Ryan Holiday and Jordan Peterson

Why even bother with a blog? Maybe for these reasons. I really like a lot of Ryan Holiday's outputon his various Daily Stoic channels, even though I have never journalled. Maybe blogging is as close as I'll get to that. 

Being 50 and the news

I usually avoid the news but occasionally I get drawn back into it. Perhaps it's a symptom of being 50, but it is strange to me to have lived through what is now 'history', to remember it as having been 'real time' life, and to wonder why those whose job it is to commentate upon it appear have such a limited grasp of it, or at least to daily observe that they recite an edited, redacted, version of it. Wikipedia gets criticism but, to understand why Northern Ireland politics is in the news yet again, a quick scan over the period 1998–2007 here would be of benefit. Then go digging and ask why those various suspensions and issues arose. You'll need to dig pretty deep because it seems that hardly anybody explains anymore. Figuring out where you're at is much easier when you retrace how you got there. To co-opt a famous slogan from 1798 and apply it to events two centuries later … Who dares to speak of '98 – 2007?

Ardal O'Hanlon – Tomb Raider

Three friends have told me about this, and it is excellent. See how ideas of ancient history were selectively mined and appropriated to construct notions of identity in 1930s Ireland. I am delighted that the renowned Estyn Evans' work comes across in it so well. It can't have been easy for him to swim against the well-funded tide. An essential watch, see it here on iPlayer. Much to think about.

Community > Nation > State

When you read all the best accounts of the 'colonial' era in America, you soon see a common thread that the people's loyalty was first and foremost to their community. A coalescing and coming together of the common interests of those communities – Charles Augustus Hanna reckoned there were 500 Scotch-Irish communities in the original 13 colonies – then becomes a nation. And a nation which then, after 1776, became a new state. Communities carry values, traditions, continuity - regardless of their geography or who their governing administrators are. We would do well to remember that momentum, when looking at Ireland's past, present and future. A bottom-up community-first perspective is the most effective way to understand. Imposing a top-down, nation-first mould makes little sense.

MartyrMade Podcasts – "reason can justify and rationalise, but emotion motivates"

... So says Darryl Cooper at 1hr 04minutes in this fascinating podcast about the origins and context of what he calls "the conflict between Israel and Palestine".