On Community…becoming Empowered Citizens

Originally published 20. April 2011, the message applies more than ever!

I believe the citizens of Ireland in the Republic and in Northern Ireland will finally elect worthy representatives– if empowered to witness a mature belief that we deserve governments and institutional authorities that are competent, responsive and respectful of the citizenry.

When my adolescent children were rebelling, I would assert my authority by saying “this is not a democracy”, well my fellow Irish, Northern Irish or British men and women – this is a democracy – on both sides of the border. We get the representation we deserve.

I believe that culturally and anthropologically, Ireland is in that same adolescent place. Seen in this light, we can collectively rebel against the parents, the government and the authorities to whom we had relinquished our power. We were dependent on institutions charged with our care and security and they have failed us. We believed and behaved as told. We didn’t question, we believed the financial institutions would hold, the church would educate and protect our children, our pensions would be secure. In failing us, they have abused that trust.

Would I expect a child I had bankrupted, lied to and left homeless to respect and obey me? No.

What I am asking you to do is join me in becoming empowered citizens. Seizing this moment for Ireland would be to require institutions to serve and protect us. Representatives would be forced to answer to the citizenry. Citizens would have to let go of “I am powerless to change it” and go to the polls to choose competent, respectful and responsive leadership.

“Myth lets you know where you are across the ages of life ” *

There is an heroic journey we are all called upon to make at some point in our lives when we live authentically and leave behind our dependencies on an old way of being that may not be working for us anymore.

Personally, I thought I had to live the way my parents had prescribed, where they had chosen and to please their vision of who I should be. When I came into being as my own person, an authority for my own life, responsible for my own happiness I grew up. In my forties.

Civically, I know we can have the leadership we deserve. A collective “adolescence” seems about right for this ancient land with millennia ahead…

Join me, at the polls and in the public spaces, on our collective heroic journey to require competent, responsive and respectful leadership.

* Joseph Campbell illustrates this developmental truth in his own words:

Five minutes, too dear? Start at 3:20!

The universality of the “heroic journey” is discussed here:

…not surprising that in the journey as described – the outcome is to “bring life back into the culture”.


Storytelling…What it Helps to Know

Kevin Kling came into his own as a storyteller when while in college he realised, “Saturday night was only as good as the story you could tell about it on Sunday”.

Stories are the way in which we share the full measure of our experience.

The onus is on the listener to ‘take what you like and leave the rest’. Carefully chosen words unconsciously deliver a multilayered, and full message.

Just how full becomes apparent not only in the first telling but when compared to subsequent retellings.

We in the West let go of the gift of storytelling in the last half of the twentieth century. Arguably, in large part, because we devoted ourselves to science. Science, we believed, would reveal explanations for everything “unexplainable”. We no longer needed to spin yarns for children about things like what the noise of thunder was or where the rain comes from.

Thankfully, filmmakers, songwriters, and poets never lost sight of the value of a good story. Interestingly, and notably in the case of popular films, consciously or not, they kept retelling the old stories.

  • If I said that StarWars was the Jesus story redux, a few might agree, some would deem me blasphemous, others just dismiss me.
  • If I argued that the Matrix was like the Abraham story, perhaps the same result.
  • And that some archetypal story in J.K. Rowling’s hands got a generation reading again!  Harry Potter’s adventures don’t require interpretation, but it too is a “hero’s journey”.

Monomyth is a term academics use to describe one story common to the mythology of cultures across the globe– the Hero’s Journey. The visual says it all:

Our task is to further explore how this universal story can inform our own. How we can grasp the significance of it in order to recognize a call to action in our own lives. There are heroes among us.  You are invited to explore your own story.

We live in challenging times. We can choose to despair, or allow our stories to be transformative. We can choose the journey. It begins with us.

If you are intrigued, these links may be of further interest:

The developer of the Matrix, Christopher Vogler, describes it in his words:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AG4rlGkCRU

A lovely comparison of the myths of different cultures and life stages can be found at: http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/00212/monomyth.html

Our own history on this island was well preserved by the efforts of the Irish Folklore Commission: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Folklore_Commission

Those archives are available to the public, and many on-line thanks to University College Dublin: http://www.ucd.ie/folklore/en/