We’re all liable for Corrie’s death

“But now that he had died, any threat that he might have posed as an unkempt figure in a doorway was gone. He could no longer extend a cup with the threat of imposing on your conscience.”

Michael Clifford (Opinion, December 4) challenges us all with a searingly candid appraisal of our communal/ societal ambivalence and derogation relating to those on the margins.

He parses the late Jonathan Corrie’s debilitating demise with due sensitivity, but equal cogency.

We are all liable to some degree.

Crystalising the bottom-line brew of our conscience tweaking, Michael Clifford defrocks our self-convenient distancing when we chorus our discomfort around such a tragedy, a scenario we should all have been aware of and attendant to at some level.

‘Tut-tutting’ the governance coverage of the societal margins is merely passing the buck.

It is so easy to say ‘why doesn’t someone do something about this’ when the corollary is ‘why don’t we ourselves do something about it’?

We are all citizens of this collective space and shared empathy zones. Galloping towards neo-liberal, marketeering consumerism with all its corporate fallacies, leads inexorably to a cul-de-sac of inherent mé-féinism, where detached sympathy and moral platitudes are about as good as it gets.

Ireland is indeed a charitable nation of ‘givers’, and there are of course some outstanding individual examples of altruistic dedication to the needy.

However, we also can exhibit a tendency to carp on and can too often cajole others to take up the inequity on our behalf while we, comfortably enough, proceed on our way through life.

Clifford nails it when he reflects on Jonathan Corrie “taking on the character of a piece of the flotsam in a society that has forgotten its impulse for casual compassion”.

The loss to everyone concerned deserves more aforethought and pro-active doing. Life narratives which come to such a harrowing conclusion deserve full and wholesome analysis, not as some kind of ‘empty-exercise’ voyeurism, but to furnish inspirational pointers for us all.

We all live in communities where there are plenty of struggle and need.

We can all contribute in some way to the de-stressing of others’ predicaments — in little ways and bigger ways alike.

Life distress is a normal reaction to traumatic challenge. Life is difficult for all, but a traumatised life can be overwhelming for some.

If we can empower ourselves to engage collectively in whatever way we can to help alleviate and support one another, we could legitimately put pressure on the statutory powers and services, to do their bit in the round — and hopefully their bit will be appropriate.

“After all, could any government be expected to care enough about eliminating homelessness if the electorate, and wider society, don’t?” Searching, challenging words from Clifford again.

Jim Cosgrove

Chapel Street

Lismore

Co Waterford