It's hardly surprising given the general culture. Ireland does produce plenty of radical thinkers, innovators, inventors and reformers - they just tend to leave in frustration at the dominant ultraconservative anti-intellectual culture.

Change is not welcomed in Ireland. New thinking and new ideas are "rocking the boat". But then there is the curiously long-lasting colonial Good Dog cringe where some new ideas are slavishly aped whether they make any sense or not...just as long as the source of those ideas is the erstwhile colonial master, for whom Paddy still pines.

Irish "business" and employment culture is the same. Irish employers want good little slave drones that will know their place, respect their betters, and follow orders unquestioningly. This becomes glaringly obvious, often to hilariously tragic results, in companies where some form of hard technical/scientific/engineering skillset is required to get the job done - Irish management will uniformly sneer at and dismiss the opinions of their technical experts. And then blame those technical staff when their loony get-rich-quick scam falls right on its face, as predicted.

"We are where we are" for a reason. But nobody wants to examine the underlying cultural flaws that led Ireland here. As usual, everyone will prefer to get happily cross about some imaginary scapegoat and then sail on with nothing actually addressed or fixed on the leaking toxic barge that is the good ship Ireland.

Originally Posted by happytuesdays

Ireland is a Volksgemeinschaft and a society in which connectedness is all.
Creativity is an act of rebellion and Ireland is profoundly conservative and offers a clearly laid set of ways to 'play the game'.
Also the bulk of thinking in most societies is derivative.

That's very true.
Someone says "austerity is the solution" - so every other country says "yea, that is the solution" - all around the world

Someone says "let's have a bonus" - so all the other bankers, and senior civil servants say "yea, let's have bonuses" - all around the world, and the bonuses grow bigger and bigger, for competitiveness's sake

Someone says "let's save the banks from their own folly" - so every country bar Iceland says "yea, that is the solution" - so only the little economy Iceland does OK, while the rest...

Someone says "let's denationalise everything we can, it will save money" - and every country in the west says "yea, that is the solution" but all it does is cost the taxpayer more than twice as much as it used to (rail fares come to mind).

And so forth. Lots of other examples.

Originally Posted by Riadach

I dare say that you wouldn't have found Seán Ó Tuama's solution to the problem particularly appealing.

And what about M Fennell's argument?

Originally Posted by Deaf Mute

After hours of searching for something for a "beat the Irish to keep them down" thread, you must have wet yourself with excitement when you dug this nugget up.

Er, no, upon opening this morning's IT I found, among other articles, this article by Desmond Fennell with which I largely agree and I was kinda wondering what you guys might have thought except the place is full of guys like you.

Bal please, not man - neither me nor Fennell.

Statsman,

Maybe not a bad list if it only went over a century or so, but it spans 1,200 years.

D

Originally Posted by Humbert

Interesting article from Desmond Fennell in the IT today on the dullness and derivate nature of Irish thought

Rarity of the 'Irish thinker' reveals society bereft of depth - The Irish Times - Mon, Jul 02, 2012

In it Fennell says;

'In 1972 Prof Seán Ó Tuama of University College Cork, in a Thomas Davis lecture on The Gaelic League Idea, said: “In business, science, engineering, architecture, medicine, industry, law, home-making, agriculture, education, politics and administration – from economic planning to PAYE, from town planning to traffic laws – the bulk of our thinking is derivative.

“One doubts if we have added anything of real importance to sociological or theological, philosophic or aesthetic thought.” '

Forty years later that remains substantially true...'

I have to say, I agree with Fennell in this and I marvel how the Irish manage to maintain for themselves the illusion for themselves that they are a creative race - probably by excluding voices like Desmond Fennell from public life.

Anyone have any thoughts on the matter?

I got as far as 'Desmond Fennell'.

Originally Posted by happytuesdays

Ireland is a Volksgemeinschaft and a society in which connectedness is all.
Creativity is an act of rebellion and Ireland is profoundly conservative and offers a clearly laid set of ways to 'play the game'.
Also the bulk of thinking in most societies is derivative.

Very interesting - forgive my ignorance but what is a Volksgemeinschaft and perhaps you could expand on how Ireland being such might affect its intellectual culture.

Originally Posted by ScreeOrTalus

I got as far as 'Desmond Fennell'.

Predictable - read on and maybe do a bit of thinking - stretch the oul synapses, eh?

Originally Posted by DuineEile

Statsman,

Maybe not a bad list if it only went over a century or so, but it spans 1,200 years.

D

Only if you include Eriugena.

Originally Posted by statsman

'Nations' are sets of individuals when it comes to thinking, not hive minds, and a handful of individual in any given generation produce genuinely unique ideas. It would be true to say that “In business, science, engineering, architecture, medicine, industry, law, home-making, agriculture, education, politics and administration – from economic planning to PAYE, from town planning to traffic law's – the bulk of human thinking is derivative.

The Irish 'nation', or rather the people who have inhabited the island we call Ireland, produced Johannes Scotus Eriugena,George Berkeley, Robert Boyle, John Toland, William Rowan Hamilton, Ernest Walton, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, J.M. Synge, Sean O'Casey and Sam Beckett. Not a bad list from the top of my head.

It is arguable that all those names belong either to the old Irish Tainist order or to the British order - what about the past century?