The alter boy's delight

History, we are told, is a dialogue between the present and the past. It changes with the times. Perspectives shift. Reputations dull and grow tarnished. Those formerly vilified are rehabilitated. Things once thought significant prove insubstantial. Others, perhaps dismissed as incidental, prove pivotal. Time and tide reveal all for what they were, and are.

So, here we are. Changed utterly and yet, not changed at all.
For fifteen years we have chronicled major changes in Irish life involving economic activity, social contours, religion, sexual mores, political values, the lot. Bright harsh lights were shone into deep, dark terrifying crevasses.
Some exulted in the demise of the dark, fusty influence of the Catholic Church. Others took the opposite view, regretting the passing of a clear moral order and seeing its absence reflected in the truculence and giddy misbehaviours of the young.
But have things changed all that much? I am not at all sure. In fact, I think that we’ve simply changed the colours and codes, but not the underlying intolerance or authoritarianism.
I mean, fifty years ago people lived in fear of being condemned from the pulpit. That holds no fears today. But now they fear the media. And where once they feared being found out by the clergy in this world or God in the next, now they fear being exposed in the media, or the courts.
The all-seeing all-knowing powers that God was once thought to have are now vested in CCTV, satellite tracking and the Revenue Commissioners. And we have swapped drink for sex. Back then, you could blame anything on drink. No more. Now, drunkenness is spoken of much as adultery once was. But as for sex, well anything goes and the more public it is the better.
I’m all for that – get it right out in the open. But then I’m all for tolerance and plurality and I don’t see much of that. Indeed, post-Catholic Ireland is turning into a mirror image of Catholic Ireland. The priests may be gone, but the altar boys are still in charge.
The latest example of ingrained intolerance and a need to interfere in and regulate other people’s lives is the ban on smoking in the workplace. There was a great glow in the sky as it came in. Hundreds of reporters and TV crews descended on Ireland to bear witness. The Department of Health and Children, getting some positive attention for a change, gushed and Minister Martin basked.
Its first and most public victim is the Fine Gael politician John Deasy, rebel smoker. Official Ireland mightn’t like to hear this, but young Ireland kind of likes this sort of thing.
Let’s be clear. I don’t smoke. I like the idea of a smoke-free workplace. And it’s the law. But with its introduction has come a kind of fundamentalist health fascist triumphalism that is very bit as intrusive and authoritarian as the fundamentalist Catholic version of earlier times.
By way of example, take the reported views of the Health and Safety Authority on company cars. Quoted by Irish Times reporter Olivia Kelly the Authority argues that smoking in company cars and commercial vehicles is banned under the new regulations.
According to the Authority, they are ‘enclosed workplaces’, ‘even if it’s a truck driver on their own in their vehicle’. They say it’s ‘essentially the same thing’ as self-employed people working on their own in an office and that employers should have deterrents and disciplinary procedures in place to enforce the ban.
Like what? Hidden cameras in cars? Sniffer dogs? Hello?!? Anybody home?
Meanwhile, in marked contrast to the views of official Ireland and Health Fascism International, the Irish people themselves believe they have a healthy lifestyle. We don’t just think it. We’re third, after the similarly heavy drinking Luxembourgers and Finns in exercising at least twice a week. And we’re the happiest people in Europe.
So why the zealous nannies? More on this next issue.
The Hog