The Blindboy Podcast - Speaking with the President of Ireland

Episode Date: November 16, 2022

I chat with Michael D Higgins, who is the President of Ireland about his Macnamh 100 seminars. We speak about the reflection and contemplation of history, and the Irish Psyche as it relates to home and housing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tongue the furnace, you punctured earnests. Welcome to the Blind Buy Podcast. Before I continue, I'd like to remind you all that it is Science Week right now. It's Science Week on the 13th to the 20th of November. Two weeks ago, I spoke to the quantum physicist Seamus Davis about quantum physics and about Irish mythology. We had a wonderful cross-disciplinary chat where Seamus tried to democratise quantum physics for me

through a shared understanding of and love of mythology and art. If you'd like to hear that, just go to my podcast from two weeks ago. And I put that out to raise awareness for Science Week. And now I'm telling you you it is Science Week right now and there's loads of magnificent talks and events and seminars up and down the country this week which I urge you to go and see

if you're interested in science and if you want to find out about those events go to sfi.ie I want to thank all of you who listen to this podcast for the feedback from last week's podcast. I spoke about issues I'm facing around emotional resilience, but I received so much wonderful, kind, loving messages of support and just an outpouring of humanity from so many listeners and I tried to respond to as many as I possibly could but genuinely the sheer human authenticity of some of the messages I

received acted as quite a healing tonic to counteract some of the negativity that I spoke about last week. So thank you very much. So at the end of last week's podcast, I mentioned that I was going to have an incredibly special guest on this week's podcast, but I wasn't sure whether it was going to happen or not. Just before I put out last week's episode, I was contacted by the office of the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins,

and the message basically was, the President listens to your podcasts and would like to come on and speak to you as a guest. So of course I said yes, but I also couldn't believe it because I'm like, did I just get a fucking mail that the President of Ireland wants to come on my podcast for a chat? So I did. So yesterday, I went up to Arras-on-Ouchteron, which is the house that the President of Ireland lives in. Which is a beautiful, magnificent building. And two interesting facts about Arras-on-Ouchteron. Number one, it was almost built in limerick.

It was almost built in limerick, which would have been hilarious. And also, the architecture of Orison Ucturon was most likely the inspiration for the White House in America. Orison Ucturon is designed in a neoclassical style, which means it's an architectural callback to the classical styles of Rome, which itself was a callback to the classical styles of Greece. But you know, by the columns, the columns outside the Orison Ucturon,

very clearly neoclassical. But the architect of the White House in America was a chap called James Hoban, who was born in Ireland. But that's why people speculate that Orison Uhteron in Ireland inspired the design of the White House in America. But anyway, I went up and I got to sit down and have a chat with the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, who is an absolutely lovely man

who was born in Limerick himself. And what the President wanted to speak with me about specifically is an initiative that he has been doing called Machnav 100, which is a series of historical seminars

that reflect and contemplate and meditate the past 100 years since the War of Independence that liberated 26 counties of Ireland from British rule. And Machnav 100 is a project that President Higgins is so proud of and took such a direct role in putting together that he wanted to chat about this. Now, there's six seminars in total. They've been going since 2020.

You can find out about them on the President's website, president.ie. They're all on YouTube. And what they are, are seminars that are led by President Higgins. And then they contain input from leading scholars from different backgrounds, with loads of different perspectives. And they share their insights and thoughts on the context and events of the formative period of a century ago. And on the nature of commemoration itself. And the final Machnav 100 seminar is going out this Thursday the 17th of November. And the title of it is Memory, History and Imagination. And as well as like a keynote from the President.

You have input from Professor Declan Kybird, like Professor Angela Burke, Lelia Dolan, Fergal Keane. And it's a way to democratize and to think about history. And that's on the RTE player. If you want to watch it, it'll be on the RTE player this Thursday, the 17th of November. RTE player this Thursday the 17th of November. Before I get into the chat with Michael D. Higgins

I announced this on Instagram like a day before I went up because I wanted to get questions from people who listen to this podcast. I wanted to get questions from as many people as possible if I was going to sit down with the President. Now I got about a thousand

questions and I picked as many as I could. We spoke for just over an hour. I couldn't ask all the questions I would have liked and then expected the rigorous, thoughtful responses that those questions demanded within the time frame. I could have easily sat down with the president and had another 10 chats because he's a fascinating man. So there's a number of important social issues

that just I couldn't get covered. But what we did get to cover was we chatted about reflection and contemplation of history and viewing history from multiple angles rather than one single narrative. The little goal that I had was to bring the conversation as much as possible to the now, to the issues that are facing Irish people today. So we spoke about the philosophy of the home and housing within the Irish psyche and how the concept of home is related

to our sense of self and our sense of connection and emotional well-being and I got to chat quite autobiographically with the president because he's 81 years of age he's had a massive incredibly interest in life and then I then have in my awareness, which is mad, when you get to sit down with the president and have a chat, like a human conversation, you're creating a historical document. And I really wanted to use the opportunity to do that, to try and have a conversation that was as human as possible.

That, yes, I'm speaking to the president of Ireland, but I'm also speaking to a man called Michael from Limerick. And those opportunities are rare within the solemnity of having any opportunity to speak to a dignitary. So with that in mind, I really don't want to interrupt the chat that I have I want to let it play through so I'm gonna get the ocarina pause out of the way early so I'm now gonna play a Spanish clay whistle for a couple of seconds so I don't startle ye because an algorithmically generated digitally inserted advert is going to play right now. This unmissable evening features Herway and Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Gustavo Jimeno in conversation. Together, they dissect the mesmerizing layers of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, followed by a complete soul-stirring rendition of the famously unnerving piece, Symphony Exploder.

April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall. For tickets, visit TSO.ca. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one

is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. You would have heard an advert there, I don't know what for. You would have heard an advert there, I don't know what for. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast. This is a listener funded podcast. This is my full time job. This is how I earn a living. If this podcast brings you joy, solace, distraction, entertainment,

whatever it does for you, if you're enjoying it, please consider paying me for the work that I'm doing. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. But if you can't afford that, if you don't have that, don't worry about it. You can listen to the podcast for free because the patrons are paying for you to listen for free. So everybody gets a podcast and I get to earn a living.

It's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness. Patreon.com forward slash The Blind Boy Podcast. Also, it keeps this podcast independent. I'm not beholden to any advertiser. No advertiser can tell me what to do or dictate the content in any way also i'm gigging in brussels this thursday if you have any interest in coming along to that couple of tickets left no fucking friday man i'm gigging in brussels on friday um come to that if you want look look it up on the internet. So without further ado, here is my interview with the magnificent President Michael D. Higgins.

And if you're wondering, yes, I did wear my plastic bag on my head. You can hear it crinkling over the microphone. I'd like to open with, first off, thank you so much for having me. It's an absolute pleasure to chat with you. I've been an admirer for a long time. You've been president for most of my lifetime.

And it's just been wonderful to have someone who reflects kind of my ideals, my ideals of social justice and compassion and artistry. And it gives me great hope

seeing someone like you being the president well thank you that's a very fine compliment that is so much appreciated from your good self and all knowing all the issues in which you're involved it's great that you've made you've had such a great success it's i mean it's wonderful to be like i started it out of my bedroom and now i've got i just celebrated 50 million listens around the world, you know, which I can't believe. And what podcasting, what it allows me to do is to have this space for curiosity. And to be honest, it's, I'm funded by my patrons. And to be honest, I'm funded by patrons. So the people who listen to my podcast fund it.

And that funding allows me complete and utter creative freedom. And I'm not beholden to any advertisers or anything like that. So it's almost like the perfect model of state broadcasting. Because I believe with state broadcasting and public service broadcasting, you need to provide money for people to fail, not necessarily to succeed. Because you'll know as an artist, you've got to fail. If you can't fail, you'll never succeed. And if you're forced to succeed, you have mediocrity.

So about this initiative, Macnaf 100. The word Macnaf, as I understand it, it's one of these Irish words that doesn't have like an exact definition, it can mean meditation, it can mean reflection. Yes. Like what is the intention of the Machniv seminars for yourself? Machniv, when I picked that concept to put as a title, you are entirely right.

It is a word that can mean reflection, thought, smuinshu, it's more than smuinshu because it's not just superficial thought, it's actually an idea of thinking that goes deep and maybe returning to something that you had an opinion of and you're going back to it and revising it. Mockner was able to do that. So I gave it as the title to six seminars

that I would run over a period of two years. So one thing I'd like to speak about in your keynote, which really struck out for me, is you spoke about your own father who served in the IRA and the 2nd Cork Brigade and how he applied for his pension after the Civil War, but then your uncle, who would have been on the opposite side in the Civil War.

So your dad was interned and had difficulty applying for a pension but then your uncle who would have been on the opposite side in the Civil War. So your dad was interned and had difficulty applying for a pension and then your uncle was serving in the Irish Army. And I found that fascinating. Well, I can tell you it is fascinating when you look at it from a distance, but the truth is it was quite painful for me as a youngster and you have it right my family on both sides both my mother's side but and my father's side in particular were all involved in the war of independence they started out my father was from a family of 10 he was the youngest in a family of ten

and he went away to train as an apprentice to bar and grocery but very early on he joined the volunteers and he was in the East Clare Brigade and that is where his brother Peter was as well my mother was over in Cork in Le Scarre County Cork but it's in County Clare that was where my family was. It was an interesting background in a way

because my father's family, I said that in turn, his father and mother, there had been seven of them and five of them ended up in Australia. In 1852, my grandfather's brother was a ploughman And five of them ended up in Australia. In 1852, my grandfather's brother was a ploughman and he went to Australia with his sister. And by 1860, just over a decade after the famine, five of the seven were in Australia. And the man who remained at home, that's my grandfather,

he died just after my father was born at the youngest of ten. And then I think that they must have got assistance from the Australian relatives because my father had two years of schooling beyond the national school. And that enabled him then. And he was an apprentice, first in Ennis and then in Brian Greens in Limerick. And then after Limerick,

he went on to Benchies in Charleville. And I think old Mr. Benchie was a nationalist because my father was hired as the traveler, as it were, and he had a good salary of £130 a year and £50 traveling. But then what happened is that during the Civil War that followed the National War, Mr. Binchy died and I think his son succeeded him. And his son did not have the same views. So that's why you'll see in which those references I have made and they're in my father's later

applications for a pension to say that the trades as they were called at the time went on a delegation to the young man and asked him to take my father back and he refused. So my father, no one, my father writes at that particular time, it's there in his application, very few people would hire an internee. Wow. And he also wasn't very... And how long was he interned for?

He was from the 15th of February 1923 until the 21st of December 1923. I think his mother died then in January of 2024. Now, he's not able to get any job for a year and then he goes back to Newbridge and Kildare and he gets a job, £50 a year live in. And it was one of the most moving things in my life when I was in the Dáil and that. I got a photograph one day from an old woman, she'd asked her son to leave it in for me and it was a photograph of Nolan's

shop in Newbridge and she had an X on a window, she said, this was your father's room. It was of the nature of things, I have to tell you, that I haven't ever really been able to pin down much of the detail, but I do know this is something why I was interested in talking to yourself as well and knowing your interest in this. I'm interested in history belonging to everybody. And the only way, in fact, we can, there isn't a fixed version of history. The only way we can do it

is by continually taking advantage of the new research, the new material we have. And what I am in favour of is putting all the different pieces of facts on the table as a kind of mosaic and let people then, in fact, be open to revise and be open to change as new information comes into being. That's an interesting way of looking at it.

So like... That's why we call it Machnuff. That's why I'm saying is that I'm encouraging... It's not linear. It's not a linear... It's not linear. It's like being in a gallery of history and you are the, you get to walk around and observe many pieces. Yes. And other things will, different things will strike you.

I also call it, you know, from very much your own kind of work now would be, I said there isn't, you just don't memorise a fact. There are waves of memory because you will remember it differently another time and so forth so what you do is you're accurate and truthful as to events and for most people the one thing that's not available

I keep it to people that is of no help is to try and say you can have an amnesia and draw a curtain across the past and move on because I think it's much better to transact what is unpleasant better to transact what is unpleasant and to transact what is painful and to do it that way.

And that's what we've been doing. So I began actually in December two years ago with the first seminar. And the first seminar was all about that. It was about the concepts around the thing, about memory, memory forgetting, about that. It was about the concepts around the thing about memory, memory forgetting, about forgiveness and I used this, what is involved in that,

about how you do all the, I feel like that, the mind work on it. And then I went on to look at, is that trying to see the events that took place.

You know, you'll have a representation of a particular event. But I said that one thing that you must respect in the whole thing is that history the events that took place. You know, you'll have a representation of a particular event. But I said that one thing that you must respect in the whole thing is that history is complex and that an event

is taking place in a context. And like I say, the Irish War of Independence was taking place at a time when the British Empire was after a victory, but at the same time was in danger of breaking.

So you have people who are looking, for example, about the events of the period 1916, you'd have them saying, well, for many it was an emancipatory event, but for others it was a breaking the link with empire and so on. So I tried to put it all in. So when I became president, one of the things I did was about the War of Independence, really. And I gave a number of speeches, and they're now all available at my website and that. So then I moved on, if you like, to the period that includes the Civil War and that includes the establishment of the state. So as we moved on then to the third and the fourth and so on, I began to look at it as there are, everything that I'm saying to you now is influenced by one fundamental

fact that people don't give enough attention to maybe, and that is that Ireland emptied itself of people. In a hundred years, eight million people left Ireland. And in 1901, in the census, the majority of the people who were born on the island of Ireland are living abroad. In majority, it's about 52, 48 or something like that.

And a lot of what happened after in the early days of the Irish state then is one, and you to say some people adjusted very well and the history very often is a history of constitutions and the history of who was in parliament and who and so on. But what is very necessary I've been trying to to point out is what were the people experiencing and what were the people feeling? And you had a flu in 1918.

Yeah. Went to a tens of thousands died. You equally had the World War, which had come to an end in 1914-18. You had people who'd come home from the war injured, and they weren't very well. You had 1916. Then you had 12,000 people who had been imprisoned during the Civil War. So it isn't a case, a feeling about giving the best possible

version of the events, it's about trying to see the full complexity of the events. of the events. It's about trying to see the full complexity of the events. Like, for example, there's no doubt whatever, Ireland was changing. People had, the tenants of the late 19th century

had become owners. There were many of them. So here's what were you to do then. What had happened, the agricultural labourers, many of them had emigrated. Yeah. And in case of places like Limerick and Waterford

and so on, there had been strikes by agricultural labourers who were opposed by nationalists and if you like the graziers who were now the people who got the most of the land after the departure of the landlords in parts of the west of Ireland

they would be able to recruit people with a nationalist tendency to face down the labourers. There were 140,000 agricultural labourers in the big union, the transport union. You had a thing called the Farmers Union, which was regularly in conflict, which actually tried to have a reduction in wages. So all, what I was, this is all history that was a kind of left aside as you tell a glorious story. So what I wanted to

say, what I really liked was that first of all, history is very important, but not just the history of constitutions and military history, but the history of how the people were living. And to try and create, to make, that's why I decided, look, I'll run a series of seminars, I'll invite people from different perspectives, so I got people from different institutions, places that teach history, different universities, some from abroad.

And I looked at what the newer people were saying, like, for example, people who were writing for the first time about the role of women, about gender violence and all of that. So that's how it all came to be. So I went on then from these concepts on to the question of empire. Then I moved on to the name about land and class and exclusion. Then I moved on to really what were people writing? And what were they imagining?

What was the attitude? And then I come on to the present. But I'm really now dealing with this period really of around 1923. That's my one and that's that final one that's going to be broadcast now so for me for me what what i why i enjoy history is it feels like practicing empathy through time yes and what i enjoy about history is what it can tell me now about myself and my place in society and one thing I would like to reflect on today is the greatest threat that's facing young people of Ireland today, aside from the climate, is housing. My listeners, they don't feel that housing is a possibility. And how I always think

about it is there's a great existential psychologist called Viktor Frankl. Oh yeah, Viktor Frankl of course, and they couldn't be reading anybody better. But I think and one of the reasons I'm interested in talking to you as well is that I think we have totally underestimated the degree of loneliness in our society I think

that what I mean about this what strikes the about this what strikes the bow, what resonates is in fact a desperate anxiety to connect to be connected it's a terrible feeling

the feeling of alienation of loneliness and all of these kind of things the importance of the touch to be connected and where I will talk to your point you put to me about housing is that having a safe shelter, having a home is a crucial part of being connected to those with whom you have a physical relationship to with those who are in your community and those who are in your society.

And my views on it are, I mean, I haven't changed my views enormously from my lifetime in politics. It was the great, this was a point that was acknowledged after the wars. In Britain for example, the people provided

public housing because in fact you had to do something for the people who had come home. And you also got what was a great monument to humanity, the British National Health Service. Absolutely. And therefore, when I think about it all, when I was in politics myself, I was elected to a local authority in 1974.

I was twice a mayor of a city. And the state had a building agency and the state built houses, housing estates. And I saw those housing estates. We used to have housing estates of 200 and 300 and so on. Where I live in Rahu and at the end of Circular Road in Galway, there are eight housing estates all around me. And there's a hard stand to just

stop at the end of it which is very successful as well. But the fact about it is their children went to the university, they went on then to, as it was then the regional tech, now the GMIT and now it's Atlantic University. But the fact is it is I want to be careful about. I don't have to be careful except to say that people know that it has been my belief all my life.

There are certain things that the market can solve in relation to making choices in consumables. But there are certain things that should be beyond the market. And these are matters in relation to food, in relation to shelter, in relation to housing, and in relation to education. There is a role for the state.

And the best possible way out of it is the state building a housing on state ground. The idea is that there's no point in trying to pretend that it doesn't change everything if you say that housing is to be a speculative activity. I've dealt with this elsewhere in some of my recent speeches where I say that for example in relation to the global hunger thing that I've been writing about recently is you should the idea in 2020 the stock market changed in the United States in the 2020 act it's an out grain to be a forward a future one part of the futures, which people could speculate, the net result is that nobody knows anymore

how much is held in all of the different silos because it would affect the price. So where the future is, and I'm 81 now, but if the future was, if I was your age and other ages, the future has to be in accepting some form of version of universal basic services where people can say that we're doing this with ecological responsibility in relation to food, shelter, education. These basics are ones that must be accepted as ones that should not be at the mercy

of speculative forces. And I think, in a way, this fits best with the other agendas in relation to climate sustainability, doing things differently. What I like about our conversation in a way, and I'm only a tiny, tiny part of all that you will do, but it's very important that we have a literacy on all of these issues. Economics should belong to the people. History belongs to the people. And you will not be able to survive and make changes

unless you come to an effort to understand. And I think in the same way I was at a thing in the region to the seas recently and someone used a great phrase, this book about a literacy of the oceans. The idea that the oceans don't belong to any one country, one state, but yet in fact they affect all of our lives. They're what connects us. And let me tell you the good news, in a way, is that when I was making my speeches

during a period of austerity, there were economists coming from the right who were talking about what was the inevitable and only single model of how it all works and things like that, they're now gone away and hiding in the bushes because it was disastrous the response didn't work

it's now regarded as bad economics and so there's a great economist from the old days Palagny and I found it like bad economics. And so there's a great economist from the old days, it's Polanyi. And I found it like this in my random life in a way. There was often one book

I picked up that had continued to influence me for all of my life. And like there's one writer, another I mentioned, Hartmut Rosa, just the most recent. There's James Scott, whom I regularly quote. But you'll find that Thomas Merton, the theologian, once said,

there is a serendipity of books. The book will find you when you're ready. So there are individual people. That's the importance of reading. There will be some book that will say that you know yourself it will strike a chord with you

but that's why so when I brought up Victor Frankl yes the quote the reason I brought up Frankl is Frankl's famous when he was an existential psychologist was

a human can put up with any how so long as they have a why. Now, one of the issues I'm finding with people in Ireland today is they feel that they no longer have a why. So the situation with housing in particular in Ireland, and I don't think the housing crisis can be separated from the mental health crisis. Things are so dire that the average person is feeling the type of hopelessness whereby internal action for change is becoming difficult. And that's what has me concerned. It's hard to inspire people to want change when the general vibe is one of hopelessness.

One thing I'd like to ask you, especially in the context of Machnav, the Irish psyche around ownership of land, like historically we're a people who are used to having land taken away. And I see now that we've become a people who are very comfortable with hoarding. The housing crisis is a problem of hoarding, whether that be derelict property or whether that be allowing investment funds to come in and hoard all that property. And I would like to see the people of Ireland go, no, this isn't good enough.

This isn't good enough. We, like, where are our heads at with housing from a historical perspective? And especially you as a sociologist as well. What is the Irish attitude to home and housing and what would you like to see change if anything? I have in one of my books an essay called Home in which I go into this in detail but let me take up the point first because it's very interesting and it's very, what I have to say is a bit provocative. In a way we lost a great deal when the emphasis became entirely on ownership rather than usage. To give you an example about it all is that what happened as we were getting the land

and the people after that, I said eight million people in Ireland in a hundred years. We were emptying the country. But in addition to that as well, you were now getting, instead of cultivation of land for food, before the famine, for example, life expectancy was short. People were attracted to each other. They got married very quickly. They threw up a shanty thing against a corner of a field or whatever. Joe Lee

described it, the fields giving way to families. And then after the famine, when you have that great exodus as well, he refers to families giving way to fields. The emphasis becomes on ownership, not on the usage of the land. And indeed, it's one of the

significant differences. I address this slightly I think in Machniff 6 is in relation to the different view of the Fenians and some of the later people. The Fenians still had an idea of how the issue is how to use the land properly and so forth but in

fact actually the land was filled in with cattle. The graziers were taking over from those who cultivated and so on. And now to come to a point then in relation to it, there is no, you need, you see, the language is in fact distorting the discussion in relation to housing. Moving up, getting one's toe on the property ladder, moving up the property ladder, all of this. What this, I think, does in a way, it moves it away from what is a home. Now, when I wrote about home, I think about it all. It is something into which you've poured intimacies.

You see, it's a shared space of shelter and security. But there's something very much lesser when people are talking about properties walking to market. As if they had an animus themselves, an anima themselves, that they are in fact actually self-contained. It is in fact, in the piece I wrote, I wrote about a French philosopher who has spoke about it in terms of these intimacies. It was when people call it, when something make a thing home,

it is in fact something into which they have poured relationships. Then there is the other thing where you are right about its connection with mental health. It is the safe space that is home enables all of the senses to be used. And that is very, very important. People haven't thought enough about it, in my view, about what has happened, let us say, during COVID, where you didn't have an opportunity of touching another person. The idea of touch in all of the senses, and that is, these are all things that are very, very important.

And sometimes my view as president people say you know that the president is never partisan, I'm not partisan but I wouldn't be an adequate president if I didn't in fact speak like I have had to speak in relation to say about the importance

of these issues the other part of it about doing the history and doing a mock of us, well, there's a huge difference between in the way where you debate things. If you debate things

about sufficiency, we're coming to that in relation to climate change. Absolutely. We're coming to that in relation to what people eat and what people do and the responsibility. Sufficiency.

Sufficiency leads to a kind of a civilisation of simplicity in the end. That's where Franco would in fact actually be relevant to. But if it is in fact the idea that if it's the, on the other hand, it's open-ended and it's insatiable and it is a point's insatiable. And it is a point when insatiability, when people would say in ordinary language,

wouldn't you think he has enough? Capitalism doesn't have it. Capitalism is, everything is insatiable. Everything is, there's no end. You keep, sufficiency doesn't exist in capitalism. I think that it wouldn't be an original opinion with me either to say that the debate is that it has attempts have been made to transform it. The welfare state was an attempt to try and correct its worst excesses.

The idea of social economy, new movements in relation to social ecological responsibility are attempts and so forth but it is in fact there is a driven hard core of irresponsibility and about what it is it is not a good economics, good ethics

good philosophy to allow the realm of what is unaccountable expand the test in the end of the day you know in our time on this, where we're alive and all so forth, is how accountable we are. The worst systems are ones that encourage passivity. Well, that's what's happening at the moment, Mr. President, is so people feel powerless to the point of passivity.

They're wondering, what can I do? This entire system seems so unfair that I'm not sure what I can do. Well, I think that's what they must, as I have said, they become literate on all the things that matter in relation to the idea of... One of the things that builds on passivity is the notion that there is an expert opinion that only very few people can have access to. I can tell you, as somebody who struggled to go to university, who was a university teacher,

I taught several subjects here and abroad, and the point about it. That is the most important thing, is to empower people. There is absolutely nothing that cannot be understood if communicated properly. And I think then after that about it is that people become activists and they perform and join whoever they wish to try and bring about the changes. But it isn't about defeating other people. It's about getting a better system into place on that basis. I think every now and again I get very depressed at where we're not succeeding. It's a disaster for example that we weren't able to have an agreement on managing the oceans, upon which so many depend. I have

maybe one of the most radical ideas that recently I've written about ideas that recently I've written about is where I try to stay away

from it because it's so dire and that is that a species failure

if you take of all the living biodiversity collapse yes if you

take about it is that we had the capacity I actually think where frankly is relevant we had the capacity. I actually think where Frankl is relevant now again here and that is the

idea that you can split mind and spirit in two. That's René Descartes. I call that the Cartesian fallacy. And it is that because the thing is if you're getting to where Frankl is and happiness and so forth,

and the level of balance that is achieved between, for example, as I said, within the sufficiency of your being, within the freedom of your senses, which is very, very, very, very important, and also what you are able to, the freedom to share, the connectivity that you have and so forth. These are the things that are in his work as far as I'm concerned. And what you're speaking about there is the relationship between human beings and our environment, to not separate those two things, to be holistic.

I think so. The whole question about it. Recently I was doing something in honour of Tim Robinson and in his work going round and looking at how did a place take on its name and whatever it's the concept of wonder

when I was about 60 when I was starting out I wrote about what happens in the case of learning when a child for example will hold what happens in the case of learning. When a child, for example, will hold a worm in the palm of its hand and an adult will sometimes say, oh, a worm or something like this. How does this destruction of wonder happen?

And that's why... The curiosity leaves and all of a sudden a worm is no longer something wonderful. All of a sudden it's dirty and squirmy and something that doesn't belong in your hand. Well, now in his book, Resonance, and Hartmut Rosa's book, I think in a minute, he describes two people starting out for the day. And one person, it depends, this was meant by resonance, it depends, or how are you facing the day?

Are you facing the day with optimism? I'm going to see something, and you're open to wonder and so forth. or how are you facing the day? Are you facing the day with optimism? I'm going to see something and you're open to wonder and so forth. Are you facing the day with fear? Exactly I think what you're describing is no more than people are, for example, going out and going out, what am I going to feed them this evening?

What if it's this much? Will I be late for work if I go and do this and so many many cases That's hypervigilance Mr President so if we have a society we say who are anxious and hypervigilant about meeting

their basic needs, what gets lost there is the vitality and curiosity and love of life so if I'm worrying about paying my rent, I don't care about worms and I want to care about worms.

I want to pick a worm up and look at how beautiful it is and go, oh my God, what a fantastic creature. It's so different to me. When I'm hypervigilant, I don't give a shit about worms.

That's why the importance of social floors. That's why the way to do it would be in relation to internationally, for it would be in relation to internationally is in relation to basic services. It isn't only that,

for example, what the test is as well, not only what enables you to survive, but what you have just described enable you to wonder. But that's also to enable you to participate.

And that's the definition of the citizenship that we should be after it wasn't this endless uh in in in in in mountain of six when i'm doing this in many many ways i ask uh what kind of administrative structures did we set up and i'll tell you what happens, not just in Ireland, but in many countries, I call it coming out from under the rug of empire. One of the things that people do in many cases is to be able to say,

well, we're able to manage things just like they did. And what you get is something that I call mimetic. Rather, that is one of the most fascinating things in life, is to what extent, in fact, do we live by imitation or how much is original and so forth. But you will find in many of these countries that after formal independence, they're anxious, in fact, actually,

to show that they're able to dance the dance of the empire in relation to administration. And that's why, for example, when it was dealing with all of the pensions applications of those who had taken part in the War of Independence, people, for example, had a concept of the deserving. I tell you because where we're both born, we were both born in Limerick. My uncle Peter, who joined the National Army, went back to County Clare where he lived with his sisters.

I would be there in that house as well. There was a sister who had in fact actually a nurse in the British Army in Cairo and places like that. And when she came back, she became a district nurse in County Limerick and she slated one room. The rest of the two were attached and that would later.

I had actually a very good few years of my life, I think, between the period of five and twelve to some extent. I remember all wonderful things about cattle and land and corn and everything like that and going occasionally with it we would join up our family again. My sisters were with us as well but then illness took over and that was one of the things that was no sensitivity in the system. And that is the people who had been in dugouts and the people who had been in the flying columns, as my father and my uncles had been, their health was very, very much deteriorated.

But when there was a kind of a partisan decision in relation to whom pensions were given, women were excluded for a long period. So there was no value on their contribution to the War of Independence. And we didn't get any history of women's contribution because they didn't get to apply for pensions. And that's one of the things that Mocknapp did. We put back in this and we looked at the violence against women. So it's all there.

So one, and there's a hardback version of Mocknoff's one, two and three and it's available free to the schools as is the other thing. And so will Mocknoff's four, five and six. But 22 years

after his application, my father is asked to come again for another interview to the guards barracks in William Street in Limerick. You know, it's up there at the top of William Street. Oh, that's long gone, guards barracks in Williams Street in Limerick. You know, it's up there

at the top of Williams Street. Oh, that's Lange and that barracks. Well, yes, but this was in the 1950s. Okay, yeah. So, you see, he dies in 1964. So, he died six years later. Now, what you were asked to do there was, you see, people still saying, bring any of your witness statements. But half the people were dead. They had emigrated.

The papers were lost. And yet these civil servants were... And the idea of holding you being interviewed in the police station was a kind of an indication that you were capable of fraud. It was kind of frightened to you into telling the truth. capable of fraud, just kind of frightened you into telling the truth. But all of this stuff was... There are things

that are coming out in Mockner by the way, that people didn't realise. For example, as I've said, you have 12,000 people in prison during the Civil War. You have also other people who have been assassinated, who are good people whose houses are burned. These other people who have been assassinated, who are good people whose houses are burned.

These are people who suffer too, a huge number of people who were the senators. But I wish also I was able to say to you that it all ended. I don't believe that my father and my uncle ever fully restored their relationship. Even on yourself, Mr. President, to have your father, we say, denied his pension to be interned,

what was the trauma of that on you as an individual, as a child? Well, I remember my father coming to see me when I was in Clare. He had got the bus out to Newark and Fergus. He walked a mile and a half out of where we were. And I said I'd walk home with him and he had nothing to give me he took a badge that he had in his jacket

from when he had got married and he gave me that as a token I lost it afterwards and sadly but the movement from I think there's my family the mistake that my mother probably made was

everything would have been better if they had stayed in their house in Rathbun they made an attempt to come out the country so that after my aunt died so that we would all be together again but it wasn't successful

and I must remember that there's no glory in some of what was achieved I had an education my brother, for two years I was a boarder and then

three years my brother and I cycled eight I was a boarder and then three years my brother and I cycled eight and a half miles every day to secondary school my sisters never got that one of them went for to become a very very highly skilled

typist and whatever, I remember we didn't have the the fare we didn't have the fare to we didn't have the manager to give her to take up her job that she had been offered in London. So they emigrated at 20 years of age. Half

my family is in England and began working in cafeterias in Manchester. And so I missed them. I missed so many of these intimacies. And then as my uncle was, my uncle was 60

when I went to deliver them at the age of five and everything was fine until his health collapsed. And then my aunt died of a heart attack. And at that stage, everything kind of

becomes shambolic. But that's not really what I'm just why do I say this I want to say something to you about that the reason that I people often ask me will I write about all of that who knows I think I will maybe

but it's my poems I write I don't want to write at a distance from it and the other side of it is I have a reason why I would and that is this there were times when

at 19 years of age I'm a grade 8 clerk earning £6.14 a week in Lickgold where I'm paying £3.10 for dicks. My father is dying in the community hospital in Innes. And I'm hitching a lift down. I've written about it in my poem, I think, Betrayal.

But then I go back, and there were times when I would hit my head off the wall and think, where is this all going? Where am I going with all of this? And then I was writing, and then I got a loan of 200 pounds, and then I went to England, and then I went to university, and then I got finished. I got scholarships and so forth, and then I went to the United then I got finished. I got scholarships and so forth. And then I went to the United States and the rest of it.

And one of the reasons I went into politics was to say that a couple of things far beyond myself is that housing shouldn't be like this. My mother spent all her life in ten different addresses in Limerick as we were going downhill in relation going from one flat to another, flats in four or five different places. Housing shouldn't be like this. Education shouldn't be difficult. And insecurities in relationship. And what I'd say I missed, the price I paid hardest in my life is the absence of connections as it grew into the years you know I know what it is for example about it even very very early on

of not having a place to which you could invite anybody because there were holes in the roof and things like that and that's the reason I would probably write the thing only would be to give encouragement to hope

and to say that people should go into should should not just go into academic life and be successful

but should actually be on the street with the public version of life and that was very very very important to me I've no regrets I do remember be on the street with the public version of life. And that was very, very, very important to me. I do remember it was a very, very something.

There's actually something I saw in Bono's book in a way that I admired in it very, very much. You spend a lot of your time after what I just, Moth Street, just described there now, looking for families. And I was taken in by different friendships. It's also meant that friendships were very, very much more important to me. Intimate friendships. And they are very important.

And the other side of it then is, is that affected? Really, that's what has decided the kind of politics I have been offering for a long time. And that's maybe about what I would like to think. There is a certain kind of person with the background I have described as President of Ireland now. And that's very different to maybe other people's journeys to this office. I'll tell you one thing about what you just shared there which really struck with me was so you described there something that got you into politics was the lived experience of having to move around the place as a child, insecurity, lack of connection with people because of a precarious housing situation. How does it make you feel today in 2022 that this thing that motivated you to get into the politics is what people in in direct provision and people in emergency

accommodation have are experiencing because people who live in emergency accommodation which is one of the consequences of the housing crisis these people have to live in hotel rooms and they have to raise kids and they have to wash all their clothes in a sink. They don't have anything that we could describe as a home and the whole thing is being presented as a solution for homelessness but it's not. It's a way for private corporations to profit. Of course it is. It isn't a solution. And the other thing which I think is mistakes, and I think it's a mistake that people should have seen earlier. I probably should have seen it myself early on. And that is, this one wouldn't go down well at all with a lot of people.

The suggestion that, you know, about tenant purchase. What people need are homes to live in and they should have always we should have kept a national housing stock what you needed in a way is you need in fact to have the experience of a home in a house but it isn't as essential to own it but we began actually there's another side to this as well where the notion of what it was is that you could actually accommodate a kind of a gentrification and that is that the good people would be moving out and you'd be just left with the hopeless cases and so forth and there was a lot in that philosophy that was behind that. And it was wrong. That's why, let's look at the positives about it all now.

And that is that having achieved independence and having had such a long run since 1923 and all of the rest of it, we still have actually to do what is actually the better version. And the better version was there in the democratic programme of the first old. How were you informed as president as someone who was first and foremost an artist and a poet? Well, I wouldn't say I'm first and foremost. What I see in the way the poetry worked for me

is that I see it as a distillation. The one thing about composition and like that there's nothing redundant and there's nothing unnecessary but something will strike in that and one has that. And even when I'm now so distracted with so many

other things are demanding my time and whatever I would occasionally keep an image notebook and therefore then I would go back and that's the way memory works and I actually could I could re-people that again maybe sometime

that time will come I would When you mean an image notebook is that like a little mood board or these images that resonate with you? I did yeah I remember I was on the road

I had owed eight gigs to Mary McPartland I did, yeah. I remember I was on the road today. I had owed eight gigs to Mary McPartland. So we did places around. When Mary died, I wrote a poem for Mary McPartland which had kind of an enigmatic name of Saturdays Made Holy. And it was about all of us getting banners ready to go out for the Saturday performance and folding them up and so forth

and all of the feelings and so forth. And I enjoyed that. In fact, the truth is that Sabina and I were 47 years, now we're about 50 years together. But the point is, Sabina took on a person who had been through a lot and the rest of it. But also at the same time, a person who was in very, we were both very public people. We don't regret that at all. I kind of get very sad sometimes when I see old comrades and friends have died or something.

And remember about it, there's great humour, there's humour too. Humour is so, so, so essential. Because you can actually look at what appears to be implacable and have a good laugh at it because the absurdity of it

is defining itself as an essential. What I find about humour and it being so important is humour cuts through solemnity and when something is too solemn, solemnity can cut off through human emotion. Like when you're at a funeral and you're not allowed to hug people

instead you have to say sorry for your troubles. This real solemn act. Well you should always remember as well in many cases that before words at all, that wonderful Irish tradition of keening, which is a sound drawn up from the depths of sorrow. Is it a song? Yes, this is the keening where you're kind of,

in fact, actually it would be in the old days, in many cases, in the Gaeltacht, there would be, while every woman would have been Angela is one of the best theorists on this, but

while women would be expected to shake, this is preferable, but you would produce a sound and there would be somebody who might in fact be it would be expected that a person would be keened properly

and Is it an expression of grief that isn't to do with words? It's pure guttural emotion? It's out of the sound that comes out. Later people in fact actually using their own versions of it will be verbalising it. Wow.

Angela Burke isn't it? I think is the person that I think of who's written beautifully. She's in Mocken of Six. So the best description in fact of the importance of keening and for example. That's beautiful.

She makes reference to that when I was up in Donegal at the funerals recently and that's healthy it's congruent grief yes and people the

other thing you know in relation to love and intimacy as well, that is people are often having beautiful silent moments when it is in fact their proximity that is something that is for them transcendent and assured. and to show but this is why people shouldn't think that you know spirituality is something

that is much wider than than piosity I have the deepest respect because you have to remember as well

there are people who have had nothing else but their prayers to keep going and I very much respect that and that's right

but this is why I think beyond it all there is a better life to be created and it'll meet and one I think that when it's filled with that kind of generosity of purpose

and spirit and cooperation it's one that will solve those problems that you are mentioning. Because they shouldn't be problems. We should just actually have a surplus of houses. So that you have ones that are available to be filled. Absolutely. And that is possible. And it is possible for that to come to be in the future.

I hope it does as do i um thank you so much mr president for for appearing on this podcast and for giving me your time it was an absolute pleasure to speak to you not at all i so wish you well uh that and when you think about it there we are now two people again yeah having a chat a chat. There you go. All right, thank you. So that was my chat with the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, something I never thought that I would say on this podcast.

If you'd like to check out Machnav 100, especially the final seminar, it's going to be on the RTE player this Thursday the 17th of November and it's titled Memory, History and Imagination and all the rest of the Machnavs they're on YouTube I believe and just look up type Machna

100 into Google and you can find out all the information about this project that the President wants to come onto this podcast and speak about all right i'll catch you next week possibly with a hot take hopefully with a hot take because i'm over in brussels for three days um i'll chat you next week in the meantime mind yourselves rub a dog wink at a swan blow a kiss to a crow rock city you're the best fans in the league

bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for

every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com