{"id":363,"date":"2008-11-08T23:12:20","date_gmt":"2008-11-08T23:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/wordp\/?p=363"},"modified":"2008-11-08T23:12:20","modified_gmt":"2008-11-08T23:12:20","slug":"leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/?p=363","title":{"rendered":"Leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve culled this from a recent post I made to the highly entertaining David McWilliams<\/a> site. It’s perhaps misanthropic but an accurate reflection of my increasing frustration with Ireland.
\nThe worldwide financial crisis merely reflects what we are rather than what we aspire to be. People are fundamentally limited in our viewpoints which leads to selfish and socially unwise behavior. We have some perspective but on the bell curve of social conscience I\u2019m willing to believe that the middle bulge generally assume that if everyone looks after themselves then it\u2019ll all work out. They believe in the equilibrium of an non-cooperative game without understanding that the timeframe for reaching a comfortable equilibrium could be long and the path arduous. Quick fix and laissez faire are not compatible.
\nIn many respects all this talk of supermen is highly relevant. We don\u2019t need someone with average intelligence or social conscience to help inspire the Irish people to be better than they really are. All the major religions come from powerful and charismatic figures who had markedly uncommon wisdom and presence. There are good and bad points to this, as lampooned in the LIfe of Brian. Holy gourd of jehovah anyone?
\nIn seriousness the US are lucky. They\u2019ve gotten a leader of formidable intelligence and powerful charisma who appears to have a genuine social conscience as evidenced by his decisions since graduating magna cum laude from Harvard Law school. Every top firm wanted the first black president of the Harvard Law Review as they recognised an innate brilliance as a litigator. He could have joined a major law firm but instead became a community organiser and civil rights lawyer. Does this sound like ANY of the people we\u2019ve elected to run this country?
\nLargely we\u2019ve elected mammon. Many Irish don\u2019t want to be represnted by those who are smarter or better than themselves. Direct empathy with our problems is more important than solutions.
\nIt\u2019s difficult to point towards a single inspirational character in the dail. Eamonn Gilmore comes closest and he\u2019s no Obama. As a nation we\u2019ve only recent emerged from a haze of dogma induced superstition. That dogma took the form of civil war allegiances and religious beliefs but the narrowness of the argument and differences between ideologies only underlined how stagnant this country is. How entrenched in the politics of colonialism.
\nMy experience of doing business in Ireland over the past few years is that if underhanded dealings and collusion were olympic sports we\u2019d beat all comers. We conduct our dealings based on refutable conversations and handshakes. Self interest is put before decency, yet we’re shocked when our illusions are shattered. If you don\u2019t believe so then look at the Flood and Morris tribunals. We elected a \u201cHandshaker in Chief\u201d in Bertie. There\u2019s a tacit acceptance throughout Irish society of skull duggery and roguery that is holding us back. Irish society has more respect for cunning regardless of it\u2019s underlying morality than it does for humanitarian concern or creative intelligence. The knowledge economy won\u2019t be founded on ruthless cunning, although it has its place.
\nWe need a hell of a leader to come along to lift us out of this mess. He\/she has to overcome the desire for a quick economic fix. He must make an election about national rather than parishional issues and he must encourage the Irish people to adopt a more sophisticated altruistic view irrespective of colour, creed, etc.
\nAll this in the confines of one of the most conservative and shallow political genepools in Europe.
\nWith this mountain to climb to rule a boithrin of a country, If Obama had been born in Ireland I\u2019m not sure he\u2019d have gone into politics at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve culled this from a recent post I made to the highly entertaining David McWilliams site. It’s perhaps misanthropic but an accurate reflection of my increasing frustration with Ireland. The worldwide financial crisis merely reflects what we are rather than what we aspire to be. People are fundamentally limited in our viewpoints which leads to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gaisan.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}