No time to be negative

Pardon my recent absence but I've been out and about in the world a bit over the past weeks. Travel costs you, even in the era of cheap airfares, but it's worth it. Not only does it yield the pleasures of the present and the place you've travelled to. You also get to consider your own situation from afar.

Each encounter triggers reflection, revelation and perspective. In that regard, it's interesting to consider how Ireland in 2010 compares with how it seemed in, say, 1995.
Back then Irish people had a real pride in their country and what it had to offer and visitors responded. I remember chatting in a Galway pub with a German tourist who summed it up for me: “You people know how to live.” And he was right!
People flocked to Ireland. It was a truly cool destination. And if you were returning here on a plane you would regularly overhear Irish passengers advising tourists with genuine pride and confidence on things of fascination, on where to go and what to see.
Perhaps it still happens in 2010 but it's nothing like it was. Now you're more likely to encounter rage and accusation, sneers and sideswipes and tones of dismay and despair.
One understands why this is. There's much to decry. Things were good in 1995 and they're quite the opposite in 2010. Where once we declaimed standing stones, we have pointing fingers now. Instead of deserted Famine villages we have unfinished Tiger estates. And so on, and on.
But perhaps the most striking change that you notice from a distance is the pessimism and negativity that pervades almost every thread of Irish life at present.
It really is deeper and darker than anywhere else. An old woman selling pho on a Hanoi street corner might have hardly ten cents to rub together, but she'll be far more philosophical and sanguine than most Irish.
There's grave danger in this. Recently the psychologist Maureen Gaffney addressed a seminar in Dublin and described how pessimism and negativity can reach a tipping point for individuals beyond which it's very difficult for them to return to optimism and a positive outlook. They become so mired that they can't escape.
She said that much the same can happen to families and communities and proposed that Irish society is at, or may indeed have passed, just such a tipping point.
If that's the case we're in real trouble. And no, I'm not being pessimistic!
Politicians and economists often discuss whether ‘the fundamentals' of the economy are sound – by this they mean the sums, the price of things as it were, rather than the value.
Yes, the excesses of the Banker and Builder Era needed the counterweight of doubt. But we're way past all that now or should be.
Optimism and positivity are fundamentals too and they are likely to be the more important in the long run. Without them, all the fiscal rectitude in the world won't get enterprise moving, encourage innovation and creativity, or motivate consumers to start buying again.
Compare the Irish with Icelanders. They have proportionately a far greater burden to bear from the banking outrage. But where we seem stuck in accusation and anger, their attitude has been that what has been done cannot be undone, that blood still flows in their veins and what they have to do now is find solutions to the problems that afflict them collectively – and get on with it.
We are closely related to Icelanders – for example, they exhibit almost exclusively Irish blood lines. Why then are they so different? And why are the Irish in America so positive and enterprising and we here at home so negative?
Yes, the bankers and builders done us in. Yes, those in charge fumbled the ball, and badly. Yes, there's a villain in every village, yes, yes, yes…
But the Irish are now so fixated on what's gone wrong that the society seems paralysed, scarcely able to look forward and vengeful to the extent that it seeks retribution even if that means destroying itself and its capacity to pay its way in the world.
We gotta get out of this place if it's the last thing we ever do.
But throwing off this blanket of pessimism isn't easy, especially in a country where the bad news agenda and the culture of complaint are so dominant.
Given the extensive penetration of our market by UK media, this might well get worse, as the economic shit hits the fan in the UK in coming months. We have to keep reminding ourselves that here isn't there, even if the red tops don't share that view.
Finally, this: optimism isn't empty-headed devil-may-care have-a-punt hysteria. It's essentially rational, a positive understanding that there are possibilities and opportunities out there and that if there are problems, solutions can be found.
And that's the point. Yes, there's still hell to pay and those who blackguarded the public should pay that hell. But the rest of us have lives to get on with.
Isn't it time to stop digging holes for ourselves and look up and out and forward? It could actually be fun, you know...