Most of the non-European
immigrants we get in Ireland are already "Westernised" in that vague sense that
they wish to step aboard the property express and have all the goodies often
denied them in their place of origin. I used to work in a refugee center and
irrespective of nationality; Cameroonian, Congolese, Iranian, Egyptian,
Muslim/Christian or whatever, it's the base economic determinants - the need for
a job and a roof over their head which obliterate any differences that arises
with respect to the cultural domain, whatever they may be.
I've often heard the attitude expressed (by people who should know better) - "oh, we can't be letting anymore in, look at us now, we've worked so hard to get where we are (pre-bust Celtic tiger) they're taking Irish jobs and blah blah blah". Well, I'm kinda happy to say that the world has shrunken somewhat and allowed us to absorb more diversity. There is a wicked closed-mindedness among all too many here which emerges from time to time - there was scarcely a black man in the entire country fifteen years ago but now we have been forced to accommodate a different viewpoint through the high influx of non-nationals and swallow at times what seemed to me from some quarters an innate racist mentality.
It's important to preserve what is distinct about our own culture and allow that to be fostered as much as we can (Gaelic games, the Irish language, a sense of "Irishness") - and this entails obviously keeping the importance of past struggles for nationhood on the public radar and not allowing ourselves to collapse into some petrified mirro-image of our nearest neighbours. But oftentimes it's hard when attempting to preserve thse atributes which we hold to be distinctly our own to mistake within ourselves another impulse which seeks to absorb from the wider world what may be termed 'a modernising impulse' or simply the collective positive trends of what is transpiring in the international sphere. Along with a sense and even a reverence of nationality comes too an acknowledgement that for the world to work in any practical sense there must be a global collective trend towards displacing our own prejudicial love for locality and embracing all that which can bind us together and bring us forward.
There is always going to be a level of political sovereignty sacrificed within a federalised European system for instance simply because we have ceded control over so many dimensions of an economy which is now more thoroughly integrated within that system. The evidence is undeniable that this integration has helped in the past and continues to do so - we were always net beneficiaries of EU grants, aids and subsidies and up until the recent fiasco were only beginning to wean ourselves off it's enormous teat - notwithstanding the enormous and ongoing CAP subsidies to our farmers.
All of this however is a little tangential to the issue of preserving our "cultural integrity" unless you are of the viewpoint that there is something in the nature of the European project itself which denudes specifically Irish cultural traits. There are no shortage of missives from Brussels which stress the basic integrity of individual member states when it comes to matters of national "cultural" importance - the very insistence of our own MEP's in having the Irish language promoted within its chambers is in fact an instance of this. What goes on in the specifically cultural domain will always be a matter for individual members themselves to hammer out - this guarantee is in fact enshrined in EU law. Come hell or high water though, whether the EU survives in it's present form, whether further integration takes place along political or economic lines or whether it buckles under the strain of the present difficulties and collapses altogether what is specifically unique to Ireland culturally will remain largely unchanged.
What does change of course are people's attitudes and if the integrative claws maximise their grasp a little more you will see a repulsive force developing within the country - but this will emerge I'd suspect more out of a fear for ceding rights in the political or economic domains than any wish to preserve what is distinctively Irish; people look to their pockets and their autonomy before they register any threats in the national cultural domain. Though it is plausible to suggest that any further steps towards integration need to be looked at closely - the appointment of an EU Foreign minister for instance is a step laden with pitfalls for individual countries who wish to maintain an independent line on foreign policy. That to me is an area which demands the greatest scrutiny.
It's also well to reflect on what we're talking about precisely when we bring up the subject of culture and ask ourselves likewise what are the dangers really in allowing a degree of immersion to occur between peoples of differing backgrounds. If you spend any length of time in the company of people from a vastly different background to yourself the very first thing you will notice (after the initial sense of strangeness maybe) is how completely alike they are to you and your own - as most everyone, everywhere (apart from the comparative few) are engaged in the business of survival; they must work, they must rear families, they must put bread on the table, or, if they are not already doing so they will generally aspire to these ends and they will carry out all this in a usually supportive extended network of family and friends; that really is the bedrock of all cultures. And everything else which marks the distinction between cultures - the way we marry, wear our clothes or cook our meals, the language we speak, the way we practice our faith or even the way we don't have a faith, all of these things are but secondary, tributary offshoots of the one fundamental bedrock of commonality that exists among us.
I have to mention a Muslim friend of mine from Niger who this afternoon dropped in to see me on his way back to Cork having spent time back home in Africa. He came to this country several years ago as an asylum seeker, got working, but then got involved in a pretty nasty affair through no fault of his own but was taken by the public prosecutor here to be the principle guilty party - something which I knew to be entirely untrue. Anyway, I met other Muslim friends of his who are staying here and we co-ordinated a response of sorts - visiting him in the detention centre and making sure his lawyer was well briefed as to every particular. The prosecution as I saw it hadn't a leg to stand on and despite my insistence to the investigating detectives that certain other lines should be pursued as opposed to the ones they were then taking - they continued with their brief, which was essentially that of the aggrieved party (they were very serious charges) and the man (my friend) remained in detention for over four months - over the Christmas in fact - where he was roughed up, intimidated and harassed basically into "making a confession".
This scandalous state of affairs was in no way aided by the fact that he was a black Muslim and when we eventually got our day in court the judge saw quite clearly what the truth of the matter was - dropped all charges, had him immediately released and within the month he received his official papers granting him refugee status in this country - where he works to this day. He went back home to Africa two months ago where he saw his family for the first time in several years and having returned dropped in to see me - which he needn't have done as we have been out of contact for some time - told me how he has been getting on, how he has been saving up to start his own small business, showed me pictures of his new born daughter and finally presented me with a handsome native African leopard-striped leather briefcase. We chatted for twenty minutres or so and having given him directions out of the maze of an estate in which he managed to find me - he went on his way.
That, my friends, was a man of culture.
I've often heard the attitude expressed (by people who should know better) - "oh, we can't be letting anymore in, look at us now, we've worked so hard to get where we are (pre-bust Celtic tiger) they're taking Irish jobs and blah blah blah". Well, I'm kinda happy to say that the world has shrunken somewhat and allowed us to absorb more diversity. There is a wicked closed-mindedness among all too many here which emerges from time to time - there was scarcely a black man in the entire country fifteen years ago but now we have been forced to accommodate a different viewpoint through the high influx of non-nationals and swallow at times what seemed to me from some quarters an innate racist mentality.
It's important to preserve what is distinct about our own culture and allow that to be fostered as much as we can (Gaelic games, the Irish language, a sense of "Irishness") - and this entails obviously keeping the importance of past struggles for nationhood on the public radar and not allowing ourselves to collapse into some petrified mirro-image of our nearest neighbours. But oftentimes it's hard when attempting to preserve thse atributes which we hold to be distinctly our own to mistake within ourselves another impulse which seeks to absorb from the wider world what may be termed 'a modernising impulse' or simply the collective positive trends of what is transpiring in the international sphere. Along with a sense and even a reverence of nationality comes too an acknowledgement that for the world to work in any practical sense there must be a global collective trend towards displacing our own prejudicial love for locality and embracing all that which can bind us together and bring us forward.
There is always going to be a level of political sovereignty sacrificed within a federalised European system for instance simply because we have ceded control over so many dimensions of an economy which is now more thoroughly integrated within that system. The evidence is undeniable that this integration has helped in the past and continues to do so - we were always net beneficiaries of EU grants, aids and subsidies and up until the recent fiasco were only beginning to wean ourselves off it's enormous teat - notwithstanding the enormous and ongoing CAP subsidies to our farmers.
All of this however is a little tangential to the issue of preserving our "cultural integrity" unless you are of the viewpoint that there is something in the nature of the European project itself which denudes specifically Irish cultural traits. There are no shortage of missives from Brussels which stress the basic integrity of individual member states when it comes to matters of national "cultural" importance - the very insistence of our own MEP's in having the Irish language promoted within its chambers is in fact an instance of this. What goes on in the specifically cultural domain will always be a matter for individual members themselves to hammer out - this guarantee is in fact enshrined in EU law. Come hell or high water though, whether the EU survives in it's present form, whether further integration takes place along political or economic lines or whether it buckles under the strain of the present difficulties and collapses altogether what is specifically unique to Ireland culturally will remain largely unchanged.
What does change of course are people's attitudes and if the integrative claws maximise their grasp a little more you will see a repulsive force developing within the country - but this will emerge I'd suspect more out of a fear for ceding rights in the political or economic domains than any wish to preserve what is distinctively Irish; people look to their pockets and their autonomy before they register any threats in the national cultural domain. Though it is plausible to suggest that any further steps towards integration need to be looked at closely - the appointment of an EU Foreign minister for instance is a step laden with pitfalls for individual countries who wish to maintain an independent line on foreign policy. That to me is an area which demands the greatest scrutiny.
It's also well to reflect on what we're talking about precisely when we bring up the subject of culture and ask ourselves likewise what are the dangers really in allowing a degree of immersion to occur between peoples of differing backgrounds. If you spend any length of time in the company of people from a vastly different background to yourself the very first thing you will notice (after the initial sense of strangeness maybe) is how completely alike they are to you and your own - as most everyone, everywhere (apart from the comparative few) are engaged in the business of survival; they must work, they must rear families, they must put bread on the table, or, if they are not already doing so they will generally aspire to these ends and they will carry out all this in a usually supportive extended network of family and friends; that really is the bedrock of all cultures. And everything else which marks the distinction between cultures - the way we marry, wear our clothes or cook our meals, the language we speak, the way we practice our faith or even the way we don't have a faith, all of these things are but secondary, tributary offshoots of the one fundamental bedrock of commonality that exists among us.
I have to mention a Muslim friend of mine from Niger who this afternoon dropped in to see me on his way back to Cork having spent time back home in Africa. He came to this country several years ago as an asylum seeker, got working, but then got involved in a pretty nasty affair through no fault of his own but was taken by the public prosecutor here to be the principle guilty party - something which I knew to be entirely untrue. Anyway, I met other Muslim friends of his who are staying here and we co-ordinated a response of sorts - visiting him in the detention centre and making sure his lawyer was well briefed as to every particular. The prosecution as I saw it hadn't a leg to stand on and despite my insistence to the investigating detectives that certain other lines should be pursued as opposed to the ones they were then taking - they continued with their brief, which was essentially that of the aggrieved party (they were very serious charges) and the man (my friend) remained in detention for over four months - over the Christmas in fact - where he was roughed up, intimidated and harassed basically into "making a confession".
This scandalous state of affairs was in no way aided by the fact that he was a black Muslim and when we eventually got our day in court the judge saw quite clearly what the truth of the matter was - dropped all charges, had him immediately released and within the month he received his official papers granting him refugee status in this country - where he works to this day. He went back home to Africa two months ago where he saw his family for the first time in several years and having returned dropped in to see me - which he needn't have done as we have been out of contact for some time - told me how he has been getting on, how he has been saving up to start his own small business, showed me pictures of his new born daughter and finally presented me with a handsome native African leopard-striped leather briefcase. We chatted for twenty minutres or so and having given him directions out of the maze of an estate in which he managed to find me - he went on his way.
That, my friends, was a man of culture.
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