On foot of the publication by our beloved former leader of his true, unexpurgated, non-revisionist, and completely unembellished autobiography, I felt it was an appropriate time to post this picture I sketched a few years ago. Truly, a legend in his own mind, he can claim credit for so much of what we see around us today...
The past few months have thrown all of these words into sharp focus in my mind. Not that they weren't fairly clearly delineated there anyway, given my Irish Catholic childhood and schooling, but the governmental, financial, and clerical shenanigans of the recent past have given them that bit more prominence than hitherto.
The more etymologically inclined among you will have spotted that "greed" is the odd one out in the opening lexicon, but those of a more philosophical and cynical mind will realise that they really do all belong together in any realistic theory of human society. In fact, they underpin most of what we think of as the pillars of our day to day lives.
Let's face it. Whatever our pretensions, rationality is not exactly a driving force in a world that goes through the boom-bust economic cycles or that elects a George Bush to the presidency, or that wages implacable hate-filled war in the names of men who preached love and peace. We all talk a good fight about our sensible, logical approach to the world, but an unbelievably large proportion of our decisions are predicated on blind faith rather than logic. We are, by virtue of herdity and environment, herd animals.
Don't get me wrong here, we can and do act reasonably rationally a lot of the time, but the whole thing of "faith" does underpin our behaviour. Faith is just another word for belief - and it's the fuel that burns brightest in the infernoes of stupidity we perpetrate on ourselves and each other .
Look at the whole economy thing. It is, after all, nothing more than a shared delusion. Money only has a value because we all agree it has a value, and the jobs we do are often only valuable because we believe they are valuable. I'm not suggesting that a doctor or a teacher or a binman don't do valuable work, but the agreed rates of pay are based on an arbitrary set of values set by the market at a given time under the influence of a particular zeitgeist.
What does "confidence in the economy" mean, after all? Just that enough people believe in or don't believe in the value of a currency, which is nothing more than an illusion in the first place. If the human race disappeared off the face of the Earth tomorrow, the entire concept of money would go with us. It is only an artefact of Human belief.
Creeds and credibility and credulity and greed. Whether we're talking about NAMA or Fianna Fail or the Catholic Church or Creationism or Organic farming - as a species, we take so much on trust from those in whom we repose that trust. Priests and politicians, lawyers and scientists and teachers and doctors - they have all been entrusted with our lives and livelihoods.
That's an awful lot of power to hand over to people who are fallible, venal, silly, and weak. But that's what we do for no better reason than that we have chosen to "believe".
Did you ever notice that "lie" is in the exact centre of "believe"?
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