Sideways to the Sun

One of my favourite Irish bands, from yesteryear, is Horslips. They recorded ‘Sideways to the Sun on their ‘Book of Invasions’ album telling the story of the fairy-like Tuatha dé Danann people of Ireland, who faded from view when they were defeated by the Milesians. ‘We stay around, to watch you laugh, destroy yourselves for fun. But you won’t see us, we’ve grown, sideways to the sun’. If the Dé Danann managed to survive by melting away as the culture changed then their fate was much kinder than that suffered by Native Americans, Aboriginals, the Zulus and many other peoples. Like most Western children of the 60s, I grew up playing ‘Cowboys and Indians’ where the Indians were always the bad guys. It was only right that these savages had only bows and arrows or they could have inflicted greater carnage on those brave frontiersmen as they drove out West. Only decades later can I understand the settling of the New World as a tragedy. As a species we have not learned to accept others unlike ourselves. This leads to prejudice, hate crimes and violence the world over. Is war fuelled by the greed of the invaders or by the pride of natives defending a cherished way of life? Winners write the history books and children immortalise the outcomes in their games. Cultural influences run deep in the human psyche. It is extremely difficult for us to bridge the divide even when we can see the innocent suffer. The Holocaust is probably the worst example of attempted cultural extermination but Apartheid in South Africa tried to legitimise racial segregation, the Hutus and Tutsis went on a rampage, the Middle East is a tinderbox, the Ukraine is extremely tense and recently the town of Charlestown in South Carolina showed us continuing race hatred in America. Even here in Ulster, our recent history has been shameful and in several areas mistrust and tensions remain. As humanity has evolved we developed the abilities to both grow and defend. It’s easy enough to understand when we lived as hunter gatherer communities constantly in danger of becoming dinner to something more dangerous. But now as we inhabit every part of the planet, and have the ability to communicate as never before, surely the time is ripe for us to evolve a greater consciousness so that we can appreciate the rich diversity of humankind and the environment in which we live? We are losing animal species at a higher rate than ever as the world is ravaged by insatiable greed. The environment is now so poisoned, and the very air we breathe so polluted, that we are risking our own extinction. As Alan Deutschman puts it – ‘When the stakes are so high, knowledge isn’t power, it’s anxiety. My hope with this piece is not to deal in Deutschman’s 3 Fs: Fear, Facts and Force but rather to adopt his 3Rs of Relate, Repeat and Reframe. Instead of waiting for the world to change we must recognise that it is our task to change it; we are responsible. Each of us, in our own way, must be courageous enough to do what we can to restore this paradise we live in. Start today with a smile to a stranger, an outstretched hand of peace and the breaking of bread together. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Let us not follow the Tuatha dé Danann underground.