Month: September 2016

Social Class in Dublin: the final taboo

Dirty old classism
As I prepare to leave Dublin, I find myself reflecting on the things that make life in this city special. Many are splendid: the quick Dublin wit, the pleasant gift of the gab, the unique blend of international culture and local identity. But some are less worthy of celebration, and in this category I would place social class. I have travelled much in my life, and made it my business to understand a place as well as I could, but nowhere have I observed a social class structure quite like Dublin’s. For an issue that barely gets mentioned, class is everywhere on the streets of the Fair City. The fault lines are so visible that you can determine a Dubliner’s social class by their dress style, by their manner of walking, by the very first syllable of the first word that comes out of their mouths; even by the complexion of their skin. Not to mention the neighbourhood they live in: Even the city’s postcodes are euphemisms for the class of its residents.

By way of example: If you’re 25 and you grew up in Clontarf or Clonskeagh (postcodes 3 and 14, respectively), you went to college – probably either UCD or Trinity. If you grew up in Clonsilla or Clondalkin (15 and 22), you did not. The former ‘Clons’ are non-smokers, they support Leinster rugby, go on holidays to the South of France, shop in Dundrum or Powerscourt and work as accountants or barristers; while the latter Clons smoke, support Celtic or Manchester United soccer teams, go on holidays to Spain, shop in Blanchardstown or Liffey Valley and work as builders, shop assistants or else simply draw the dole.

Inequality of opportunity
That wouldn’t be so bad, if it were simply a case of hard work and merit allowing those who earned it to rise a little higher than others. But the truth is, your postcode has little to do with hard work and merit, and much more to do with who your parents were. You need only look at a Dublin child of 10 for a few short seconds and you will be able to project the course of their future prosperity, to a shocking degree. The ones with poor skin, screaming at the top of their lungs in public, and with their feet up on the opposing seat of the Luas Red Line train which they ride late at night without either a ticket or parental supervision, will not command decent salaries in 20 years’ time. The truth is, they have zero chance of advancing up the social hierarchy. Conversely the 10 year olds you meet in the Luas Green Line train, en route from their fee-paying private school in Milltown to their violin lessons in Ranelagh are almost certain to succeed, economically and socially. No matter how lazy they are in school or how badly the bow screeches across the strings, come 2036 they will probably be doing just fine.

Of course, I am deliberately picking extreme cases, in order to make my point. In reality there is a spectrum of privilege and disadvantage. Class is a fluid concept. But the observation is more than just anecdotal. A recent study shows that Ireland stands out among its European peers as having the highest intergenerational persistence of low educational attainment and the highest wage penalty for having a father with low educational attainment. In other words: if your dad didn’t finish secondary school, you won’t either. And you probably won’t earn very much money. This is a bit true everywhere, but it’s especially true in Ireland, and – though I haven’t got data – I’d be willing to bet it’s even more true in Dublin.

Does social class really matter?
I’ve sometimes been accused by those who know me well of over-focusing on this issue. After all, can’t we just let class be class? Some people read The Sun, others read The Guardian. Some people spend their leisure time in betting shops, others in art galleries. If that’s what makes people happy, why is it a big deal?

Unfortunately, class is more than just a preference in culture and clothing. It determines the quality and length of life, not only for yourself, but for your children and their children. The OECD indicator below shows this Class Mortality Gap in brutally stark terms:
class-mortality-gap
While there is a wide variation across countries, what the chart reveals is that being middle class (i.e. you went to college) adds about 4 – 8 years to your life, depending on whether you are a man or a woman. This makes the Class Mortality Gap almost as bad as the Gender Mortality Gap. Having the misfortune to be born to socially disadvantaged parents is almost as bad for your health as being born with a penis.

De bleedin’ elephant in de roo-um
What makes the social class phenomenon in Dublin all the more eerie is the absence of meaningful discussion of it as an issue. The liberal commentariat are hardly silent on women’s rights, traveller’s rights, abortion rights, gay rights and just about any other social issue you can think of. Rightly so, you may well say. But on social class, their silence is deafening. It’s the last taboo subject in polite Irish politics. Worse: There’s a myth of classlessness in Irish society that seems to be perpetuated whenever you bring the subject up. Class, so the narrative often goes, is something that happens in England. And even then, the Irish of rank and privilege are most comfortable with it when it appears in BBC period dramas. Best to keep the Irish Sea and a hundred years of history between ourselves and the whole messy business!

Riot at the Fringefest in Merrion Square: The excellent rapper Emmet Kirwan sells working class culture to middle class punters at prices only their accents can afford.
Riot at the Fringefest in Merrion Square: The excellent rapper Emmet Kirwan sells working class culture to middle class punters at prices people with his accent could never afford.

Myself and my equally middle class partner recently went to see a show at a pop-up theatre in one of Dublin’s more middle class gated parks: Merrion Square. In the queue for pre-show food (wraps, don’t you know – one had one’s choice between halloumi and falafel) we conversed politely with our fellow show-goers, using rounded vowels and fully enunciated consonants. Then it was time to filter in to our seats. The show was called “Riot”, an eclectic mix of acrobatics, music and political commentary, featuring Ireland’s most famous drag queen, Panti, who since the Marriage Equality Referendum last year has become something of a national treasure. The politics played very much to the crowd. In between slapstick gymnastic routines and sing-songs, there were frequent called to “Abolish the 8th”, a reference to Ireland’s constitutional prohibition on abortion-on-demand.

But the showstopper was a young artist named Emmet Kirwan. He hails from a working class Dublin area known as Tallaght – a suburb built in the 1970s and 1980s to cope with the overflow from crowded inner city neighbourhoods. Kirwan’s unique blend of the Dublin working class vernacular and hip hop was as electrifying as anything I had seen on stage. With such an overtly political tone to the production, his indisputable talent and the obvious power of the medium to convey just such a message, this was surely the perfect opportunity for Kirwan to cast some home truths into the sea of class privilege upon which he gazed. I was waiting for the lyric: “A boy of three / undernourished and weak / Can’t afford to eat / Cause his ma’ don’t take home in a week / what youz are after spendin’ to sit in dah’ fuckin’ seat”

That lyric never came. Kirwan was happy to bang on about poverty, but he kept the teeth of social disadvantage well away from the manicured hands that were feeding him. The audience took it all in politely, letting out a dutiful cheer whenever the politics of the left-leaning middle class were voiced (pro-choice, anti-Catholic church) But nowhere was there an honest recognition of the dissonance between the culture on the stage which they were happy to expropriate, and the social reality of that culture’s roots, which they and their parents not only avoided at all costs, but in fact were the ultimate authors of.

Choose your parents carefully
If class is so present, such a problem, and yet Dubliners are so unwilling to talk about it, can anything be done? Is there anything more concrete we can offer to young people who’ve already made the mistake of not selecting rich parents before they were born? Or is it just too late? I, for one, think there’s quite a lot that could be done. We could start by looking at how (and in which neighbourhoods) social housing quotas are being filled; taking a hard and honest look at how the State is subsidising fee-paying private schools; looking at thresholds for inheritance and gift tax.

But before we get to concrete policies, the discussion has to start by acknowledging de bleedin’ elephant in de roo-um. Here’s my lyrical contribution:

Dublin is a class-riven city,
And the cost of that is shitty.
We bury are heads in de sand
Makin’ like it was all grand.
Wha’ a bleedin’ pity!

Is Social Media turning us into monsters?

Antisocial Media
I started using social media a year and a half ago, mainly to promote my freshly published book, The Hydra. It took me a few days to figure out the main functions, a week to hone my marketing strategy and within a month, I found myself embroiled in bitter, acrimonious exchanges with anonymous trolls over subjects I had only a passing interest in. It all came to a head when, one day in July, I found myself about to publish a tweet in which I was calling someone an asshole. I paused, deleted the tweet without sending, took a deep breath and asked myself what the hell was wrong with me. This was not a part of my marketing strategy. And even beyond that, I am not the kind of person who calls other people assholes; not in social situations, not even when cycling to work and some aggressive, rude driver nearly runs me off the road. Yet there I was, about to commit to a bare knuckle, ad hominem insult of someone I didn’t even know. For no reason.

This was the moment I re-evaluated my approach to social media and found some helpful advice. The first and most important rule I learned was: If you don’t have something nice to post, don’t post anything. Before you send a tweet or leave a comment, ask yourself this: Is this a positive sentiment? Does this show me from my best side? Would I say this to the person’s face in a crowded room of mutual acquaintances? And if not: Cancel. Delete. Or at very least, reword. It’s okay, I discovered, to give your interlocutor the last word, even if you don’t agree with them. It takes more courage to walk away from a troll in silence than to descend to their level.

This strategy is working for me, and I’ve managed to avoid the worst of the trolls so far. Thankfully, 4,300 Tweets later, I haven’t had to block anyone and have only been blocked by a very few people, all without compromising on my opinions. Yet it does not answer the question as to why social media brings out the worst in otherwise normal people.

 

The tweets above from Nathan and Christa are nothing exceptional. I found them in – quite literally – seconds of searching for an example of hateful tweets. In fact, one might easily scroll past a dozen such tweets without batting an eyelid. Yet if you step back and consider their content, they don’t reflect particularly well on their authors. To wish ‘rabies’ on any person, whether you like his/her politics or not, is contemptible. To liken Donald Trump’s face with an ape’s posterior is puerile, untrue and unkind. I’m sure neither person, if they were introduced to Mr Trump at a dinner party, would say these things to his face. Moreover, I’m sure they never speak this way to anyone they interact with outside of Twitter. I don’t know them, but I’m willing to bet both Nathan and Christa are really nice, polite people if you meet them in the queue at the supermarket or in a local Starbucks. Most people are. So why be hateful online?

Anonymity
One explanation that is often advanced to describe extreme online behaviours is that the shield of anonymity encourages impoliteness. The detachment and privacy afforded by the cyber-world removes any accountability for our words. It also allows us to plug into a wider debate from the very private spaces where we are prone to let our guard down: One can tweet from the living room, from bed, even from the toilet.

This leads to a debate as to whether people are at their ‘realest’ when they are not being their ‘real selves’. Is Dave McKenzie, sales manager from Dayton Ohio, being fake when he wishes his clients a nice afternoon? Is the real Dave McKenzie the guy who goes home, logs in as “Knuckler1776” and abuses Hillary Clinton supporter’s for being ‘fat pigs’ with smelly body parts? It’s tempting to think so, yet I would take a more optimistic view. In life, we are always playing roles. When we go back to our families we revert to our childhood roles, at work we behave differently than we do when out for a night with our friends. None of these roles are any more ‘real’ than the others. What’s new about anonymous internet usage is that it allows us to play a new role. Adding this persona doesn’t make the other roles we play any less real. And conversely, taking it away won’t make us phonies either.

Algorithms of Hate
Another possible explanation is that the way content is sorted and customised by the various platforms encourages more and more extreme opinions. Custom sorted content means we see what we want to see, except often a more extreme version of what we first thought. So, for example, if I click on a Youtube video showing a refugee assaulting a German woman on the street, the algorithms used to suggest content to me will select other such videos. I find myself watching video after video showing African or Middle Eastern men verbally abusing, assaulting or harassing white, German women. As a user, it is easy for me to (erroneously) assume this content is representative and I quickly leap to the conclusion that refugees are everywhere, hurting ‘our’ women. A sense of panic engulfs me. Despite the fact that my feed is overflowing with clear examples of this kind of thing, the mainstream media appears unwilling to give it due attention. A conspiracy!

Now imagine my anger when someone I ‘meet’ on Twitter has the gall to suggest the vast majority of refugees are nice people, and that the instances of violence are relatively few. “Idiot, moron!” I think to myself. He, in turn, has been watching videos that confirm his previously held convictions, and my last tweet “Round them up at gunpoint and deport them! Claim our country back!” incites him to call me a “Racist turd.”

In reality, both he and I are good people with good intentions. We don’t really want Syrians refugees to suffer and we don’t want German women to feel unsafe on the streets. But the nature of the platform has made our views more extreme, our positions more entrenched and lowered our threshold for issuing gratuitous insults. Instead of bringing us to a possible common ‘middle ground’ position, we end up hurling insults until one of us blocks the other. Communication failure.

Putting the Social back into Social Media
Is there anything we can do to counteract this? I feel there is; a great deal in fact. Mostly, it’s about being mindful of how we interact. One method is the ten second rule. Before you reply to anything online, count to ten and then ask youself, can I make this message kinder? Another trick is ‘killing your adversary with kindness’. The troll culture has made us so aggressive that it can be quite a powerful argument if you simply turn to someone who is being aggressive and say something like “I know you are a decent, kind person. Even if we disagree, I respect you.”

Another idea I would suggest is not trying to use Social Media to push your ideas. Why not search for things you are less certain, but possibly interested in knowing more about? For example, I might have strong views about abortion policy, but I might not know very much about whether nuclear power is good or bad. I could interact with experts who have real knowledge in an open curious way. That benefits me far more and tends to lead to much more pleasant social interactions online.

My final thought takes us back to the idea of anonymity. I would encourage anyone who hasn’t already done so, to set up a real account, with your real picture and real name. You will very quickly find that the content you are prepared to put into the world is quite different, more civil, more human and kinder. And that, I choose to believe, is the ‘real’ you.

The moment I became a writer

The pub was crowded, as was usual for pub quiz night in our local Brussels boozer, an Irish pub by the name of ‘Michael Collins’. The quiz had reached that point where the organisers pause to tabulate the scores from the first four question rounds. Our team members all looked up from our scrawled notes and makeshift maps of African countries bordering the Congo, and began the ritual small talk. The latest movies and sports results, holiday plans, good places to eat.

“So,” Charlotte said, turning to me, “what is it you do?” Charlotte was new to our quiz team, and was still doing the introductory rounds.

“I’m an economist,” was my automatic response. I wanted to add, “but I’m really a writer. I’ve been writing all my life. The first draft of my novel is ready, waiting for me. It’s willing me to muster up the courage to nurture it fully to life.”

Instead I forced a self-deprecating smile and added, “Economics is boring stuff. You know, mostly just adjusting numbers in spreadsheets.”

That comment earned nothing more than a polite smile from Charlotte. Microsoft Excel might have pretty good mathematical functionality, but it’s a real conversation killer.

In my head, though, the conversation went on. As the quizmaster read out questions for rounds five through nine, and the team busily debated where the 1976 Olympics were hosted (Was it Munich?), and which country exported the most bananas (Costa Rica or Ecuador?) I found myself wondering why it was I was so shy about defining myself as a writer. By the time the final scores came in, and our team finished a lowly sixth place, I had come to a decision. If I was going to be a writer, I had to think of myself as a writer. And that would mean changing my priorities. The next day I told my boss I would be applying for a five month leave of absence.

Two weeks later I had packed my tent and sleeping bag, got on my bicycle and pedalled my way out of Brussels, out of Belgium, and right through the sausage-and-beer bloated midsection of Germany, until the Danube River bore me to Vienna. 1,400 km of cycling was enough to rid my mind of any recollection of the dreaded spreadsheets. I took a room in Vienna’s trendy Seventh District and spent the next four weeks poring over the text of my novel.

One evening, after rewriting a particularly satisfying chapter, I decided to break out of my hermit cell and found my way to a local beer garden, where I chanced to meet a Californian guy who had been an engineer and was now running workshops for alternative medicine and yoga.

“So what kiThe Hydrand of work do you do?” he asked me.

My glanced drifted momentarily to the string of lights suspended across the trellis at the edge of the garden.

“I’m a writer,” I answered.

And that was the moment I became a writer.