3am night hiking up the French Alps for a sunrise ski: a short adventure video to balance out the DisThinked waffle.

Dark, Steep, Slippery, Savage!

A 3am night hike to catch the sunrise for an epic ski back down in the French Alps. The stuff of wonderment!

Social Power and Privilege in Society.

Development Perspectives Workshop: Hosted by Stephanie Kirwan and Bobby McCormack.

On Thursday October 26^th last, Stephanie Kirwan and Bobby McCormack, of Development Perspectives, hosted a fascinating workshop in the Carmelite Centre in Dublin City. The workshop focused on ‘power’ and ‘privilege’ in society, specifically the invisibility of power and privilege, and how it creates and maintains particular sets of norms and conventions which sustain unequal access to social capital, and resources.  Under guidance from Bobby and Stephanie, the conversation developed quite organically taking us down an enlightening rabbit hole of issues surrounding topics such as education, social status, language, discourse, rights, duties, obligations, privileges, and responsibilities etc.

There was a broad range of people from different backgrounds in attendance bringing multiple perspectives to the table.

The event inspired me to write about power and privilege in society. So here it is…

(As a quick disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Development Perspectives and the views in this article are entirely my own)

Storms, Surfers, and Peculiar Irish Nannyism: A national discourse of alarmist paternalism

By Nick Doran

"Discourse" (a word with many meanings) - for the purposes of this article I am taking it to be a general societal viewpoint or understanding, activated and maintained by, and through, language within a particular socio-historical context. It is viewed as social action and is instrumental in maintaining and creating power in social relations. Concepts, both experienced in reality and experienced through language and discourse, have been shown to activate the same areas of the brain pointing to the power of language and discourse in creating social and political realities and structures.

In South Korea most of the population cannot swim. This is a fact. So when on the beaches of South Korea, if you wander in past your waist, the lifeguards will charge you down, quite aggressively, to bring you back in from the brink of disaster. It doesn't matter what credentials or skill you display. From a societal perspective you need to be protected. Following from this, 55 million South Koreans must adhere to the lowest common denominator of water sports capabilities under the weight of society's collective cognitive predisposition towards paternalism. Regardless of whether one can swim or not, policy dictates that you must not. There has been little critical thought put into the attendant policies. Undoubtedly, South Korea's recent history, and psychological legacy resulting from massive human loss and suffering during the Korea War plays a role in this societal drive towards paternalism or guardianism. The culture of guardianism is driven by a developmental ideology rather than critical understanding. This ideological stance is so pertinent in South Korea that a friend, who sea kayaked around South Korea some years back, was followed by a Coastguard escort the entire way around the peninsula for 3 weeks.

Irish Times Letter to the Editor: Banning Cluster Bombs (2008)

Letter to the Editor: Irish Times 2008

Madam, - Dermot Ahern (March 6th) writes a prolix defence in reaction to Nuala Ahern's article of March 4th and Margaretta D'Arcy's letter of March 5th, both of which question the Government's actions regarding banning cluster bomb munitions.

Mr Ahern cites his contacts with Minister for Finance Brian Cowen, and with the National Pensions Reserve Fund Commission, "with a view to ensuring that no public funds are invested in any company involved in or associated with the production of cluster munitions".

After this woolly statement, the Minister goes on to say he is "proud that Ireland is leading efforts to combat cluster munitions and passionately hope that a convention will be agreed here in May".

The question remains, however: does Ireland have investment in companies which produce cluster bomb munitions? - Yours, etc,


NICK DORAN, Sandyford Road, Dundrum, Dublin 14.

Adventure and Exploration: Iran by bike with Stef

Adventure and exploration are literally, and metaphorically, vital! Curiosity is an innate part being human. But, curiosity must be fed with vitality-giving openness to new experiences and challenges. This is my first adventure post.  It's a 2 minute video of part of our cycle through Iran.

An excerpt from my Doctoral Thesis introduction: A comparative Critical Discourse Analysis of British and Irish media coverage of the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

The issue at question: Media representations of the Israeli Palestinian Conflict.

Media coverage of the Israeli Palestinian conflict (hereafter IPC) has become increasingly diversified in recent years. This diversification of news in general, and the IPC in particular, have occurred somewhat in parallel with the rapid growth of the fields of critical thinking in language and discourse analysis. Critical Linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics, Systemic Functional Linguistic, Cognitive Discourse Analysis and Discourse Semantics are just some of the areas which have contributed to the impressive body of knowledge about human communication and the dialectic that language, ideology and power maintain in societies.

The Road to hell… and all that: how intentionality and social and discursive loci of the words you speak can act as a window onto your values.

Understandings of the concepts of "language" and "discourse" are slaves to what might be called “common sense” – the notion that through adherence to a logic of social norms we might better navigate surrounding social orders. 

“Words are just words”, “sticks and stones…”, “actions speak louder than words”, are generally considered strong guiding principles in relation to people's attitude towards, and understanding of the purpose of language.