Ireland as Universal State

Stereotypical views of Ireland run deep and misunderstandings abound: an emerald isle awash in myths, legends and faerie stories, and steeped in a highly marketable (and misleadingly uniform) “Gaelic” culture hardly does justice to the complexity of this land and its people. Few people would consider Ireland to be a universal state (basically a multi-ethnic state with an inclusive ideology) but its history makes it a surprisingly good candidate for this status. While there are those in Ireland who wish to keep that land exclusively for Celts (“the real Irish” as they mistakenly say), they are blind to their own ancestry and the intermixing of blood and culture that gave rise to the Irish people and made them what they are today.

Ireland really isn’t a Celtic land so much as a melting pot where Norse Vikings, European missionaries and exiles, Norman Knights, and the Celts themselves (who were not the original inhabitants of Ireland it must be remembered but intermixed with the original inhabitants when they came in around 1000 B.C.) intermingled and forged a uniquely composite culture that has proven amazingly persistent and resilient in the face of immense pressures. It would be a mistake to label this culture as being the product of one people – for it is as multi-faceted as any. The reason why immigrants seem to find far more acceptance in Ireland today than in many other areas of Europe where racism is increasingly rampant, is because Afghans, Slavs, North Africans and others are basically following the trend of Irish history and intermingling with the peoples already present in Ireland – a process that can only reinforce and increase the dynamism of the ancient Irish composite culture. Indeed, the Dublin St Patrick’s Day parade now embraces Muslims thus contributing to the all-encompassing and universal tradition of Ireland by drawing in new peoples and new cultural traits. Those who would see Ireland shut out foreign influences would rob Ireland of its greatest and most defining feature – its universality. Without its universality, Ireland has nothing – losing its cultural dynamism just as many Eastern European countries did when they attempted to “purify” their countries in the 20th Century by expelling everything that their narrow-minded leaders considered “foreign”. This must not happen and I have faith that in Ireland, the universal spirit will restrain nationalism and prevent its excesses while extending a hand of welcome to all who come there.

The Irish composite culture is truly unique – for it occurred on an island far away from the traditional seats of European civilization and yet it was its monasteries and monks who largely saved European learning when it vanished almost everywhere else. In a place that the Romans referred to as the “farthest shores of the earth” – a nation was born based not on any one people but upon humanity: and that is what Ireland has been for so many centuries – a bastion of humanity that has suffered so much but has always endured and to integrate even the most violent of invaders and I bear the marks of this composite culture – of this human nation – upon by own body.

The bigotry and strife that has characterized Northern Ireland for the last century – spurred on predominantly by the exclusive and extreme ideologies of the Orange Order – happily can be considered an anomaly in the history of this most unique of universal states. Exclusivity is weak and naked before the greatness of spirit that drives the universal state to embrace all the peoples of the world within itself in all their unity and in all their diversity.