Let’s make honesty an election issue

WE have, since Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalysis as one of the most powerful tools in self-realisation just over a century ago, myriad ways of trying to make ourselves comfortable in our skins, of trying to make ourselves fit into the world we find ourselves flickering through like a fairy light blinking on a Christmas tree. 

We have a pretty full tool box of conceits designed to assauge the itch that trying to be a good, decent person inevitably causes in such an unfair world.

Some people take the talking cure, others the walking cure — the Camino de Santiago or any one of those ancient pilgrimage routes enjoying an unlikely, counterintuitive revival. Some embrace religion, many with love but, sadly, others with a dangerous, threatening fanaticism. Others still, equally good and passionate people, reject religion and the idea of a god.

More of us join organistions, creeds, sects, cults, active on what is imagined the very edge of reason by the essentially conservative and all-too-often indifferent majority. Others, trying desperately to cling to the positive side of the equation, develope obsessions that play entirely disproportionate roles in their lives. Those who fall on the negative, tragic side of the Rubicon, often endure wasted lives lost in a fog of delusion, or all too often in this society, alcohol.

All of those methods, those paths, if they are to be successful, are utterly dependent on a person being coldly honest with themselves and acting accordingly. If that challenging and often discomforting soul-baring reality is not embraced then success is unlikely. Contentment will remain elusive. Progress towards happiness and, in some cases even stability, will be blocked. Unease will fester, dysfunction will escalate.

It is one of the great, destructive ironies of our time that we recognise the need for honesty in self-realisation but that we are so very blasé about the role honesty, the act of being honest, plays in sustaining a successful society. It is one of the great tragedies of this Republic that we recognise that there is no wriggle room, no soft opt-out clause in the pursuit of personal happiness but we apply an entirely different set of standards when judging our public life, our political, our business and our working lives — our civic morality. Two sets of principles apply, principles that are polar opposites.

In our public life we fumble through processes driven by well-meaning but ultimately powerless people — our banking inquiry say — as if such a charade was a kind of acceptable substitute for what we really should have had. We have form on this — tribunal of inquiry after tribunal of inquiry has presided over grand proceedings, spending millions and taking years, but to little enough avail, if any at all. We are at the same point, it seems with the inquiry established to review the Siteserv deal and how that might have been facilited by the IBRC. The intention to do the right thing exists, even if not universally, but the possibility of reaching that goal is as remote as snow was this Christmas.

Earlier this month a Garda Inspectorate report described an under-resourced, badly managed and insular police force, one that seems stretched to discharge its duty. It described the garda fraud squad — our bulwark against white collar crime — as hopelessly inadequate in our globalised, Bitcoin world. Of couse we can convince ourselves that this is because of the recession and management seduced by languid insularity but is it really? Who benefits from this half-hearted foolishness?

We have endured the consequences of boy scout regulartory authorities in finance, planning and construction. The lessons are painful and enduring. We are often appalled when HIQA uncovers unacceptable practices in our health services. The country is agog when RTÉ uncovers a few sleazy councillors. Some of us even pretended to be surprised — especially the political associates of those caught in the glare of the RTÉ Investigates exposé. It is difficult to accept that this indignation was entirely genuine. We will, in days, begin to mark the 1916 centenary and, no matter how bizarre those celebrations prove to be, the idealism of those active in 1916 will shine through. Why not honour them, and ourselves, by demanding that idealism and honesty from those who will, in a few weeks’ time, come looking for our votes? Or maybe we’re just too comfortable with the way things are?