There is only one solution to the three crises that have engulfed us

FOR most people, managing a crisis in their lives can be a full-time job – and sometimes it can bring people to breaking point.

Trying to manage and deal with three interlocking crises is almost impossible.

As a country, that’s what we’ve been trying to do and all the signs are that we’re floundering.

The effort to deal with all the stuff that is going on right now, and seems to be getting worse by the day, is slowly and imperceptibly changing us. We’re beginning to feel that our country is broken, perhaps beyond repair. That’s potentially very dangerous.

An what are these crises? We have an economic crisis. We have a crisis of leadership and authority. We have a crisis of values. And all three of them have come on us very suddenly – they’ve hit us like a ton of bricks, in fact.

A couple of years ago, we believed (and we were regularly told) that the sun would shine on us every day, that there was no reason for the party ever to stop. So neither we, nor our country, made any provision for harder times.

And suddenly, it seems, it’s all gone – not just the prosperity, but the hope of prosperity. In one fell swoop, full employment disappeared, to be replaced by emigration. All the safety nets we took for granted have started to be cut back.

In economic terms, people are encouraged every day to be at each others’ throats – out of nowhere an intensely bitter feud has developed between people who work in the public sector and people who don’t. We’re quarrelling with each other at precisely the time we need to be pulling together.

And we were lied to. Remember SSIAs, the great giveaway? That was the harvest that should have put to one side for the years of drought, but instead it was used, under the guise of encouraging saving, to boost a huge consumer-driven party.

Remember the budgets that introduced whopping increases in child benefit (now reversed) and new allowances for childcare (now eliminated)? Now we realise it was no coincidence that these budgets took place just before general elections.

And so we’ve lost faith with the politicians who brought us to this place. And with the builders whose hubris and impatience we admired, with the bankers whose flash and dynamism were the face of the Celtic Tiger.

They were our leaders, our holy men throughout the good times. Now, all we can see is their feet of clay. And what of the other holy men, the priests and bishops and cardinals? We didn’t have a lot of time for them while we were enjoying the fruits of growth anyway. Possession had become the new religion. We didn’t need religion – we needed a second house in Bulgaria or Portugal.

If we couldn’t have that, we had to have a television screen so big we needed to remodel our sitting rooms. Our children couldn’t go out without their designer clothes, their mobile phones, their ipods.

And suddenly all that disappeared, in a puff of smoke, and we needed to be able to rely again on some of the older certainties that our church and its values offered – values of compassion, of faith, of warmth.

And where were they? Suddenly we discovered the church was authoritarian, secretive, corrupt. That it had colluded in the abuse of generations of children. That its leaders had covered up that abuse in the interests of the institution, and never the children.

And we realise it’s still going on to this very day. The men we need to lead the church out of this mire are themselves in denial, incapable of recognising their own failings.

This weekend we discover that the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland knew for years about the existence of the vile Brendan Smith, that he had first-hand evidence of the terrible things Smith did, first-hand evidence he says he believed – and yet chose to regard one of the worst paedophiles in our history as someone else’s responsibility. How shaming is that? And yet, it seems, there is no recognition of any wrongdoing.

And, and, and – it could go on forever. The bottom line is that we find ourselves now coping with terrible economic reverse, wondering who to trust and searching for some sense of value or values. What are we to do?

I read one study last week that might provide a small bit of the answer to that question. It’s a study carried out by the distinguished market research company Behaviour and Attitudes, which has a long track record in gauging public reactions. You can find the study on their website. It doesn’t pretend to be an in-depth psychological profile, or to offer solutions.

But, based on research among focus groups, it does give some sense of our mood at the moment (and that’s all it claims to do).

Life goes on. That’s one of the themes of the report. We’re coping with downturn. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say we’ve gone through anger and bitterness, and now we’re somewhat resigned. We’re cutting our cloth a bit – looking for discounts and bargains, learning to settle for less, making do. And we’re trying hard to cling to the positives – more time for family, a little bit of volunteering, a sense of “come on, we’ve been through worse than this” (although we’re doubtful).

But the loss of trust is embedded deep. That’s why the second main theme of the Behaviour and Attitudes study is called Fear and Loathing.

A DEEP sense of betrayal has eaten into the possibility of recovery – betrayal by all the institutions we respected, or at least that we followed. It goes side by side with a willingness to find everyone else responsible for our plight and a strong sense of deteriorating values. Insecurity is one of the consequences – fear among elderly people about young people and what they get up to, fear of change, fear of “the other”.

But here’s the third theme – and maybe the beginnings of a message. Authentic Experiences, the authors of the study call it. It’s illustrated by a quote from one of the focus groups – “we lost ourselves during the Tiger years, we need to get back to reality”. And the reality we’re looking for is in the family, in the local community, in shared experiences, in friendship.

It will be a long time before trust is rebuilt. A whole new generation of leadership needs to recognise that trust is earned on a daily basis and can never be taken for granted. But we don’t need new political movements or new charisma, or new promises. That is precisely where we went wrong before.

The real message is that we the people have the capacity to rebuild the future. Out of this mess, we can demand that the people we entrust with leadership in the future – in every walk of life – are prepared to account for themselves, to be honest with us, and to recognise the consequences of their actions.

We can pull together, and be very clear-eyed about our leaders. It’s our choice, and nobody else’s.