Reality Bytes

 

My beautiful 19 month old daughter is an Angel. It is no idle hyperbole when I say that she teaches me something new every day. More often than not these lessons are reminders of things I already know but that I have either forgotten or ignored because of some trivial pointless distraction.

I wake up every day wanting to see her smiling face. When I am away from the house I look forward to getting back home to see her running around causing chaos and laughing all the while.

I acknowledge that it is exhausting and challenging and at times utterly terrifying but I look forward to my lessons like no other learning experience in my life previous.

And I suspect that most Dads feel this way about their children. Isn't it wonderful that we are made this way?

This story is really about one single lesson she has taught me. Hopefully that lesson will be obvious by the time you reach the end of this story;)

I take the train to work most mornings. Greystones is the last stop on the DART line and so more often than not I manage to get a seat. It allows me do things that I rarely get to do these days – read, write and observe.

One observation that I have been really taken by is how quiet train journeys have become. Outside of people answering mobile phones there seems to be far less conversations between people taking place. Particularly amongst young people.

More often than not young people are immersed in their 'smart devices' engaging in some connection with information or with another distant user somewhere else on the planet.

Its almost like we have put a greater importance on the distant connection rather than the nearby connection.

I worry about that.

There is a theory that says that the development of sophisticated language was the single most important evolutionary step for human beings. Our ability to communicate with one another is unprecedented in all of known life. The evidence is there to suggest that our language capability is far superior to all other species and has led to our ability to dominate and control our planet (not always in positive ways).

Life has evolved for over 3 billion years as far as we know. In that time the human brain (a truly remarkable evolutionary miracle;)) has developed some hard wired constructs linked to our physical capabilities that tell us a lot about how we evolved from a language perspective.

For example, the amount of brain power devoted to moving muscles in the face, that have no other purpose except to communicate and express emotion, is extraordinary. These brain to muscle connections are designed to augment all our other channels of communication when engaging in real communication (and by real, I mean people being physically present).

In short we are hard wired for face to face social interaction.

And the purpose of this need to socialise?

Sophisticated language techniques allowed us build relationships to work together and allowed us see the benefits of teamwork versus individual pursuits. It allowed us pick mates using more criteria than just physical traits. It allowed us build devices and shape our environment way beyond anything any individual could do. Crucially it is strongly linked to the emotional development and emotional intelligence that defines us as human beings.

If we ever do get an understanding of the greatest evolutionary mystery of them all, the emergence of conciousness, I contend that it will be related to the evolution of sophisticated language capability and our need to socialise.

Modern social network platforms reduce communication to stacatto like bursts of information (often completely disconnected from one another) without the rich augmentation provided by our brain in face to face communication. In fact if you were to compare how people communicate on modern social network sites to a rich, deep, extended conversation between two people it would be akin to comparing morse code communication to video conferencing with haptic feedback.

What are the consequences of this?

Essentially we get a lot of information shared with very little relationship building. Without relationships at stake people can pretty much behave in whatever way they want at a particular moment. There is a diminished sense of responsibility in communication and as a consequence debates and arguments can turn very nasty very quickly.

That would be fine if all this connectivity was just something else we were doing in terms of connecting to one another.

The danger is that this form of communication is actually replacing real interaction. It is a stated goal of big social network sites to make virtual connectivity as compelling as real communication. Its absolutely in their interests to keep users on their platforms for as long as possible. Patterns of behaviour can be tracked allowing for more and more targeted advertising. Users of these platforms think they are using a free service. They often don't realise that they are the product!

And all this is happening very quickly.

This is not good.

Over the last few years I have had to do quite a lot of travelling. I used to really love travelling when I was younger. These days I struggle with it. I honestly hate leaving my young family for extended periods of time.

A few months back I found myself in San Francisco trying to raise awareness about a new social networking platform that my company was building (more on this later). My daughter was just over 1 year old and so my wife and I tried her on Skype.

The first evening, when she heard my voice, she smiled and found the whole interaction very interesting.

Then the novelty began to wear off...

The second evening, she walked around the back of the tablet computer to see where I was and was confused to find that I was not there playing hide and go seek. She pleaded with her mum in baby-speak expressing her dissatisfaction at the situation.

The third night she picked up the tablet and threw it on the floor.

When I arrived back home 10 days later she grabbed me for a hug and would not leave my arms for about 30 minutes.

It really brought it home to me just how much children need real physical interaction. Instinctively they know the difference between whats real and what is an illusion in this case. Real connections matter  - it is essential for their sense of security and growth.

However the lesson did not stop there -  I had more to learn....

The seats nearest the door on the DART have a label saying that they are reserved for the elderly. I love this simple idea. Public transport in Ireland is free for people retired and long may that continue. The best seats should be for those that use and need the system most.

A couple of weeks ago I was standing (for once) on a busy train. It meant that I was in observation mode. The train was packed. At one stop, one of the reserved seats became available and a group of four teenagers got on and took the seat. They all clearly knew one another but as soon as they sat down (as two pairs facing one another) they pulled out their phones and started playing with them. There was no conversation - just lots of thumb movement and the occasional smile as some text received caused amusement. They were, to a person, completely immersed in whatever they were doing on those phones.

At the next stop an elderly woman got on the train. She was stooped and very frail and was carrying a shopping bag. Without saying a word she dutifully stood next to the teenagers in the reserved seat, held onto the support pole and waited for the train to depart.

The train began to move and the poor woman staggered and just about held her balance. Not a blink from the four teenagers immersed in their phones. At the next stop the woman struggled to hold herself up as the train came to a halt. Again not a blink from the teenagers.

As the train took off again, the woman’s shopping bag fell over. At this stage I felt compelled to point out to the next generation that the woman could do with some help.

To be absolutely fair to them, they recognised their mistake, profoundly apologised, helped the woman tidy up her shopping and gave her a seat.

I am not telling this story as a way of complaining about the youth of today;) - I was a youth leader long enough to know that this is not unusual. In fact, had I been in the same seat using my computer the same thing would have happened. Its more a metaphor for me about how modern communications has taken us away from the real world at the cost of important connections and responsibilities that we have to the people and surroundings around us.

The good news is that once you point out the obvious the essential goodness in human nature tends to prevail!

This note is an effort to point out the obvious;)

A couple of years ago I was priviledged to meet a remarkable young man called Stuart Mangan. Stuart had a terrible accident playing a rugby match and broke his neck very high up his spinal cord. The higher the break the less mobility you are left with. Stuart was left with very basic movement around his face and the ability to speak. He once described his situation to me as being in a block of cement with only his face above the surface. It was a terrible tragedy.

Over the course of a couple of months I worked with Stuart looking at technology solutions that could improve his quality of life. We had some great successes. We managed to get a computer to understand his distorted voice (he had to learn to speak again and he was on a ventilator that made a lot of noise). Computer voice recognition then allowed him surf the web and go on Skype calls. We linked his phone to his computer so he could send voice controlled texts to his friends. After 6 months he was voice dictating emails quicker than most people could type them, he was managing his finances online by himself and he was sending texts to friends in a way that kept him connected to the real world.

In this instance technology was a wonderful liberator for Stuart. He could pretty much do what any of us able bodied people can do on the internet. But Stuart had an extremely limited life in the real world. He needed 24 hour care. Outside of conversing with someone there were very few things he could do autonomously. In many ways he had no alternative but to use technology in the way that he did to improve his quality of life.

We have a choice. Spending vast amounts of time connected to the 'virtual opportunities' around us at the expense of real interaction is not good for us. We need a balance between the real and the virtual worlds. We can do amazing things connected to the internet but it should never compromise our real life engagements.

What really brought this home for me was the connection with Stuart. Although we were working together developing technologies to try and improve his quality of life it was actually the friendship that developed between us that mattered most.

He lived in London and I would arrive over for a day to spend it with him working on the technology. We would chat, joke, muse about life in a kind of intense way given the tragic circumstances. It was often raw, truthful exchanges pared back of ego and self promotion. It was about as real as it gets to be honest but in that connection bonds of friendship were forged. For me the real interaction that we shared together was far more important than all our technical achievements.

Stuart died in 2009. To this day I still wear my Stuart Mangan bracelet to remind me of those real interactions. Interactions that led to a wonderful, deep and tragically short friendship.

I am not againist technology. I think it has a profound and essential role to play in bringing humanity forward. I am also not against progress. I do however question progress when no consideration is given to where we are heading!

I think the social networking phenomena is an amazing and potentially wonderful way to share information and keep people connected who otherwise cannot meet. However, there is nothing 'social' about the phenomena. At best it can be described as 'isolation networking' – staying somewhat connected to the people you care about via technology.

If this 'social networking' replaces real communication we are shoring up huge problems for ourselves in the future, especially in the mental health domain. In the same way that our physical bodies need oxygen and air to survive, human beings need real interaction to sustain their mental health. Its that important and essential.

For the last couple of years I have struggled with this perspective. The potential of the modern communication tools are enormous - one only has to look at the recent presidential election in America and the Arab spring. However there are serious consequences if they compromise the essential ways humans need to interact. We may well be going or even being driven in the wrong direction.

I want to build a different type of social network. I want it to use all the power and amazing potential of our connected world to encourage more real connections. To enable conversations that should happen to happen, to connect people to opportunities that they were previously unaware of and crucially to forge real friendships between similar minded people that would not have happened without the technology. A more connected world should be a world full of stronger friendships, more vibrant communities and a more unified human race.

If you have read this far we are almost ready to release our fragile idea into the world....

My daughter is beginning to string sentences together. She knows I am 'Dada'. She knows how to make known her needs for interaction and play. She also knows that as a 19 month old baby girl, who is cuteness personified, Dada does what he is told.

In this short article I am bemoaning the fact that people are spending far too much time online at the expense of much more valuble real interactions. I am as guilty as everyone else.

And my daughter knows this..

Even as I was writing this story, sitting on my couch with the laptop, she wandered over to me with a look of determination that indicated a lesson was coming. In a moment of what I can only describe as pure genius, she pushed the lid of my computer down to shut it, picked the device up and placed it on the table next to me. She then waved to the computer and said 'bye bye'.

With that done she grabbed my hand and indicated that I had to sit down beside her. She pointed at the lego box, smiled and clapped. She did not have to say anything else.

'Make something real Dada'

GMcD 12/12/12

Check out this video;) for another angle on the above. WISPwell is available on the Apple and Google appstores.

A tribute to Hugh O'Regan

 

"Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

Steve Jobs? (1955– 2011)

I met Hugh O'Regan for the first time in April 2005. I had been working in Media Lab Europe and it had just closed. Although the prevailing public opinion at the time was that Media Lab Europe had been a failure, those of us in the Lab knew that it had been a great idea and that it was a wonderful place for bringing different disciplines together. It needed a successor. At the time I thought the best way of doing that was to get the three big Universities in the Dublin area to jointly bid for it and to create a national centre accessible to everyone, but I had no income and no support. I put the idea to Hugh. He loved it and said he would support me in that endeavour. For 6 months he paid me a salary to cover my bills, until I convinced the Universities to jointly bid to be the MLE successor and to employ me as the bid manager. We won the bid and the National Digital Research Centre came into being. That’s the way it was with Hugh. If he liked the idea you had his support.

So began a connection to Hugh that endured for the next couple of years. He was a complex individual, and he was difficult to work with at times. He had a short temper, he was a perfectionist and he liked to stay involved in even the tiniest details of a project - especially anything aesthetic. All that said, he was a visionary, a man with a wonderfully giving and gentle side and somebody who, when he was on form, was brilliant company to be in.

I remember one very long conversation that we had whilst walking around Ballsbridge. In that conversation he revealed to me the struggles he dealt with daily and in particular how the death of his brother Jack really affected him. He wanted to get out of the pub industry and use his good fortune to do something different and more meaningful. I remember coming away from the conversation thinking that here was a really good soul who, to the outside world had been successful but on the inside was fragile and struggled with life. He needed support and good people around him to help him realise his dream.

Over the years Hugh introduced me to some of his thinking. It was wild and imaginative and really energising. He bought No.8 Stephens Green and wanted it to be a philanthropic centre that connected Celtic Tiger wealth to the need of those left behind in its wake. He opened up No. 14 and No. 15 on Stephens green to social entrepreneurs like myself, SUAS and Social Entrepreneurs Ireland. He gave over office space to companies like Traidlinks trying to develop new business models in the developing world. In the basement of these buildings he incubated a vegetarian restaurant that cold pressed juices (to protect the integrity of nutritionally beneficial enzymes) and sold the most wonderful vegetarian food I have ever eaten. He arranged yoga classes in the building for those working there. And he did all of this without a big self-promotion fuss. He believed in what he was doing and that was enough.

On numerous occasions he provided free rooms in his Morrison hotel for many international guests travelling to Ireland, to work with the social entrepreneurial organisations in Stephen’s Green. He often personally hosted the guests with dinners and functions and so on.

After Media Lab Europe wound up, a couple of my former researchers set up a games company. As time went by, they drifted back towards biometrics, continuing the work we did at the Lab. What emerged was a very novel piece of technology, a device which helps people to manage stress. I took the idea to Hugh, and we showed him a demonstration - he loved it. He gave his support and incubated the company for a couple of years in No.14 and No.15. That piece of technology has now been re-incubated following the financial collapse and is now an installation in the Science Gallery. A product will be launched next year. None of this would have happened, had it not been for Hugh.

At one stage in his past he considered studying electronic engineering. He was fascinated by technology and the positive role it could play in society. He funded a feasibility study in his ICE charity to look at setting up a foundation that supported inventors trying to solve deep human problems in society using technology. Much of what he learned here fed into his bigger vision for the Kilternan project – see below.

I was involved in Camara in its early stages and he allowed us hold our very first fund raising art exhibition in the Stephens Green offices – an event which literally got us off the ground. He gave us a room at the back of his Pravda pub where we refurbished our first computers.

As Cormac Lynch, the driving force behind Camara and now the CEO of Camara Learning recalls:

“In June 2005, Eamon Dunphy asked his listeners to contact his radio show if they were throwing out any old computers, as Camara, a new Irish charity needed them for some schools in Ethiopia. On the back of that plug, an Internet Cafe in Andrews Lane contacted me and said that they had 40 computers (Pentium 3s) that they were getting rid of but they needed to be collected the next day.

I had no idea how to collect them or where to put them. I frantically called around a few people who I thought might help. Hugh called back within the hour and said he had a room at the back of Pravda Pub and we could use his van driver to help pick them up. The first Camara computers were collected the next day and were shipped to Ethiopia....

Hugh helped us kit-out that room in Pravda, do the electrics and repairs and that was Camara's home for our first two years.”

Camara has now sent out over 35,000 computers to schools in 7 countries in Africa and recently started sending computers to schools in Jamaica. 500,000 African children are now able to use computers because Hugh helped Camara get started.

Even though No.8 St Stephens Green was not quite ready, he allowed us host a John Moriarty tribute event to launch 'One Evening in Eden', a unique set of recordings of John following his death in 2007. He did this because even though he was not an expert in the complex ideas of John Moriarty, he had a deep intuition that John's vision matched his. To open up a house that you love for a free public event is quite a remarkable thing to do. It takes courage and trust and huge generosity.

Kilternan, though, was to be his Magnum Opus. He bought the Kilternan Sports Hotel in the early 2000's. Over the years his vision for the place began to grow. It is a 300acre+ site and as development there began to move forward, so did his vision and hope for the place. He wanted it to be a place of learning. He wanted it to be a place of healing. He wanted it to be the start of something global. And so was born the Global Academy of Ireland – or GAIRE (the Irish word for Laughter). He called the site New Springfield – a nod to the Simpsons, and a great example of his mercurial wit. He wanted Google, Microsoft, Intel, HP etc together on this new campus of ideas.

My brother Phil remembers the first time he saw the plans.

“There were blueprints all over the boardroom table, and Hugh was giddy with excitement describing his vision. He talked about the land he was buying up at the fringes of the Scalp, showing us the inexorable developer creep as apartment buildings and industrial estates gobbled up the countryside. He wanted to ring-fence Kilternan and 4000 acres around it and create a cocoon for this campus. The tragic thing for me now, as I drive by Kilternan, is that people just see this huge, monolithic hotel. A mausoleum to the failure of Big Development. This is just wrong. People need to know what his plans were, what his dreams for that place involved. The hotel was a tiny part of it, a ‘necessary evil’ in Hugh’s own words. The size of his vision was staggering, to be honest. When we asked him what drove this undertaking, he smiled and said “We’ll invent the Hydrogen car on this campus. Why not?” Crazy and out there as that sounds, you knew by looking at him that he believed it. Hugh would abhor the label of publican and developer. Difficult though he could be at times, there was a genuine idealism behind what he was trying to do.”

The complex was kitted out with state of the art facilities. There was a TV/Film studio and top of the range conference facilities. A health and wellness centre was built. An onsite organic farm was to provide food for the independently run restaurants and canteens on the campus. A wood chip burner powerhouse for energy was developed, and between that and the food production, a vision of true sustainability was in place. State of the art technical facilities were built in. Leisure trails crisscrossed the site, stopping now and again at Native American yurts, set up for contemplation and interaction. An accommodation complex was built for visiting academics, lecturers, and people working on the campus. All of this and more would have created a dream environment for learning and healing – a model way ahead of its time.

He wanted to create a place where new types of thinking could take place so that new directions for human society could be paved. He really believed in that.

He had a deep concern that climate change was going to devastate coastal areas across the world. That’s why he chose the Kilternan site high up in the Dublin mountains! In some ways that captures the essence of Hugh. He was a visionary who was extremely sensitive and therein lay his fragility.

I did not agree with everything he said but I had the utmost respect for his courage and his higher view of things. There are very few people around that had the vision he had.

I really wish I could sit down with him now and continue our conversations. I would love to go on that long walk again and revisit everything. I would do anything for that now rather than just writing this tribute to him.

He is going to be missed because Ireland needs more people like Hugh O'Regan. He embodied the kind of bold and daring thinking that we could really do with in our current crisis. Sadly he will not be around. I hope this short note goes some way to making sure he is remembered in the right way. He was a good man, with a generous heart. And long may those memories of him remain.

Goodbye Hugh, you crazy rebel....we miss you.                                                     

GMcD 28/11/12

From the Edge

A friend of mine is suffering from Motor Neurone Disease. He can only move his eyes. He wrote this article in the last few weeks.  

Simon you are utterly inspiring....

 

People are amazing. I'm in the back of the car. We're moving fast. Riding bumps like waves. My chair lifting off the floor. In the back with me is my friend Cait from Limerick. Crazy. Has me in stitches most of the time. In the front is my brother-in-law, Pierre-Yves. French. Crazy. Drives like a madman. But he's not driving today. He's on the phone to his mother, speaking in a rapid rush of French. It's her birthday. My mother is driving. Bray. Crazy. Drives like a madwoman. I'm on my way to the hospital. Ruth's Caesarian is taking place at twelve. It's twenty to twelve.

****

I believe in birthdays. I count forwards now not back. I look ahead at forty and think yes. Yes please. When I hear someone's age I subtract mine from theirs. Sixty seven. Thirty years more than me. Old people are the worst. Ninety nine. Sixty years more. Jesus. I look at older people with awe. You did it.

It's easier looking back. Twenty five. I've lived ten years more. Yes.

Then I look at my children, six, four and three, and I see how much they've lived in their lives, how much they've become, and I say wake up, learn something. It's all there for the taking.

Quite often, people who haven't seen me in the last four or five years find it almost impossible to reconcile the difference in me in that time. I don't blame them. I often find it hard myself. One way, for me, is to think I'm in my fifth year of MND. World War Two was six.

****

I'm nervous. In my stomach. I've been on this road before but nothing changes. Pierre-Yves turns from the front, his phone still pressed to his ear, "Mum says did you know that Caesarian got its name because Caesar was the first child to be born that way?" No, I didn't know that. He slips back into the silk of spoken French. Caesar, I think. Caesar was born that way. Okay. The nerves in my stomach ease a little. We're approaching Holles Street.

****

History. All around us. Buildings older than any of us. The news telling us what's important every day. Yet there is a more important history. The things we gather. The photographs we hang. The things we use. Our living memory. The wake we leave behind.

When Ruth and l were searching for our first home, we walked into a bungalow we could not afford. Other people were walking around the house, in and out of doors. It was inviting, old fashioned, but immediately warm. The kitchen presses were simple seventies and the window above the sink looked out onto a garden run round with flowering plants. People stood in the garden. Ruth went on out. I stood in the room alone. I opened a narrow press by the back door. On a little shelf were a pair of gardening gloves, fresh dark earth still crumbling on the fingertips. I am transfixed. Embarrassed. Suddenly aware of doing something wrong. Why did I open the press? I shouldn't be here. I close it quickly and hurry out after Ruth.

When we go to leave I ask the estate agent. Yes, he tells me, the owner only passed away last week, an older lady, living by herself. The family are hoping for a quick sale. He smiles. I want to run from the house.

****

They are waiting for us at the doors of Holles Street. Whisk us upstairs. My amazing people dress me in surgical gown, hat. Time has stopped. I enter the room.

Ruth is on the table. The medical team are beyond amazing, ushering me in, helping me get into the best possible position beside Ruth (Ruth later tells me if I had moved back and forth once more she was going to kill me (I was nervous)). They start. Ruth holds my hand. I watch everything. Sadie comes out feet first, screaming, blue. Then Hunter, bum high in the air, but silent. Ruth and I look at each other. They lay him beside Sadie and he lets out a roar. Ruth and l start to cry.

****

So much history. The days I've lived. The places that linger, the single moment that stays, like something from a book you once read. Glimpses that live within us. We are strange.

We want to know. But we don't. If we knew how the body worked, there would be no disease. If we knew the mind, no pain. But there is too much to talk about. More mystery than history.

I write in bits and pieces. Live in bits and pieces. People live in my mind. People I've touched. A coffee and a cigarette at a small wooden table, with a girl sitting next to me. Knowing and not knowing. Love.

Pathways. Taken. Followed. And we end up having lived.

Leaning against a car, on a sloped German street. Waiting for someone. Cloud and sun. It's cold when it goes in. I look up, the warmth on my face. I see an approaching cloud. How long before I’m in shadow? I follow its path towards the sun. I catch myself. Close my eyes. Feel the warmth on my face.

****

My extraordinary wife. I wouldn't change MND. Those two babies in my arms. Their warmth against me. Rising and falling with my breath. I wouldn't risk that for anything.

Eucharist means thanksgiving. That's how I feel. Thank you. Caesar. Thank you all who watched over Ruth and Sadie and Hunter.

I send out a thank you. A beacon. Something. From as deep as you can go. To as far as you can reach. I will hold this day inside me for the rest of my life.

****

Six months now. Sadie and Hunter are fat beautiful balls of life, with hands that reach to touch my face.

MND fought back these last few months, leaving me in terrified panic, drowning for air.

Last week I bit the bullet and admitted myself into hospital for the first time since I left March of last year.

It was Vincents and the week I spent there changed my mind about consultants. The warm sincere individuals I encountered treated me with the dignity of being a person not a disease.

I don't know how other people handle MND but it sometimes lays me so low that I don't know how I will go on. I feel like I'm being tortured, a thousand little jabs, that on their own I don't notice but slowly over time they start to hurt, until suddenly I'm crying. They're tiny things I barely notice, little hurts I've grown used to. Someone I love not understanding me. One of the boys telling me about something I will never do again with them. The hundreds of urges that I have to do simple human things but cannot do, like sit on a couch with Jack and read a book and hold him, put my arm around him, tickle him. I think I'm doing fine and then realise I'm holding myself together with I don't know what. Something unbreakable that pain keeps trying to break.

And then my boys pass the doorway on their scooters. Dot. Dot. Dash. Or wander into the room in their pajamas, in the middle of some elaborate world of lizards and kings, the youngest watching his brothers with silent eyes of glass. Or one simply stands in the doorway, looks at me and says ‘Hi Dadda’. And I remember.

And I write. Writing is my fighting.

****

Some days you can just see clearly. Our meaning, what we value, is the most private part of us, it may just define us. It shapes everything we do, everything we say, everything we feel, everything we dream. It's hidden, from others, from ourselves. There is no mirror to show us what we value. So often it is only revealed to us after the fact, in the long movie reel of memory. And when we see it, our heart stops, aching with recognition. It is a beautiful thing to see yourself.

****

I'm still alive.

On the way home from the hospital I see my reflection in my computer. I have a black strap across my head and a white one under my chin, a pipe coming out of my neck and going over my shoulder. I look like some crazy desert horseman racing along the dual carriageway.

I'm still alive. I seem to thrive on things trying to kill me. I'm still alive you bastard.

When I die, don't say Simon loved films, say Simon had as much love in him as blood. That's all. I'm racing towards a bridge.

****

Out of the Darkness and into the Light

 

When I was younger (a good deal younger) I used to teach mathematics to anybody that was interested. It was a simple way for me to earn a bit of pocket money particularly when I was going through college (we, genuinely poor students, had to pay fees at that time ;)).

Unlike my incredible brothers and sisters, I have very little obvious raw talent, however I am told by a few that I was actually quite a good maths teacher (one of my brothers credits me with him getting through honours maths in his leaving certificate – I suspect he just managed to pay off the examiner ;)). 

As it happened I absolutely loved teaching maths (and therein lies a piece of wisdom that has stayed with me to this day – allow children follow their passions and they will find their career), but never in my wildest imaginings did I imagine how this simple passion would be the basis of a story that gave me a short but beautiful glimpse of the divine…

****

You do not have to be a child psychologist to know when a child has been traumatised. Perhaps its some built in human instinct that allows us understand that a deeply troubled child needs help.  The human instinct to protect a child is crucially important. Children truly are society’s most precious gift. From a Christian spiritual perspective there is enormous wisdom is recognising children as those closest to the kingdom of heaven.

That said, if this is true, it’s an instinct that is sadly under utilised in our world. Worse, there are so many examples of children being abused in different ways. And the consequences of neglecting or abusing children are enormous.

I believe the abuse of children to be evil in its rawest most awful form.

****

Mary is 10 years old and she has had a most difficult life. Her short time in this world has been an enormous struggle and it is written all over her face and her demeanour.  She was not planned and when she entered the world there was no security, no welcoming party and no support structure to give her a good start in life. She came into a world of recrimination, rejection and regret.

The first few years of her life included times when she was desperately hungry, when herself and her young struggling mum were constantly on the move looking for work and a place to live. When she was very young she spent long periods of time with her grandparents so her mum could try to stabilise things.

The poor little soul was flotsam in a raging sea.

And then there were men in her mum’s life who brought further misery to the child. Mary was regularly beaten for simple reasons like crying because she was hungry or making a nuisance of herself just exercising her natural childish curiosity.

Marys approach to coping with all this was to withdraw into her own world. She took the view that if she said nothing, nobody would notice her and that way life would be bearable.

I have known Mary for a couple of years now. She is one of the quietest people I have ever met. If you ask her a question she immediately looks to her mum for permission to answer. You often get no answer to the simplest questions like ‘how old are you?’

When she does answer she mumbles in a barely perceptible voice and stares at the ground.

In school Mary struggles. Teachers reckon she is 2 years behind her peers. Recently, it became possible for Mary to attend a good fee paying school. However, she had to do an interview in order to be able to attend.

The feedback from the interview was that she would not be able for the school and that she had serious learning and communication difficulties particularly when it came to maths. Her mum pleaded with the school and eventually they agreed that Mary could attend but only if she took extra maths tuition (this of course cost extra money).

Extra tuition meant that Mary stayed behind for 2 extra hours every evening to do ‘maths grinds’.  

Essentially that meant getting up at 6.30am, starting school at 8.00am and finishing at 5.30pm. Then going home, doing your normal homework and then all the extra work you got from the tuition.

That would be a long day for anyone.

****

In the summer of 2009 it so happened that I was staying close by to Mary’s house in Mombasa, Kenya. On a couple of occasions I noticed her sitting on the floor (there was no furniture in the house) doing her homework. Because she was so quiet, she never asked for help even though it turned out she was struggling.

It soon became clear that she was getting more and more maths homework from the extra tuition in an effort to improve her mathematical abilities.  She was spending hours and hours trying to keep up but was getting nowhere. At the end of every couple of weeks she would do an exam and fail it.

Looming ahead of her was the end of terms exam. If she failed that exam the school would recommend that she be kept back a year.

I sat down with her one evening and discovered that she had 50 problems to do. These were non trivial problems and each took about half a page of maths to finish. I remember thinking that that was a lot of homework for a 10 year old!

So, on the basis of nothing ventured nothing gained, I decided to give her some maths lessons…

****

It was not long before one big challenge became clear. When Mary did not know the answer she would write nothing down. When I pushed her on this it turned out that the same lack of confidence in her social outlook manifested itself in the way she approached maths. She was scared of writing down the wrong answer in case of the consequences so writing nothing down (or withdrawing from the problem) was better than a bad attempt.

When I gently pushed her to have a go I discovered that she was actually well able to do the maths.  She grasped concepts quickly and was very disciplined and methodical in her approach. Not only that, but once she grasped something she was quickly able to repeat it in different scenarios.

I tried to encourage her by making jokes when she made a mistake and kept telling her that there was nothing to be scared of when you got the wrong answer. More often than not getting the wrong answer can be a good thing in maths. Generally that means you have learnt something new, that a particular approach does not work or that you realise that you need to improve your addition!

In any case, so began a tiny confidence building exercise that was akin to nurturing a tiny seedling in a category five storm.

I am not exaggerating when I say that Mary and I spent many hours together over the course of a month tending to this fragile little seedling….

****

We can view poverty in many different ways. One classic way of viewing poverty is that it makes people make extreme choices in their lives.  People make these choices because they have no other choice. People can choose crime, prostitution or other desperate measure to survive in the difficult circumstances they find themselves in. 

In many ways, people who choose these paths become the very visible side of poverty.  There is a terrible very obvious tragedy to people who find themselves on these paths and the consequences to them and society are very real and damaging.

What about those people though, who choose to withdraw and be anonymous?  Those that cannot cope with the circumstances that they find themselves in?  To me there is a greater tragedy here.  Were you to get into the head of somebody on this path you would find a truly lost and lonely soul overcome with the challenges of life. Oftentimes they have lost all hope.

Over the course of my life, for good or for ill, I have met a few people who have been in this situation. I have learnt something fundamental from these encounters.  If all we do in life is give people hope we are imparting the most precious and wonderful of gifts.

Mary is one of those people.  A poor child, born into a harsh world, lost and lonely on life’s journey. Unfortunately she is one of many children in these circumstances in the developing world.

But never under estimate what happens when you give somebody hope….

****

At the end of the month Mary did her maths exam. No amount of interrogation with her gave me any sense of how she had done.  She just would not answer any questions about the exam – all questions were met with a blank stare which was her typical response to anything which she found difficult to answer. I have to admit that I hate exams. Even though I went through the educational system as a successful exam ‘product’ I think it’s a terrible crude, unjust and ultimately futile way of measuring somebodies ability. My biggest concern for Mary was not whether she was able to do the maths problems but rather was she able to cope with the exam pressure. In times past teachers would beat her for failing the exam. This is not  untypical  in Kenya and comes from the Victorian model of education that they inherited under British rule (the same system that we are still struggling to consign to the history books here in Ireland;)).

A week or so later I arrived back at my apartment early. I was standing at the balcony and I saw Mary getting off a Matatu (the local bus) and making her way to the house. She was clutching a piece of paper but her countenance suggested she had just been given bad news. Her face was taught and stressed and I have to admit that my hopes of good news were dashed.

I went out to meet her as she came up the stairs frantically trying to think of what to say to encourage her.  Her mum joined me in the corridor, both of us grim faced. I gently asked her how had she got on and tried to reassure her that no matter what the outcome, that all would be well.

She passed the paper in her hand to her mum who carefully opened it up and read its contents.

What happened next was something truly beautiful and I honestly wish I could have captured it better than these few words.

Marys Mum looked up from the paper and over at Mary with a look of astonishment on her face.

‘You passed your maths exam Mary…and the teacher says that there has been vast improvement and to keep up the great work….’

I looked across at Mary – the taught and stressed look had vanished.  She had a look of disbelief on her face like she had found something precious that she had deemed lost forever. The poor girl had not believed that she had passed the exam till her mum had read the note.

Suddenly, like the spontaneous blooming of a fabulous flower, her face lit up with a radiant smile, her eyes wide, bright and soft with tears.  It lit up the corridor and then reduced myself and her mum to tears! A few group hugs later and we all were laughing and giggling uncontrollably.

If one could have somehow captured that brief moment of joy in its purest essence and spread it out far and wide there would be no doubting that love and hope are alive and well in this broken world.

Mary took the paper back and held onto it for the rest of the evening. She maintained that wonderful smile for a long time. There was an extra spring in her step in everything she did.

She did not say a lot – it’s not her way -  but you know what - that is very much another day’s work.

GMcD August 2009

****

There is a wonderful epilogue to this story but that will be revealed another time;)

Our National Debt

I am the co-founder and director of a small Irish start-up in the tech sector. A typical funding need for a company similar to  mine would be about 1 million euros to get the company off the ground. With funding of 1 million euros you could relatively easily get matched private funding, employ potentially about 20 people for a year (if we use the average industrial wage as a ball park figure) and grow the company significantly on a global stage.

If we do not tackle our national debt crisis and continue with the delusional notion that we do as we are told in Europe, it is going to cost us a minimum of 5 billion euros per annum to service the debt (that does not mean reducing it - just servicing it) from 2013 onwards. If we seek a second bailout then (which is a stark reality given the global economic crisis around us) this cost grows (the above core cost remains whether we take a bailout or not by the way).

5 billion euros is five thousand million euros. With this money a government could fund five thousand companies like mine for one year and generate the exact same in inward investment whilst creating 100,000 jobs i.e reduce the dole queues by about 20% whilst also reducing social welfare payments by the same amount. Together with increased tax revenue from employment these savings almost match the original 5 billion euros investment!

Instead, we are being told that continuing to pay off a debt that we cannot possibly pay off is the way forward for 'stability' for our economy. It is an insane argument with no logical basis of truth. Look at the figures - they are real. Look at the economic conditions we are in - they are real. Look at the fact that we are paying our bills with borrowed money. Things can only get worse if we carry on this way.

By voting no you give our politicians some opportunity to get a negotiation of bank debt onto the table. By voting yes you do not. In fact you throw away the single biggest bargaining tool to get the country out of the mess it is in.

Ireland has two options. Leave the euro zone and default on its debt. Or stay in the euro zone and renegotiate the debt. The latter is the better option because we are too small to go it alone. These two options have to be at the forefront of all government policy from now on. Everything else is a head in the sand perspective as a tsunami is approaching.

The bottom line is this: Ireland cannot pay back the debt we have taken on. We are bankrupt. We are only keeping our head above the water because we have borrowed money to pay our debts hence our debt is growing. This means its only a matter of time when we will default. Asking us to sign a treaty that asks us to sign into law some book keeping measures to keep our finances 'tidy' is a ludicrous notion given the state of our finances. Its pure folly to do this and shame on the government for scaring its population into thinking they have no choice. There ends democracy.

Why I am voting No this week

It has been ages since I wrote anything in this blog. I was actually hoping that the next article could capture some of the amazing experiences I have had in my new family sitiuation over the last year. Instead I am writing about the blooming referendum that the Irish people have to vote on this Thursday. Groan.

That said, I feel absolutely compelled to write this note because I don't know of anybody else doing the same (correct me if I am wrong so I can spread the word;)). It actually takes awhile to get all the figures together (something very few people seem to have these days) but once you write everything down you realise that voting 'No' is the only option the Irish people have this Thursday. The argument goes like this:

Ireland is bankrupt. Right now we are borrowing from the 'Troika' to pay off a 19billion euros deficit  (13% of GDP).

As we do this we increase our national debt. By end of 2013 our Debt/GDP ratio will be >120%.

The treaty we are about to vote on requires that a country keeps its deficit to 3% of GDP. By end of of 2013 we 'hope' that our deficit will be close to 9%.

Nothing in this treaty would have prevented the collapse (for many of the boom years Ireland ran a budgetary surplus).

The above figures (that assume we can get the deficit down to 9% by end of 2013) assume a staggering growth in our economy of 3.3% in 2013. It is far more likely that we will be in recession by then.

Carrying on like this will mean that AT LEAST 25% of all tax revenues from 2013 onwards will be used to service our national debt.

If it’s true that we cannot get ESM funding if we vote no to the treaty then Ireland will have to default – we will have to default at some point – remember we are bankrupt.

Given that Greece is in a worse situation than Ireland, is it conceivable that the EU will not allow us access funds just because we exercised our democratic right to vote no? 

If this is the case then we should not be in the EU in the first place.

The plan seems to be that 'over time' the economy will grow and thus we will outgrow our debt. There is zero evidence globally that large scale growth is on the horizon. Couple that with rising energy costs and you see the folly in this approach.

So could somebody tell me why would you vote yes to a treaty that limits your ability to manage your own sovereign finances and writes these limitations INTO LAW (so that we can be penalised if we fail to reach the targets and clearly that’s what’s going to happen)? This means austerity ad infinitum. It is akin to whipping the flock before they go over the cliff.

Ireland has only one option right now and that is to have its debt renegotiated. This treaty is the one chance the country gets to get that on the table. If you vote yes you lose that chance and the country goes over the cliff - that’s a certainty – just look at the figures. If you vote no you get a chance to negotiate – that’s an uncertainty but far better than the certainty this present government is inflicting on its people.