I see you're a Gaia freak, aren't you?
Excerpt from the aforementioned paper:
One danger inherent in such Gaian sociobiology is that human rights can all too easily be rendered secondary to considerations of "social" stability, as defined by Gaians. Commenting in an earlier work on the civil strife that has historically racked Northern Ireland, for example, Goldsmith has insisted that Catholics and Protestants constitute separate and implacably opposed "tribal groups", whose differences are now culturally insurmountable; the only lasting solution therefore lies in splitting the two communities apart, forcibly if necessary. Writing three years after the most recent era of "Troubles" flared in 1968, Goldsmith argued:
"The Catholics and the Protestants in Northern Ireland . . . constitute two distinct ethnic groups, of different origin, with different manners and traditions and different motivations and capacities. They could occupy the same geographic area and form a single society if they were capable of living in cultural symbiosis with each other, which they have done up to now. The Catholics, however, are no longer willing to fill the lower echelons of the economic hierarchy, as the cultural pattern which previously enabled them to do so has largely broken down. The only remaining solution is to separate them territorially. Ataturk separated Greeks and Turks very successfully, although there was a terrible outcry at the time and it undoubtedly caused considerable inconvenience to the people who were forced to migrate. But should we not be willing to accept measures of inconvenience in order to establish a stable society?"
Entirely missing from such an account is any sense that the "differences" in Northern Ireland are not reducible to those between "Catholics" and "Protestants".
Moreover, it is not possible to categorise the peoples of Northern Ireland into such broad, homogenised camps. Not all Catholics are "Nationalists" (supporters of a united Ireland), nor are all Protestants "Unionists" (supporters of continued membership of the United Kingdom). The experience of Unionist and Republican politics also differs radically for men and women, whilst class differences may mean that middle-class Catholics have more in common with middle-class Protestants than with their working class co-religionists - and vice versa. Even those class differences obscure wide divergences between and amongst individuals as to how they approach the conflict - and their willingness, or unwillingness, to renegotiate existing political structures.
[snip]
Now, John, how can you tell chimps from baboons in this Irish snafu??!? Oh, and if you really can, why not give Senator George Mitchell a buzz? --sure he'll appreciate your Gaian theory in troubleshooting the US-sponsored peace process in Northern Ireland.... |
