Marie Murray, in a turn-of-the-year exploration of what makes us tick, suggests it is time to throw off the shackles of history
The fear of being dominated and dictated to runs deep in the human psyche. Deeper still in any colonised country. Fathoms deep in our own Irish psyche, with some still flinching at the memory of colonial oppression. Indeed, the psychological sequelae of occupation can take many lifetimes to erase.
Colonisation is not just possession, it is dispossession: raid of land, rape of pride, suppression of language, subjugation of religion and slavery of body. It is educational deprivation, starvation and famine, and the deeper starvation of the cultural core, distorted and disfigured by the relegation of a population to the sidelines of itself.
Colonisation cuts to the heart, corrodes the soul and erases cultural identity. That is why it is challenged so exceptionally, why it is remembered so vividly and revenged so ruthlessly. When colonisation ends, freedom rarely begins, because of the psychological and sociological damage which inevitably ensues.
Recovery can take decades and is protracted if any party perceives that there is injustice, inequality or unfinished business in how the relationship is terminated and in relation to who gets what and who keeps what when "independence" is finally achieved.
Like a messy divorce, achieving "independence" in this country led to divided loyalties, fights over who went with whom, who wanted what, who had a say in it, who did not, how it was negotiated, how it was settled, who felt cheated, who felt coerced, and who gained.
There were the national custody arrangements in a "family" where some wanted no change, some wanted to join the departing party and others wanted to remain behind. Inevitably, some on both sides simply got stuck with the one they did not want.
But the further tragedy of the aftermath of "occupation" is that when independence is finally achieved a series of even more oppressive regimes may be self-imposed. This is because in any post-colonial society what is most important to it is usually that of which it was previously most deprived. This frequently brings about an over-correction, an extreme swing in the opposite direction which propels a people too far from the centre in an attempt to get as far away as possible from every reminder of a past oppressive regime.
Ironically, in the attempt to recoup the pre-colonial past, eradicate all traces of occupation (consider the destruction here of many Georgian buildings) and regain a denied era, foreign oppression may be replaced by a different domination. In Ireland, in the attempt to restore our lost language, revive local customs and reinstate religious practice, another ascendancy ensued: one that has met its own demise in recent decades with a further swing too far from centre in the opposite direction again.
The psychological oscillations in the aftermath of occupation and recuperation may include the triad of hurt, fear and anger and a post-colonial, post-traumatic anti-authority anxiety, suspiciousness and hyper-vigilance for any imposition, any demand, control or constraint upon the person, his possessions, place, practices or philosophy.
This may explain many of our current practices as a people, particularly our ambivalence with regard to law.
When a legitimate authority replaces an occupying authority, the habits of generations in circumventing the controls of the coloniser may continue in a new, irrational and damaging form. There is, perhaps, a kind of atavistic national memory which says that to adhere to the law is to collude with the enemy, to party with the oppressor and thereby betray and inform on your kin. Colonisation takes its toll on a society; post-colonial freedom does not begin when the coloniser leaves - there is a post-colonial legacy to be dealt with.
But what is the legacy of this, our past, and what psychological consequences, if any, has it had on the individual in this society? One possibility is that it has contributed to the propensity of many people to flout the law, equate authority with autocracy, view obligations as impositions and see organisations as systems to be outsmarted.
It is this that may have allowed a generation to drink and drive, to avoid due debts, to kill for land, to segregate, castigate and dominate anyone who posed a real or imagined threat to absolute freedom. It is this that may have caused a generation of individuals to hoard money and to secrete surplus earnings from benefiting its own people. This may explain the cartel-based collusion and corrupt institutional cheating of which we have recently become embarrassingly aware.
The undercover mentality, the resistance, the covert activities to outwit, outsmart, to circumvent and operate within the loopholes rather than the spirit of the law, within what can be got away with rather than the ethics of living, and to regard all institutions and enforcers as "suspect" - that is one post-colonial legacy. Perhaps the tribunals to resolve the outcome of that mentality are testament to how endemic that mindset has been? The hope lies in our young adults, our post-post-colonial young European generation not burdened by the ambivalences of the past.
There are other questions concerning our national psyche that we might ask ourselves. For example, is it the legacy of fear that makes us feel threatened by others of different culture, see immigration as invasion, asylum as imposition and equate "foreign" with "foe"? Or is it just singing too many ballads over too many pints that conjoined foreign and foe in mind and memory?
Is it simply that we were once poor and are afraid of being poor again, or that we were once downtrodden and are afraid of being oppressed again?
Is it fear of religious imposition that makes us evade ethical considerations? Is it fear of deprivation that causes us to be afraid that others will take away from us what we have so recently retrieved?
Or is this post-colonial story just a story, a narrative of injustice and blame to explain the less worthy of our actions as a society?
If the past is so precious, why do we destroy it, why do we bulldoze our archaeological treasures, commercialise our most beautiful resources, tolerate with pitiful penalties illegal dumping, permit noise pollution unimaginable in other capital cities? Why do we profit from sale of shoreline, mountain and lake and privatise what should be available for everyone?
We have a paradoxical relationship with the past - a hostile attachment whereby we simultaneously revere, idealise, vilify and demonise it. We have a bizarre relationship with wealth and poverty, with high tolerance for the visibility of each. We have a world record for generosity towards people in other countries - provided that they remain there and do not dilute our homogeneity of race, creed and culture.
Yet we have youth who have wholeheartedly embraced what it is to be European, global ambassadors abroad demonstrating the quintessential vitality, intelligence, compassion, creativity and humour which have been an equal hallmark of our diverse and devastatingly engaging Irishness.
The first days of a new year are a good time for reflection. Time to think about who we are, what we wish to become. Time to resolve the paradoxical absurdity between reverence and demonisation of the past. Time not to "look back in anger", but instead to look ahead. Freedom is not gained through an event: it is a process and a state of mind. It takes time, and we have had time - to adjust, to exorcise the past and to exercise the benefits of freedom.
Societal analysis may be outside the direct province of psychologists, and there are many sociologists, historians, philosophers, anthropologists, archaeologists who can inform the present with the discourses, details and demographics about who and what we were in the past and how that may or may not have contributed to who and what we are today.
John B. Keane, our much-loved masterof story-telling, put it thus: "We are the tenants of this millennium and we are the tenants of these years behind us."
As we reach the half-decade in the first decade of this millennium which is still new, perhaps it is time to let go of past oppressive narratives and co-construct new, magnificent, imaginative and magical narratives for a better, more ethical, more sympathetic, more just and more aesthetic future.
If we were to do so, what new inclusive tenancy could we create?
Marie Murray is director of psychology at St Vincent's Hospital, Fairview, Dublin
mmurray@irish-times.ie