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.

Similar to crossing a busy road or skiing, neither going in past your waist nor kayaking around the Korean peninsula are dangerous to those with know-how and experience. This is assuming you don't get taken out by Kim Jong Un.  But either way you're up against an ideologically developed societal discourse of guardianism.  Discourse plays a substantial role in the development of cultures such as that of guardianism. In other words the type of language and communication used to represent an event, process, concept or issue is a crucial part of how society perceives its importance, danger, ignorance, foolhardiness, adventurousness or otherwise.  

The recent storm, "Ophelia", that passed over Ireland had strong winds with consequently powerful coastal swell. But what is more relevant than the physics of the storm is how it was perceived and what people do, and did, with that perception.  That perception happens through a combination of direct-experience and linguistic-experience.  Both direct-experience and linguistic-experience affect each other.  Some people have more direct-experience, however most have more linguistic-experience, or storied-experience.  In any given society, storied-experiences, or the words we use, are necessarily affected by our socio-cultural histories and our socio-cognitive predispositions. Our socio-cultural histories affect, and are affected by how we communicated during historical events: for example, traumatic events such as the Irish Famine, which I will discuss further below.  Our socio-cognitive predispositions are affected by, and affect, our modes of communicating about any given situation.  So for instance if I tell you that something will hurt, my speech-action becomes more salient if you do the thing that might hurt, and it does hurt.  The next time I suggest that something might hurt, or frame the potential in a discourse of "threat" or "danger", the speech-action will carry more meaning and weight, and thus will be more likely to cause a stronger emotional response.  This same process also happens on a grander social and historical scale, which brings me back to the psychological legacies of the Irish Famine.  Psychologist Geraldine Moane (2002) talks about how it is clear that "Irish history is marked by the repeated occurrence of trauma, dispossession, loss and defeat, whether their causes are seen as colonisation, natural disaster, capitalists expansion or other factors." There are infinite complexities within these kinds of events which determine the characteristics of people on a more micro scale,  for example a person's social positioning during times of trauma might provide a buffer to that trauma the higher up the social scale one goes.

The Irish Famine: discourses develop throughout history

Ireland was stricken by a famine from 1845 to 1852. Millions died, millions fled. During traumas such as this the lives of those who surround us become more fragile, and therefore more important. Potentially dangerous things that were once perceived with flippancy become more threatening and social discourses change to reflect that state of mind.  Those discourses continue to self-perpetuate that state of mind regardless of whether the threat has abated or not.  Society holds onto a more significant and emotive response to the words which conceptualised threats or danger and thus discourses of guardianism develop.  But that was nearly 200 years ago, you might say. How could that language continue to affect the present? 

The famine was a hugely traumatic time for Irish people. The discourses of danger that developed around that time manifested in families being hyper-protective of their children, and each other.  Language cannot but reflect that threat, and the meanings of paternalistic, restrictive, protective, guardianist language become more salient and pertinent.  The understandings of linguistic concepts of "danger" become enriched with meaning that is shaped by our parents understanding of what is and isn't dangerous. This legacy continues through generations, either strengthening, weakening or remaining stable in its linguistic and thus cognitive significance. In whatever way it changes, the legacy of meaning is transferred and exists in our collective consciousness. Perceptions of concepts such as "danger" or "threat" become ideologically coloured through an historical, socio-cognitive lens. This lens becomes further magnified in the absence of direct experience or knowledge about particular events or situations. The media and public reaction to the swimmers and surfers of storm "Ophelia" was one of those situations.

On an anecdotal level I think most people will remember the following sentences from their youth: "get down off that before you kill yourself", "get away from there before you hurt yourself", and the now comedic, "it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye". In some other cultures experience is encouraged with a often clearer understanding of what is relatively dangerous, and what is not. Their language and discourse reflects, and informs this more open attitude.

In the context of the recent reports on surfers and swimmers going out during storm "Ophelia"(not a hurricane as many people thought and conceptualised), Irish media institutions, and the public, have shown themselves to be part of an ideologically bound culture of guardianism.  The journalists, editors and public commentariat present a blinkered framework that is guided by nanny-state like criticism of something that most of the journalists etc. have little or no direct experience or understanding of.

The whole furore over people going swimming and surfing during the storm yesterday is one of perception and perspective: both of which for the majority of the Irish public are constructed by the media, coloured by discourse-history, and perpetuated within society, but not informed by much if any relevant experience.  

The majority of news reports I read about the incident with the kite  windsurfers, for example, mis-reported it - focusing on their "need" for rescue, collocating it with other unrelated deaths, or relating it to the Blackrock helicopter tragedy off the coast of Belmullet. The general implication in most reports is that it was a rescue that was necessary for the safety of the kite windsurfers, which it wasn't! In fact, the kite windsurfers are considering lodging a formal complaint after being forced to be taken-in unnecessarily. The windsurfers were self-reliant, comfortable and capable in the conditions regardless of what onlookers thought. Despite this the general social media response to both the kite windsurfers, surfers, and swimmers is one of disdain, alarm, disbelief, and annoyance.  The words used to describe them were: selfish, reckless, arrogant, idiots.  One particularly virulent and narrow minded article by the owner of LovinDublin suggested that they should be imprisoned! I don't know what the writer's experience of adventure activities is. I would hazard a guess that it is very little given his language. Yet with a loose, ideological grip on the situation, and from a position of mass/social media power, he perpetuates the Irish discourse of gaurdianism without any specific knowledge relating to the so called "idiots" to whom he refers. 

In South Korea the culture of alarmist guardianism is like a magnified reflection of the culture that exists in Ireland. It was only through seeing it so clearly in Korea that it became so clear that it is a problem in Ireland. The culture of alarmist guardianism is perpetuated through discourses which develop in a vacuum of relevant knowledge or experience. 

Perhaps there should be systems in place so that adventurers can undertake what they love to do without an authoritarian, paternalistic backlash from the media and the public, regardless of what its historical basis is. Most adventurers have safety nets built into the activities which they undertake.  These safety nets usually come from knowledge and experience. It is clear that Irish society's nerves need to be put at rest when it comes to this kind of situation. The introduction of a mutual recognition that those undertaking such activities have the know-how to do what they do and that there will be no backlash from doing it should be made into policy. 

What will not help, but will contribute to the perpetuation of frames of reference that guided the clearly angry response in the public sphere, is reactionary, alarmist media reports feeding off an historically bound ideological discourse of guardianism. 

Irish media must think critically and approach situations like the surfers and swimmers of "Ophelia" from an informed perspective which elucidates the issue for the public as opposed to inciting alarmist disdain.

If we gave the increase in vehicular movement in Ireland a collective name: let's call it Norman. Then if we counted all the injuries and accidents and deaths that occurred on a given day and attributed them to Norman - clearly a dangerous concept given the figures - I wonder would the media and public leap all over the "idiots" who went out in the middle of Vehicular-Movement-Norman.

On one final footnote, as I walked along Dunlaoghaire pier in Dublin yesterday I couldn't help but notice all the signs demanding: "NO SKATING" "NO CYCLING" "NO SWIMMING" NO ROLLERBLADING".  Of course people do it anyway. But usually, on asking why these activities are not allowed the response is almost always because of the danger, risk and threat they present!

Corrections: I originally represented the two men rescued in Dundalk as kite-surfers. They were in fact windsurfers.