How others see us - Take a hard look at who we are now

THOUGH the latest Lonely Planet Ireland guide for travellers doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know time given to considering how others see us is rarely wasted.

They can bring a different perspective, different motivations and probably an objectivity to the exercise that might not come naturally to us.

The guide, as many Irish people do, laments the passing of an older, slower, warmer and friendlier Ireland.

It warns, as if globalisation might allow an alternative, that Ireland is becoming indistinguishable from other European countries and that unless we protect the parts of our culture and character once imagined unique we will become less attractive to tourists.

Just as the guide identifies how consumerism may have overly influenced our behaviour so too do very many of the people caught up in that terrible merry go round. Now, we’re more focussed on surviving than accumulating.

“Traditional Ireland of the large family, closely linked to church and community, is quickly disappearing,” warns the guide, and it suggests that you have to travel to isolated areas to find an older version of society.

All societies evolve socially, culturally and economically and it is probably asking too much to expect that there might still be regions of the country still living as our great grandparents did; The Quiet Man in green-tinted aspic, all pony traps, flame-haired women but no www.modernworld.ie.

It calls the new Ireland “a land of motorways and multiculturalism, planned and developed in between double decaf lattes and time out at the latest spa for a thermal mud treatment”. The economy took “a massive hit”, but Ireland has “a new level of cosmopolitanism and sophistication”.

But it is the more traditional personality that “still holds the key to Ireland’s draw as a tourist destination”.

You’d want to be very thin-skinned — or blind — to be upset by that accurate description and we’d all want to be more foolish than we are to dismiss the suggestion that the “traditional personality” is a primary attraction for foreign tourists.

Though there are very many traits in Irish people that we might be better without — begrudgery, false piety, selfishness, environmental indifference and a destructive ambivalence to dishonesty — there is an emotional warmth and enthusiasm for human interaction in this country that we may not appreciate until we live for a while in a different society.

And, if the Lonely Planet Ireland guide is right, we should try to ensure that that trait, that warming thread running through us all, is encouraged and indulged. It is one of the better parts of what we are and it is worth preserving and encouraging. As well as attracting tourists it can make our own lives so much more liveable, so much more complete.

Now that the Lonely Planet guide has judged us, that it has pointed to changes that are less than attractive as well as recognising the very many positive developments, we might all step outside our tribal comfort zone and try to ask ourselves how others might see us.

Do we cherish the transparency natural in a real democracy enough to demand it; do we care enough for the future to change the present; do we believe that honesty is important or just a quaint social discipline like good table manners or are we more motivated by things than ideas. If we answer these questions honestly we might unearth a catalyst for real change.