talk about John the Revelator? What about Mary O’Dea, the Financial Regulator?!?

We’re in a very weird space. According to Paul Volcker, a top adviser to President Barack Obama, the global economy may be deteriorating even faster than it did during the Great Depression. Not good. Not universal either, most things still work, but that’s another question.
Here, the level of rage is so high, so wide, so deep that we are in danger if losing the plot entirely. This is not to explain anything away, to justify the unjustifiable or to say black is white. It’s to say that while we need to sort out the mess and the evasions and dishonesties, we also need to keep afloat.
Different cultures express communal rage in varying ways. In France they block roads, burn tyres, throw paving stones, don’t shower and let fish rot. And if that screws you and your holiday, well (shrug) pffff! C’est la vie.
Further north, in Iceland they have been throwing skyr at their politicians.
It’s an Icelandic dairy product not unlike Greek yogurt. Throwing skyr has a symbolic meaning, according to an Icelandic friend. “It’s a bit like (throwing) eggs and tomatoes in the rest of the world,” she says... adding that while the Icelanders also throw eggs, “tomatoes are too expensive.”
Well, that sets the parameters all right.
In Ireland we throw brickbats rather than skyr or stones… Instead of blocking roads we flood the airwaves, we burn ears rather than tyres. We don’t assault, we insult. We Liveline. In times of discontent, we vent.
Thus it is with the banks crisis. By jasus, we’re annoyed. The Financial Regulator is to investigate Irish Life and Permanent’s €4bn deposit with Anglo Irish Bank. There’s the so-called Golden Circle, the (alleged) ten investors who took out loans to buy shares to boost the bank’s profile. There’s the shenanigans over Fitzpatrick’s own personal loans. It goes on and on.
Everyone is galled that the taxpayer is bailing them out. We all have to dig deep: that’s the dictat. And there’s no guarantee that it will work. And it’s the same all over the world. In fact, if anything, it’s worse in America.
If it weren’t grotesque it would be fascinating, because it looks as though history has reached another watershed.
A lot of prophets are being proved wrong, their promises are dead and gone. A lot of pie in the sky has turned out to be just that, pie in the sky! Many, many very stupid things have been done here and there and everywhere, and we’re all carrying the can to one degree or another.
On the other hand, it’s spring. Sure, we got troubles, but the sun is rising earlier. The dawn chorus grows insistent. Under the earth things rumble. The big wheel keeps on toinin’, Proud Mary keeps on boinin’. Life goes on.
A volcano in Chile has been spewing out tonnes of ash and gas for over a year, much more than all the Liveliners combined for a decade, so much so that it may have cooled the planet enough to have given us the coldest winter for 30 years.
I’m not too good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that our problems don’t amount to a hill of beans in the great scheme of things, for example against a geological time scale.
So at some point, sooner or later, we have to put our hands back on the plough, put our shoulders to the wheel, and start turning sods again.
Is it worth the struggle?
You might as well question why we breathe. If we stop breathing, we’ll die. If we stop trying, the world will die.
What of it, you might say, we’d be out of our misery? Ah, but that sounds like someone trying to convince himself of something he doesn’t believe in his heart. Or, more likely, hers.
There are many things we can’t control, like international money markets, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis. We can only focus on what we can change, drive, deliver. So, let’s go. We can’t go on, but we will go on, because that’s what we have to do.
The prophets can look after themselves.