Irish Nomad

Blog

  • On entitlement.

    I always had an issue with the word ‘deserve’ in relation to my own needs and wants, but I came to realise that I was conflating it with ‘entitled’. Witnessing a sense of entitlement – both within myself and others – was the actual source of my unease.

    Everyone deserves love, respect, access to healthy, nutritious food, access to a safe place to live – the list goes on. But sadly, what we each deserve is not always immediately accessible to all of us, and we cannot simply will these things into existence.

    Entitlement is to perceive things in a relative way – to consider yourself, for example, as being more deserving of something than someone else. While to deserve something such as love or a life without fear of harm is universal – a constant rather than a variable.

    Entitlement is fuelled in part by a narrative pedalled by some of scarcity – the perception that somehow there is not enough of a particular thing to go around, and so generating a sense of competition and selfishness that can result in a complete disregard for the cost exacted on others.

    The nature of the feeling is communicated within the word itself – that it’s bestowed upon you and is somehow innately deserved simply because you fit certain perceived criteria, that sets you apart from others who do not meet these criteria, and so you are more deserving than someone else. But no one person is more deserving of the fundamentals of life than another.

    A sense of entitlement is deeply rooted in any colonial or imperialist culture, and has to be one of its most destructive, corrosive, and pernicious elements. It is the foundation of the colonial mindset – a belief in some sort of innate superiority, with one group of people occupying the tip of the hierarchical pyramid, and deemed more deserving of life’s riches than those groups occupying areas beneath.

    We can’t prevent a sense of entitlement rearing its ugly head within other people, but should we ever experience it within ourselves, we should try and remember that we are entitled to nothing. We are no better or more deserving of the fundamentals in life than anyone else. If we are fortunate enough to have people who love us, to have the means to keep ourselves safe from harm, to have a fulfilling life, we should be grateful for them and never take them for granted. For sadly, in the world we live in, they can all too easily be taken away from us at any moment.

  • On generational differences.

    All too often we will explain away the behaviour of an older generation by attributing it to a generational difference.

    But to do so is to perceive the individual in question as a passive victim in the face of cultural forces, without any agency to make their own choices and cultivate their own thoughts and ideas.

    In any given generation we have a choice – to embrace the narrative we are pedalled, or to question its efficacy and seek out the truth behind it.

    To be born into a culture and society is to be influenced by it to some degree – the systems of power and prevailing narratives. But, the degree to which we are influenced by this is our choice. We can choose to embrace it unquestioningly, or we can go on a journey to unpick the threads of influence woven into our sub-conscious minds, liberate ourselves from it as much as we possibly can, and (re)construct our own worldview.

    As the world has become more globalised and connected – albeit largely in terms of the transmission of western beliefs and systems rooted in colonial and imperialistic thinking – the singular events that occur in each generation reverberate beyond a single community. They also reverberate through time. The longer the consequences of these events go unaddressed, the further their impacts travel.

    And while there are some collective lived experiences shared by an entire generation that will shape that generation, it will do so in different ways. This is because there are forces at play that affect the individual and collective experience – such as gender, class, and the colour of our skin. All of which influence how a given culture perceives us and engages with us, and how we in turn experience generational events.

    The dynamics of these forces evolve over time as culture itself evolves, and will result in creating an environment particular to a given moment in time. But there are those threads – such as racism, sexism, and other prejudices that weave their way through time as they are never fully addressed. And nor can they be while racist, patriarchal structures and thinking continue to underpin a culture.

    Because of the external and internal forces being experienced, the culture within different communities within a society will evolve at different speeds and in different ways. But this diverse eco-system that exists within any society – the lack of homogeneity – is why we always have a means to witness and explore something other than the worldview we have inherited from our family and community, and the prevailing narratives of wider society.

    It is easier now than ever before for us to connect with people outside of our own community – those with differing worldviews and lived experiences, and to expand our understanding of the world around us. We can delve deep into the inner workings of a complex machine that those who benefit from its output try to conceal from us.

    The tools we now have at our disposal, combined with the diverse and dynamic nature that ensures cultures and societies are in a perpetual state of evolution and never static, creates so much potential for change, and the challenging of existing injustices and prejudices.

    We each choose how we engage with the prevailing narratives of the culture in which we were born and raised, and the one in which we choose to live. While it takes time and effort to discover and understand the complexity of our present, the less time and effort we spend questioning the narratives being pedalled by those who gain the most from the status quo, the more we are abdicating responsibility of our own choices and actions to those vested interests. And in so doing, we are sustaining the injustices that are causing so many so much unnecessary suffering.

    The uniqueness of each human being and how we see and interpret the world means that it’s unlikely that any prejudice exists in the absence of its counterpart. It’s us who chooses which to embrace. To root out the prejudices that exist and liberate our cultures from them, we must go back to the fundamentals – we must nurture a respect for all life, and an understanding and acceptance that regardless of the culture we grew up in, our lived experience, our class, gender or colour of our skin, we are all equally human.

  • On Society and Storytelling.

    Everything in the past is a memory – a story woven from elements of objective truth, and subjective experience and interpretation. These stories echo through time for generations – even if not a single word is uttered or written about what unfolded.

    Stories were created to make sense of the world and helped provide an effective framework within which the group should function in order to remain cohesive and sustainable. It is through storytelling that humans were able to thrive, and, how we are sowing the seeds of our destruction.

    Stories, in their original form, were a survival mechanism – a means by which we could attempt to avoid pain, suffering and death. But, they are also used to justify the inflicting of these very same experiences on others.

    While arguably stories have always been about manipulation, the scale at which this innate capacity to influence others is being leveraged has never been so great.

    The internet, and the social media networks it has spawned, have been a double-edged sword in that they have both allowed the power of storytelling to be exploited to incredibly destructive effect, while also ensuring more and more people have been exposed to the consequences of this, and, more significantly, realities long concealed by prevailing narratives peddled by vested interests.

    As a direct consequence of a greater awareness of histories we were once actively denied, a plurality of forces are gaining potential, and thus creating a global cultural landscape that has never before been so accessible and diverse in its ideas and practices. Each one vying to be seen and acknowledged, to remain alive and thrive, and to erode the dominance of the racist, colonialist thinking and practices that have prevailed for far too long and dominated and decimated the cultural landscape for centuries.

  • On isolation.

    Isolation is a state of mind. It is an interpretation of our reality – a story we tell ourselves.

    We can be in a romantic relationship and living in a densely populated, vibrant metropolitan city surrounded by people we call friends, and still feel incredibly alone and isolated.

    Conversely, we can be wandering on our own through the mountains without ever seeing another human being, and not experience the corrosive emptiness of isolation.

    Isolation is ultimately about a sense of connection – how we perceive and experience the feeling of being connected to the people and world around us. And like everything else we experience, this is dependent on the stories we tell ourselves – the narrative we create and feed.

    It’s only by nurturing our connection with ourselves first – the self that lies beneath the rubble of our traumas and those we’ve absorbed from others – then that which we have with the people and world around us, will we be able to immunise ourselves against the feeling of being alone and isolated.

    In large part this requires gaining an understanding of the forces that are influencing us and what we project into the world, as well as how we respond to that which echoes back. It requires seeking out that which lies buried in our subconscious – covertly and efficiently maintaining a prison within which we unwittingly reside, and liberating ourselves from it.

    Ironically, prolonged physical isolation is one means by which we can achieve this. It forces us to sit with our daemons. It creates space for us to reflect on the connections we have and those we have lost. It affords us an opportunity to consider how we engage with the world around us, how it engages with us, and what we might need to do to experience meaningful, deep connections with others.

    The fact we are being guided by forces we are unaware of means we cannot simply will connection into existence. We must first understand these forces and then release ourselves from their grasp.

    There are many tools we can explore and utilise for us to achieve this, but if we can learn to experience the moment more fully, we not only make ourselves more immune from influence from our past, but are also less likely to form new limiting and distorted beliefs. We make ourselves more receptive to opportunities to connect and can to see the person in front of us more clearly.

    To feel connected – loved, supported, acknowledged, valued, respected, seen – is one of the most beautiful aspects of the human experience. We must choose connection over isolation – both physical and perceived, imposed and self-imposed – as much as we possibly can. As we evolve, then so too will the criteria for us to feel connected, and so it is something we must work on every day we are fortunate enough to be alive in order to continue experiencing it.

  • When the wind blows.

    “The green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm.”

    ― Confucius

    While I think this quote captures with beautiful simplicity our need to reflect on what it means to be strong, I believe there is a time for being the green reed, and a time for being the mighty oak. It all depends on the circumstances we are faced with.

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  • Being human.

    We are all children existing within ever-ageing bodies. Who we are now has been formed and moulded by the experiences of our childhood. Those experiences dictate how we act and function as an adult. Whether we like it or not, no matter what age we are, our thoughts and actions are heavily influenced by what we experienced as a child, and how those experiences were managed.

    We may be conscious of the mechanism and root of some of the influences, and lack or suppress any awareness of others. There are some influences we simply have no conscious control over.

    Trauma at a young age can cause the over-development of the amygdala, which plays a very significant role in processing emotions and in fear responses, and the under-development of the prefrontal cortex, which plays a role in emotion and social regulation.

    This means the very structure of our brain influences – dictates even – how we respond to certain situations and stimuli. With the brain being elastic, we do not have to be a slave to our childhood traumas, but until we are able to find a means of addressing the impact they have on us, we are beholden to them.

    When we reflect on our younger selves – be it 5 years ago or 25, we should therefore do so with love and empathy, and a knowledge that we were not fully in control of our responses and reactions to certain situations, and dealt with a given situation as best we could under the circumstances that existed at the time, and who we were at that time.

    Free will is a fallacy.

    Being human is to be a collection of mind and body influenced by internal and external forces, many of which we have no direct control over. All we can do is explore those elements of our being, each at once both unique to us, and identical to everyone else’s, and work to gradually shape ourselves into the best versions of us we can be, through healing ourselves and world around us.

  • Business as usual.

    Colonisation did not end with the fall of empires – it is very much alive, and more pervasive, destructive and exploitative than ever before.

    The colonisation of land and communities across the globe may no longer be directly carried out by the political or ruling classes of foreign states, but instead by proxy through foreign-owned companies that line the pockets of those same classes, and satisfy the material whims of the masses.

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  • Destiny of Nations.

    Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote in his book ‘The Physiology of Taste’ (1825), reputed to be one of the most famous books on food ever written, that ”The destiny of nations depends on the manner in which they feed themselves.”

    This simple statement brilliantly captures the importance of our food system, and the impact of how we produce our food, the food we eat, and everything that comes before, between and after.

    The industrialisation and globalisation of our food system has increased the susceptibility of our societies to shocks and disruptions to the production and supply of food, and the degree to which they impact food security.

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  • Smoke and Mirrors.

    There has been an increased awareness in the UK about plastic waste – the unnecessary use of single-use plastics, plastic straws and plastic bottles in particular. But the British public tend to be easily distracted – manipulated even – by big business, the media and politicians. These news-generators all know the half-life of a particular event is short, and it can be shortened even further by creating noise around something else, as a means of distraction.

    Smoke and mirrors. The Conservative governments since Thatcher have shown their increased mastery of this time and again.

    It’s for this reason that so much of the public’s awareness of an issue comes in cycles – the same issue, each time being seeming like it’s something new, has actually been highlighted repeatedly over the past 30 or 40 years. Each time the sense of urgency is heightened by the inaction that results in its rise to the surface of people’s consciousness once more.

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  • Why the UN SDGs are doomed to fail.

    In 2015 the member states of the UN decided to create the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which they see as “a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity.”

    They state that eradicating poverty “is the greatest global challenge and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development.” But this simply isn’t true! Anthropogenic climate change, and the unfolding climate crisis is the greatest global challenge, and the single biggest barrier to implementing sustainable development.

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