Modern misanthropy

Modern life isn’t rubbish. In days gone by miserablism was, in the main, the preserve of the Church. Since that particular institution’s influence has taken a tumble in recent years, we could be forgiven to hoping that we’d seen an end to spurious tales of impending doom.

Unfortunately from the depths of today’s recession, wailing and gnashing of teeth sometimes appear to be Ireland’s only growth industry. Let’s look at some of the nonsense doing the rounds this week:

Criminals of the cloth
— The clerical abuse scandal is the story of the week, obviously, and the findings of the Murphy Report are certainly appalling. That doesn’t mean, however, that we should respond by becoming a nation of victims.

The anger of the Irish people at the Church and, sadly to a lesser degree, the state, should not be allowed to be transformed into more generalised anxiety about our ability to move past appalling occurrences. Despite government, the media and interest groups cultivating vulnerability, people remain strong and independent.

There’s an old slogan worth keeping in mind: we shall overcome.

Abuse in the family
— We musn’t simply worry about sacredotal abusers, of course. Abuse in the family is, we are told, a much bigger problem. The problem with this argument is that it encourages a corrosive suspicion of ordinary relationships and ends up in further state intervention in the private sphere.

As we saw in Britain, this can only end in tears. In 1987 the Cleveland abuse scandal broke. This ended-up with the wholesale removal of children from their homes as a result of demands made by social workers and doctors influenced by radical feminism in defiance of the local police. Over a few months more than 120 children were removed from their homes in the town and taken into local authority care, following allegations that they had been sexually abused, usually by their fathers. Two GPs, Drs Higgs and Wyatt used a controversial diagnostic practice called RAD (reflex anal dilatation) to ‘prove’ sexual abuse had taken place. Within five months Dr Higgs had diagnosed 78 children as having been the victims of sexual abuse and Dr Wyatt 43. Twelve months later Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, the chair of the inquiry into the cases, published her report. It found most of the allegations of sexual abuse were unfounded and all but 27 children were returned to their families. Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson said techniques used by doctors at the time of the controversy 20 years ago were “not reliable”. So bad was the fallout from this absurd event that the entire place was actually renamed.

Not that anything was learnt, of course. In 1990 there was a case in Rochdale in which twenty children were removed from their homes by social services who alleged the existence of ‘Satanic Ritual Abuse’, after the ‘discovery’ of ‘satanic indicators’. No evidence was found of satanic abuse and charges were dismissed when a court ruled the allegations were untrue. The children removed from their homes sued the city council in 2006 for compensation and an apology.

A year later in 1991, the Orkneys were home to another ‘Satanic Panic’.  Five boys and four girls, aged between eight and 15, were taken from their homes on South Ronaldsay. An official inquiry was established in August 1991, which after 9 months’ investigation published a report which described criticised all those involved, including the social workers, the police and the Orkney Islands Council. Social workers’ training, methods, and judgment were given special condemnation and the report stated that the concept of ‘ritual abuse’ was “not only unwarrantable at present but may affect the objectivity of practitioners and parents”. A 1994 government report based on three years of research found that there was no foundation to the many claims of Satanic abuse. As the old Pink Floyd song (almost) goes: “Hey do-gooders, leave those kids alone!”

Political corruption
— Politicians can’t be trusted, can they? Of course, Ireland’s elected deputies are a rum lot – and a dim bunch to boot. This doesn’t mean, however, that politics is pointless. As we were recently reminded by Dermot Ahern of all people, in a republic the people are sovereign. forth would like to add to this another little slogan: the people aren’t stupid.

The terror of phantoms
— Republican microgroups are determined to undermine the peace process. Barely a week hasn’t gone by without one attempt or another to blow something up. Of course, this also means that these tiny and inept groups aren’t really capable of doing much. Moreover, the fact that they exist at all doesn’t simply mean that some nasty people don’t want peace, it means that the peace process itself is a good as it gets: it delivers a endless process of containment, not real peace.

The end of the word as we know it
— Climate change: 200mph winds, (more) flooding and minus 30 degree winters. This is Ireland after a two degree rise in temperatures. Unlikely sounding, isn’t it? That’s because even reports from the highly partisan Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been twisted and distorted out of all proportion. The IPCC forecasted that by 2100 the average global temperature will rise by between one and four degrees Celsius, while many in the media suggested there would be an 11 degree rise. Doom-mongering? Of course not… Climate change activists also constantly undermine the idea that humanity has the power to improve the world and face any challenges that come our way – thankfully, history tells us otherwise.

Flood
— The recent floods weren’t the work of global warming, even greens admit this, but it doesn’t matter, they say. Ireland will see more ‘extreme weather events’. You see, despite all the claims about ‘peer reviewed science’ cause and effect are an irrelevance to many political greens. While it’s certainly good that environmentalists aren’t pushing the global warming agenda as a result of the floods (not that they could, since global temperatures have been consistently falling since 1998) there is a logical disconnection between saying an event is not a result of something but woe betide us when it does happen. File under scaremongering.

Development dilemmas
— No more building on floodplains, says minister for the environment John Gormley. In fact there is nothing wrong with building on floodplains. What is required is a proper drainage infrastructure and flood prevention measures. Never mind floodplains, 60 per cent of the population of the Netherlands lives below the sea level and the entire country is basically a swampy delta. Technical solutions exist for all technical problems, all it requires is human ingenuity and the political will.

Drowning or drought?
— While large amounts of the country are submerged greens also claim that ireland is experiencing a ‘water shortage’. It’s not true. Ireland’s water problems are merely technical, related to an aging and insufficient infrastructure. This is easily solved and any infrastructure work would additionally have a positive effect on the economy.

Burning desire
— As with water, so with oil. Peak oil theory states that we are running out of a precious resource. The problem is, it was first predicted in the second decade of the twentieth century. In the 1950 and then the 1970s, we were again warned that oil reserves were running out. But as prices increased those reserves were discovered to be many times greater than previously thought. Today, again we are being told that ‘peak oil’ is in sight. Despite this it remains a theoretical assertion without statistical or geological justification.

Hands up who hates people
— Both peak oil and water shortage theories are subsets of a more general Malthusianism. Not only is Malthusianism based on a fallacy, one so grand that it is named after the dour old bastard (a cleric, for the record) himself. In 1798, Thomas Malthus warned that the world’s population growth would eventually outstrip the world’s food supply, bringing about starvation, disease and never-ending war.

Despite continued warnings from Malthus’ supporters, humanity still flourishes. The fallacy is a simple one: natural resources are not fixed, but are determined by advances in science and technology. As a resource becomes scarce, the price increases, inducing consumers to reduce their consumption or find alternatives.

The next time someone says there are too many people on the planet, ask them who they want to kill first.

Tell me about your mother
— If all of the above is too much for you, perhaps you should see someone? Therapy culture prevails in Ireland today. Confession to unctuous clerics have been replaced by bearing all to ‘professionals’.

While therapy may help some people negotiate life’s difficulties, the idea that we are all scarred and in need of guidance does a disservice to autonomy and free will. Most of us would be better off getting off the couch. The problem isn’t that some of us see psychologists, it’s the greater tendency to view ourselves in purely internal, emotional and personalised terms rather than in relation to our achievements in work and relationships.

Depression in recession
— Even if you want to see a therapist, can you afford it? We are, as everyone knows, in the midst of a rescission: this is the big one. Yes, times are tough in Ireland today but that’s no reason to give up hope. The economy is not as bad as it was during the 1980s and it is certainly no reason for depression. While it’s true that neither the government nor the opposition have anything resembling a plan to rebuild the economy, the fact that there is widespread resistance to their plans to institute austerity measures indicates a public that, having experienced something like material comfort for the first time in Ireland’s history, is not willing to settle for any less.

There’s always one…
— Finally, George Hook’s bizarre assumption of the mantle of saviour of the nation – OK, this is nuts and we can’t do anything about it. Sorry. We can’t get our heads around why a national radio station is obsessed with the de-pedestrianisation of a street in Sligo – other than the fact that it’s a nice NIMBY issue for whipping-up a bit of empty controversy.