The Body Politic.
Featured Image: Anatomia del corpo humano, 1559.
Twenty-three years old, raised in a Northern Irish household torn by the tug-of-war between Catholicism (Irish Republicanism, really) and Protestantism (Unionism, big sorry to Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli), here I sit in O'Neills GAA shorts and a Beatles tee in Liverpool. While my choice of clothing may seem inconsequential, it's actually crucial to the point of this article. For, if I were to walk the high street of my hometown in these GAA shorts, I'd be instantly profiled as a Catholic (maybe, even, a Fenian).
Sectarianism is inherent in the population of Northern Ireland - there's a sort of body politic to it. The island itself exists as a body, healthy in both mind and spirit, but its heart (the people) can become a toxin. al-Masudi (896 AD - 956 AD), an influential Arab historian and geographer (amongst other disciplines), referred to this idea when discussing the historical origin of kingship in the ancient Arab world, stating:
"...they concluded that the well-being of the body depended upon the proper ordering of the heart: if the heart is corrupted, the rest of the body follows suit, and correct bodily acts become impossible. Thus, when they saw that this microcosm which is the human body cannot be ordered well except the proper ordering of its leader, the heart, they came to believe that a people likewise cannot lead an orderly life except by having a king who deals fairly with them, institutes justice and executes commandments in accordance with reason."
Okay, so substituting the people with Northern Ireland and using the heart instead as the people, are you following?
al-Masudi made an important point: religious warfare is rife internationally, and the harsh truth is that it always has been. I mean, fucking hell, this guy was riffing these bars back in the tenth century. It's the same old record, over and over: Catholics disliking Protestants, and vice versa. Sufis disliking Shi'ites, and vice versa. Orthodox Jews disliking secular Jews, and vice versa. Then, when one religion decides to dislike another religion, there's a fucking civil war, or worse, a genocide. I mean, come on, if we can't even get along in our own religions, let's just hit the pause button on disagreeing with the others.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, who made me the maestro of the world peace orchestra? I hear you.
All this to say, I (like others) am altogether appalled by the state of world politics, and at the time of writing, especially appalled at the state of Northern Ireland, an island whose population have progressed in leaps and bounds since '98, and almost overnight, some groups have unleashed their bottled up hatred on a different sect - your racism is disgraceful, and so is the total disregard of the sexual assault of a teenage girl and the trauma which is concurrent to it.
Stop setting the fucking roads on fire and assaulting your neighbours and start dissembling the toxic lad culture which is permeating your community.
Fix the body politic.
