{Truth in Cultures [continued (3)]}[29th October 1988]

[Redbook6:27][19881029:1608c]{Truth in Cultures [continued (3)]}[29th October 1988]

19881029.1608

[continued]

But what sparks this* off is a recurring awareness of the impossibility of dialogue with the Southern Irish culture, whose whole approach to truth seems different from ours. This is not lightly said: my [paternal] grandmother, the Welsh-born one, was by blood pure southern Irish Catholic.**

But I speculate that certain generalised factors can be linked together: the extreme, superstitious adherence of the Southern Irish to Roman Catholicism; the repeated occurrence of political corruption wherever in the World Southern Irish communities are involved in politics; the frequent reputation of the Southern Irish among their neighbours for shiftiness; the lack of Southern Irish distinction in Science and Technology; possibly the brilliance of form in Southern Irish mythology and imaginative literature; and finally, the apparent impossibility of resolving the current Ulster troubles by any sort of rational dialogue with people for whom ‘truth’ seems to mean ‘that which sounds best for my cause on television’, and who are apparently happy to work within a democratic system whose downfall they are simultaneously trying to bring about with violence.

*[See last two previous entries, [Redbook6:26-33][19881029:1608]{Truth in Cultures}[29th October 1988]&f]

**{Not so!}

[This is curious. The writer believed this because his father told him so, saying that she came from Killarney. However, genealogical research by a first cousin a decade or so ago show clearly that on her father’s side they had moved from the West Midlands of England, although that side of the family had earlier (and recent) Irish ancestry and origin which was presumably the source of her Roman Catholicism. Her mother was native-Welsh-speaking from the Valleys. The writer’s paternal grandfather, on the other hand, did have an Irish mother; his penultimate name was Irish.]

[Even if and to the extent that the opinions in this and the next journal entry were justified, which is questionable – much has changed in 30 years, a whole ‘generation’ in traditional terms.]

[continues]

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