I wrote, last week, about the reason why there’s a ‘culture gap’ between younger people, and the more mature generations – especially on issues like ‘gender wars’. Younger people often have a literal attitude to equality: everyone must be equal, and natural, or biological, differences, don’t come into the equation. There is also an interesting…
A philosophy professor at the famed Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Alex Byrne, had his most recent book cancelled by the prestigious Oxford University Press.
The renowned American author Henry James gave advice to anyone seeking to write a novel or a play. There are three rules, he said: “Dramatise, dramatise, dramatise!” That is, make everything in fiction more extreme than in real life. Make the baddies badder and the goodies more heroic. Exaggerate every aspect of story and action.…
Every August, when the Rose of Tralee festival comes around, there’s a breakout of demands calling for it to be brought to an end – on grounds that it’s outdated, sexist, judgmental of women and all the rest. I may even have voiced such an opinion myself back in the dim dark past. But in…
After the success of Alan Gilsenan’s documentary on the late Noel Browne, I’d like to suggest another person whose life would make a very fine subject for a screen documentary. Someone who deserves to be remembered in the annals of Irish life, although not now well known among younger generations. I’m thinking of Dr Cyril…
The Department of Foreign Affairs proudly tweeted recently how Ireland was celebrating fifty years of having lifted the “marriage bar” for women working in the public service – with the support of the EU and its march towards equality. Yes, I remember that situation well: women, on marriage, had been required to step down from…
Everywhere I went last weekend I heard the late Sinéad O’Connor spoken about with admiration, and sympathy for the mental health turmoil she had been through during her lifetime. The praise we saw and heard over the media genuinely reflected, it seems to me, the widespread feelings for the troubled star, who was such a…
A multi-coloured banner at Dublin’s Heuston Station – one of a number celebrating ‘Pride’ – urges us to feel “Proud to be Myself”. It prompted me to ask myself if I was ‘proud to be myself’. My answer to myself was that I couldn’t really see why I should take any special credit for being…
Sex and money: two of the major temptations that lure men and women into a fall. Perhaps previous generations might have said – two of the weapons used by the devil to entrap humans into the error of their ways. Interestingly, the phrase ‘struggling with his demons’ is still very much in use. On both…
Stand with Ukraine’ is a slogan which has elicited much support across the political spectrum in all our European countries. We have nearly all backed Ukraine’s case against the Russian invader, admired its people’s resistance, and Volodymyr Zelensky’s courageous leadership. But the supply of cluster bombs to the Ukrainian war effort? Here is a dilemma…