Irish Examiner view: A tsunami of information but we still have so much to learn

It's been one year since the pubs closed. Picture: Niall Carson/PA Wire

One of the changes since, say, the turn of the century is that we are all witnesses to others’ lives in ways that not so long ago were impossible. 

Social media and 24/7 news platforms mean we are all voyeurs. We can watch events in faraway places unfold in real-time. We can, and often do, echo them on our streets. 

The #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements are examples. Both swept the Western world in almost a tsunami of social consciousness. 

Street vigils provoked by the London murder of Sarah Everard may be replicated here too.

This week, that consciousness may be stirred by events in Myanmar where junta forces killed dozens of protesters at the weekend. 

However, it may not be moved to confront the man-made famine in Yemen or autocracy in Russia or China. 

Outrage is empty unless underpinned by capability. Bearing witness is a fickle, graded, and increasingly selective thing. 

Like Catholicism, it is often an à la carte commitment.

That universal conversation has changed how arguments are shaped too. Conclusions can be reached without context. 

Efforts to curb carbon fuel addiction are often dismissed by comparison with China or India’s huge consumption of increasingly expensive coal — still the source of almost 40% of the world’s electricity. 

However, that dismissal is rarely balanced by an acknowledgment that China is building 11 nuclear power stations to add to the 46 safely in use.

There are no crowds at this year's Cheltenham.

This week, those frustrated battalions of Irish racing fans confined to barracks and unable to cheer on one of the hundreds of Irish Cheltenham entries in the flesh might point to the tens of thousands of American students who flocked to South Florida for their spring debauch, despite calls from officials to stay at home.

Though Florida’s beaches have been closed, that comparison offers uncomfortable truths. 

Irish fans can mark the 20th anniversary of their foot-and-mouth exclusion from Cheltenham from the couch, and how that veto denied one of the great hurdlers — Istabraq — a chance to make history by winning a fourth consecutive champion hurdle.

They may not, however, do it in an Irish pub. 

It is an irony beyond even Myles na gCopaleen that this will be one of the very few countries unable to mark St Patrick’s Day in an Irish pub. 

Monday marked the first anniversary of the decision to close Ireland’s 7,100 pubs. They will be shut for some time. 

If you’re in Cape Town, you can drown the shamrock at Michael Collins Pub at Struisbaai; if you are in San Francisco, you can do the same at the Phoenix Bar, but if you’re in Tuam or Cashel, the couch beckons.

A good number of those 7,100 pubs may not reopen, adding to the momentum already undermining so many communities, especially rural ones.

This inevitability was recognised in the recent British budget when £150m was allocated to the Community Ownership Fund to help communities take control of threatened pubs, theatres, music venues, sports clubs, or post office buildings. 

Is it time we learned that lesson from not so far away and considered that idea? 

It was, and still is, a truth that travel broadens the mind but like so much more today, travel can mean many things and offer many lessons all but unimagined at the turn of the century.