THE SONG OF LOVE

I think (we feel) that love is our one chance at Eternity..

BECKETT'S MONADIC APOLOGUE

The Vico road goes round to meet where terms begin.

James Joyce, Finnegan's Wake



I am happy (?) to say, I have happened upon the Delphic dourness of Beckett's aesthetic criticism. I admire the way in which Beckett disapostrophises Subject and Object to realise the unrealisable. Beckett sank behind his 'quiescent periods', behind a dirty window. Yet, his Dante... Bruno... Vico. Joyce . . traces the circumference - the circuity of the Monad.

He sees a bright lamp; in jest at himself views the Soul in a "glass darkly"..


'There is no difference, says Bruno, between the smallest possible chord and the smallest possible arc, no difference between the infinite circle and the straight line. The maxima and minima of particular contraries are one and indifferent. Minimal heat equals minimal cold. Consequently transmutations are circular. The principle (minimum) of one contrary takes its movement from the principle (maximum) of one another. Therefore not only do the minima coincide with the minima, the maxima with the maxima, but the minima with the maxima in the succession of transmutations. Maximal speed is a state of rest. The maximum of corruption and the minimum of generation are identical: in principle, corruption is generation. And all things are ultimately identified with God, the universal monad, Monad of monads'...

CLUSTERED CREATIVITY: THE ECONOMICS OF REGIONAL AGGLOMERATION IN IRELAND AND THE EU

It is quite clear that Germany and France, the "core" of the EU experiment in the Single European Market (SEM), must squarely face the problems of Europe's periphery. Such an assertion, I confess, is also a product of hindsight. In this vein, I found it fascinating to review David Hamilton and James Anderson and James Goodman's insights regarding the socio-political and 'Institutional' deficit obtaining within the Common Market..

In Peter Shirlow's essay collection, Development Ireland, I got a contemporaneous glance at the immediate pre-Boom period in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland. (Ironically, my parents hail from either side of the border, my brother and I being born in Dublin). In the 1980s, the ROI was running a structural deficit and spent 24 per cent in debt service with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 116.8 per cent! Plus ca change?

In any event, I will hazard an hypothesis regarding the Core of Europe's woes: a fundamental legitimation/governance crisis. In spite of superficial improvements to aggregate output experienced through the new regionalism in places like Emilia Romagna, the European core still profits disproportionately from a deficient economic architecture. On paper, Europe looked good in the good years. Now not-so-peripheral issues are coming home to roost.

To reverse the Habermasian democratic deficit, it will be essential for a chastened Europe to redress the lack of geographic equity whilst rejuvenating a sense of fiscal discipline. Anderson and Goodman chide the Republic and successive Taiseoachs for chasing the 'four motors' - Catalonia, Rhone-Alpes, Baden-Wurtemberg and Lombardy - in a race to situate Ireland slap 'in the middle'. Under Haughey's tutelage, the Republic grandiosely propped up the punt only to see the currency pincered by Germany and the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). We all know Spain and France's problems now, not to mention deepening malaise in the periphery, a rot which attacks the peripheral of the peripheral.

Crucially, Ireland, Portugal, Greece et al should rather look toward a commonly productive future to 'counter the core'. This was the Irish authors' conclusion, back in the developing nineties. Discounting Iceland perhaps, the Scandinavian countries have instantiated Nobel Prize winning economist, Gunnar Myrdal's notion of 'autocentric' development through cluster blocks of intra-regional innovation.

According to Hamilton, the key to structural innovation is stable supply chains within a stable economic infrastructure. Through intra-regional value-adding activity, indigenous adjustment to global competition and North-South cooperation, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland can tap their almost limitless educational resources and human capital. 'Fast money' Northern Europe could certainly profit socio-culturally, if not economically from this observation.

Contrary to John Nash's predicament in a Beautiful Mind, it may indeed be possible for Ireland and the rest in hock to 'peripherality' to think their way out of their current desperation.. By challenging the core, they will strengthen the (European) Project.

And in the process of recovery, Ireland and her dolorous sisters may reveal, as in Pollock's painting, their still shimmering substance.

A WINDOW UNTO OUR SOUL

In his Principles of Social Reconstruction, Bertrand Russell admonishes that one can remain immured in prison or look outwardly to the World..

Is our Psyche our Prison or a Window?

Leibnitz posited our Being within the Monad, a window onto possible worlds through Divine effluxion. Leonardo envisaged the eye as a 'window unto the soul'. Aristotle described his concept of 'Entelechy', abbreviating Plato's metempsychotic journey into the Cosmic mind. A mind with a window with a view to infinity: with infinite possibility of ingress and egress.

Therefore, let us choose. How shall we view? A prison or a window..



EPLILOGUE

And perhaps the Soul exists after all..


(Christopher Martin and Edith Myers in memoriam)