It’s a strange recession we’re in. I still see jobs being advertised in shop windows in my area of Dublin. Anecdotally, it’s not easy to find evidence that things are as bad as the word “recession” implies.

Naturally, I don’t want it to get worse. But it’s hard to challenge the assumption that the only good news for a nation is continuous economic expansion and progress, for ever and ever amen. Depression or loss in our personal lives often proves, in retrospect, to be enriching, educational, a time for re-evaluation and refocusing. It’s a time when we are forced to change old patterns and rediscover a sense of purpose and meaning, when we test our character and resolve, and reconnect with what really matters. We grow and mature through difficult times; we tend to coast during the good times. This, surely, is the same for society. I can’t think of a better example on a national scale than the introduction of the National Health Service in the UK sixty years ago, when a country decimated by war and sorely lacking in funds decided to take a principled stand on the care of the most vulnerable members of its society. It is still a source of great pride to the British, including the Tories, and rightly so. Having lived there for thirteen years, of all the things I miss about my life there, apart from friends, the NHS is top of the list. No, it’s not perfect, and yes, it could be much better. But it’s an expression of British values at their best.
I’m wondering whether we in Ireland could do something similar, a Great Idea for our straitened times. The mistake is to believe that it is only when we are wealthy that we can change our society for the better, to do something to make ourselves feel good about ourselves, proud of ourselves, to make a statement about what really matters to us. If we have to tighten our belts, we’ll do it gladly if it’s for something worthwhile. The pain of hard work and pulling together results in satisfaction and pride; the pain of a hangover leaves us feeling guilty and dissolute.
The Celtic Tiger years seem to have left us with a hangover: binge drinking at record levels, massive mortgages for modest houses that are currently freefalling into negative equity, acres of empty office and retail space, stalled social housing projects, congestion and dismal public transport, the beauty of our countryside ruined by a planning free-for-all, rampant gangland crime and drug-taking, overcrowded and rioting jails, nightmarish A&E departments, and overstretched social services unable to cope with vulnerable youths. If unemployment continues to rise, I dread the characteristic Irish qualities of envy and begrudgery turning into an entrenched xenophobia and racism, the kind that caused several Chinese families to flee their homes in East Wall last week.
Perhaps our focus on the North distracted us from the introspection and creative thinking that was necessary. For far too long, the perceived location of our troubles in the Republic was external, the wound was violent and bloody and heartbreakingly entrenched.
This is the first recession we’ve had since the peace process. So what sort of society do we want to build, now we’re not killing each other or blaming the British, with most Irish politicians still aligned along ancient tribal lines? Did the Celtic Tiger give us a sense of pride, a greater sense of satisfaction with ourselves as Irish people? I’m not convinced. Perhaps it prised us away from the victim mentality, the poor mouth, that was never far from our public discourse, which needed to happen. But then what? If not victims, then who are we now? What do we stand for? And, now that religion seems to have lost its bony grip on our necks, what new morality is taking its place?
As I write this, in a café in Thomas Street, generally populated by art students, a mother in her late 40s and her agitated 20-year-old son approach my table. He’s got the sort of body language that is alarming on some primitive level. He’s tense, wired; it’s catching. He’s got a back-of-the-throat strangulated Dublin whine of a voice; his skin is prison-pale, he’s too thin for his jeans. She sits, laying her shopping bags down around the armchair; she’s been buying clothes. She wants to better herself. She’s wearing sunglasses. He’s standing beside her, towering over me, fumbling elaborately through his pockets, the way you do at a bar when the drinks arrive and you hope someone else will get the round. But she wasn’t having any of it. “Get your mother a cappuccino. Will you not have one yourself?”
She’s trying her best to connect with her adult son, to treat him as a grown up, to get him to behave like one - perhaps she thought that by meeting in one of them posh cafés with sofas it might make a difference, break a pattern, mark something different. But instead of sitting at a table in a corner where they’d have privacy, she chose to have an audience for her chat with her troubled son. Me.
Maybe he’d just come from a failed job interview, or a meeting with his parole officer; in any event, he had only bad news to tell, when he returned with her coffee, and even that was dragged out of him unwillingly. As the conversation went on, I got a sense of just how much she was at her wits’ end with him.
“Alright ma, I know, stop giving out to me.”
“I’m only saying”.
“I know you’re only saying.”
“Could you not do a course? Why not?”
“Look, ma, you don’t understand, I... oh, I don’t care.”
Nothing she said would make any difference, nothing he said would make any difference. Maybe he was just playing for time before he got to the methadone clinic. Maybe he was hoping he could tap her for twenty quid to score. Fat chance.
“You don’t care? What do you mean you don’t care?”
She’s exasperated. She knows it’s true. She thinks that by saying it out loud, reflecting it back to him, he’ll hear how bad it sounds, shame him into getting his act together. He’s disgusted. With himself, with her, with his life. She tries to keep him in conversation. But he’s having none of it. He has to go. He won’t answer where.
“Will you call me later?”
“Yes, ma,” he lies.
He escapes. She stares at her cup. As careful as I have been not to make eye contact, especially with him, I can’t resist. Sure enough, she’s waiting for me to look at her, her sunglasses in her hand, her eyes moist. She sighs, and shrugs. What’s a mother to do? I smile grimly back, offering the sympathy she needs. She puts her sunglasses back on, her defences, picks up her shopping and walks out, leaving her full cup of cappuccino behind. What a waste.
It’s unhappy young men like him that are the main problem in Irish society; and yet they are also symptoms of a greater malaise. Aimless, drifting, lost, angry. No purpose. Money alone does not bring happiness. It’s not just a simple matter of saying that more employment will help him, that maybe more boom times ahead will lift all boats, including his; his problems go much deeper. It’s a question of meaning, identity, narrative, of quality of life, not whether he can get a poxy job on a building site or a burger bar and live in an expensive shoebox an hour and a half out of the city by crowded bus, getting hammered on payday his only release.
He’s far from unique; at least he has a mother who is trying to reach out and help him. But that sort of aimlessness and anger and despair is rife among young Irish men; it’s a crisis of masculinity. They are the gangs roaming and terrorising the badlands, cramming our jails, queuing outside the methadone clinics and lying on trolleys, drunk or strung out, stabbed or shot, in our A&E departments. They are the future absentee fathers of the next generation. The problems they cause to our society are enormous; the investment required to address their needs is not so much financial (even though euro for euro it would easily save money in the long run in terms of crime reduction and reduced prison population) but emotional. Attention, most of all, is needed: these men matter enormously. They need to know it. Good policing, good education and training, emotional literacy, prison reform; what’s needed is a thorough campaign of practical, psychological and emotional support.
We as a society need to care. More. And especially now. Their hurt is our hurt. Otherwise, what is society?