Creative Collective Communalism

---- Meitheal balance over money bias -----

The eco-artistry of forester, farmer, and fisherman 
The virtuosity of wood-turner, glass-blower and ceramicist,
Potters and weavers, painters and writers
Helpers and carers, the ‘adiutores voluntarii’
Healers, teachers, adjudicators, merchants, and performers.
All in all, a polyglot of communal creativity, a polymer of national potential. 

These are the vibrant craft-strands and skill-spectrums available for natural nurture. What travesties have transpired to cut their ‘thread of thrivance’ ?

Ireland exists within a selfish world.
What can be done ?

An alchemy of inventive spawn and creative brawn is urgently, nay distressingly, required. We can all selflessly commit to the forge of renewal, retrieval and revival.
A brotherhood of Brehonism beckons.

True gems of shared living, nestle in a respectful fraternity of generosity of spirit. Encouraging and inspiring each other to excel, not in monetary gain but in an enriched communalism :-

A perennial enterprise of collective endeavour with shared resource, galvanising the spirit of the me to boost and bolster the living heart of the we.

By giving, receiving … by volunteering, reviving… by caring, thriving.

Meithealism in all its flexible and creative permutations, can fruitfully be revived, offering bumper social and communal harvests year-on-year, interest free and inflation proofed. Recalibrating the balance with what we vibrantly are, and can be i.e. compassionate, sentient beings ; as opposed to what we have, what we own and what we flaunt.

The ’Brehonites’ effectively owned and practised their tribal templates of communal guidance, proudly, and with a respectful intimacy. Few lofty adjudicators with no specialised enforcement agency required. Restitutional packages of remorse -- yes, but primarily an espoused authentic rehabilitation back into the fold of communal and environmental holism

Entrepreneurialism seems the all-pervasive, somewhat perverse, philosophy prevailing these days ; purveying an endless utopian mirage of boundless opportunity to invent anew and peddle askew…. It does not crystallise uplifting jewels of human transcendence, but merely conjures the trite trinketry and garish gadgetry of the superfluous. A dark art of excess hovers, a malignancy of indulgence lurks. Obese craving leads merely to obscene ‘depraving ‘ of the human holism.

What instead ?
What about ‘entre-personalisme’ ? …. a tapestry of the folk, a tight weave of the skills, crafts & aptitudes, lore & learning of all .. however small .. however humble. Catering handsomely, not only for the folk who live on the hill, but also those who toil in the valley.

‘Brehonism’, it seems, afforded a fair empowerment and respect for all .. to all, where confluence of self, group and environmental nature was a fundamental aspiration -- an enacted reality, a truly shared ownership. Akin to a protective liberal maturity of sorts, it moved no doubt with a slow and steady modus operandum.

Such an ‘entre-tempo’ of reflective pace with measured consideration can be successfully re-engaged, substituting the rush-gush, ‘tigerish’ freneticism of the quick-kill, fast-buck, con-job, risk-gambling, exploitative, addictive fragility of greed and self-aggrandisement.

Enriching the community soul and the national psyche is the clear clarion call to creative arms. Sewing a counter- currency of time-share, burden-share, care-share across the hedgerows and throughout the land is paramount. Quilting communities in bundles of barter, exchanging time-coupons, skill-sets, leisure-lore and art-forms, freely and without prejudice, fear or undue favour. Assertive, productive meithealism in all its glorious transcendent simplicity.

The challenge of course is to re-plant this seed of communalism, while the existing systems of usury, ab-usury, fiscal ineptitudes and financial manipulations hold sway. Committing to the process of meithealised revolutionary reform, is not for the fainthearted, but it is also not beyond reach.

‘Care-share’ endeavour for wholesome creative survival and pro-creative ‘thrival’ is everything. Small is beautiful to begin, coalescing gradually to create the big. We need to :- re-ignite the cooperative movement ; rekindle the meitheal spirit & revitalise localism.

Money-free / time-rich exchanges are abundant in option. Collective sharing of wide-ranging local needs & services ; clocking-up community time-coupons for exchange of skill & craft, material & equipment, counsel & guidance can combine to present a fertile launching patch. Outside costings will be inevitable, but with agreed magnanimity of purpose, these can be significantly re-aligned, shared and replaced, in part at least, by time-currency, skill-mix and practical needs-based repayment. Money is not all.

Thomas Davis had a handle on this in his tender and generous assessment of “The Boatman of Kinsale “ :-
“ But money never made the man,
Nor wealth a happy home “

Let’s re-imagine an Ireland, where the currency of people and the creative rewards of sharing within a dedicated egalitarianism are prime, and not just on risk-loan. Happy homes are surely more valuable than money in the mattress !

Acronym for a new I-R-E-L-A-N-D

Inspiring Recalibrated Empathic Linkage Afore Nourishing (the) Demos.

 “ Dulce et decorum est .. “