We must mend our ways or else face the Wrath of God
The Wrath of God is what a previous age would have called what this country is currently going through. In the Bible, whenever the Israelites abandoned the ways of God, they faced his wrath. But of course, we now live in a more rational, secular, age, and so we no longer believe in that kind of thing.
But wait, did I just say 'more rational'?
Scratch that, because clearly the past 10 years were anything but rational. Instead, we threw caution and common sense to the winds and convinced ourselves there would be no negative consequences, only good ones.
Richard Dawkins, it now turns out, wrote the wrong book. Instead of writing 'The God Delusion', he should have written 'The Financial Delusion'.
The financial delusion has damaged us much more than any supposed 'God delusion'. We thought we had conquered risk and the economic cycle. What could possibly be more delusional?
I don't want to over-praise people like George Lee and David McWilliams because if you're in the habit of forecasting doom and gloom, sooner or later you're going to be right.
But Lee and McWilliams and a handful of others such as Dan O'Brien of The Economist -- he has just published an excellent book called 'Ireland, Europe and the World' -- were to the boom what a sceptic would be to belief in God; they just didn't believe in it, not past a certain point anyway.
But an even better analogy is between Lee, McWilliams, et al and the Old Testament prophets.
Ireland had wandered off the straight and narrow path, they warned, and it could only end in disaster.
You see, our concept of the Wrath of God is all wrong.
We imagine that God is a big, vengeful, killjoy who gets mad at us for having fun and that everything would actually be alright if he would only leave us alone.
But in fact, the Wrath of God is really another name for the dire consequences that inevitably follow whenever we persist in doing the wrong things.
God, in fact, doesn't have to do anything to punish us; our actions punish us. If you gamble to excess, you will land in trouble. If you drink too much, likewise. Even a child knows that.
Things are a lot more complicated when the pain that results from a stupid action doesn't immediately follow, especially when the stupid action results instead in short-term gain.
Then, you might convince yourself that the pain will never come and you carry on your stupidity.
What happens then is that when the pain does eventually come, as it must, it is far, far worse than if you had felt it immediately.
All of politics right now in Ireland is an attempt to somehow dodge the Wrath of God or, at least, divert it to someone else.
'The Frontline' a couple of weeks ago, when public sector workers were pitted against private sector workers, was a case in point.
Private sector workers can't avert the Wrath of God. They have to take the hit by accepting a pay cut or losing their jobs. But the public sector is trying to turn the full Wrath of God onto the private sector which it seems to think is full of fat cats, and not ordinary workers who generally earn less than their counterparts in the public sector.
Should we blame public sector workers for this attitude? Not really.
Instead we should blame the trade unions and the Labour Party for pandering to them and convincing them that the private sector really is full of fat cats who aren't paying their 'fair share' even though the top 10pc of earners already pay 70pc of income tax.
Labour and the unions are being deeply cynical.
They must know that the current level of public expenditure is absolutely unsustainable and that any further increase in the overall tax burden will be deeply counterproductive (the Wrath of God again).
But instead of educating their members and the public sector in the facts of life, which would be the responsible and patriotic thing to do, they are trying to maximise their support and ensure that Labour gets into power with the biggest possible number of seats.
If Labour and the unions win their battle and public expenditure isn't deeply cut in the short term, everyone will lose in the medium and long term, including the public sector -- especially the public sector.
If public spending isn't deeply cut, international lenders will stop lending us the half billion euro a week we need at present to keep the country going.
Then the IMF, or some equivalent organisation, will come in and we will feel the Wrath of God in its full and terrible majesty.
We need to wake up to the fact that the Wrath of God cannot be averted.
All that is left to do is to don the sackcloth and ashes, mend our ways, and hope we don't bear its full brunt.
There is no choice but to walk the straight and narrow path.
- David Quinn
Irish Independent
