While the cause of conflict remains, we will never escape the past

THE philosopher Alan Watts, who helped introduce the world to the Beat Generation and wrote the multi-million bestseller The Way of Zen, had a very useful word for coming to terms with and letting go of things from the past.

He called it ‘forgettery’: “If you always, and always, and always remembered everything, you see, you would be like a piece of paper which had been painted over, and painted over and painted over, until there was no space left and you wouldn’t be able to distinguish between one thing and another.”

I can see an argument for ‘forgettery’.

Too often we hold on to memories which actually become a barrier to moving on with our thinking and analysis of what is going on around us.

So much of a barrier, in fact, that we become trapped in and by the past. Unable to let go. Unable to move on.

Unable to accept that the world we see, through the prism of unreleased memories, is a world that fewer and fewer people recognise.

And, in not recognising it, see us as relics from the past who aren’t allowing them to move on.

As we know all too well, in Northern Ireland, tens of thousands of people still live with the debilitating physical and psychological memories of our troubled past.

Tens upon tens of thousands more live with the memories of family, friends and assorted loved ones who were murdered or seriously injured by events during those 30 or so years of daily terrorism.

The Good Friday Agreement was never meant to remove – and never could have, of course – those memories from all of those people.

Memory isn’t eradicated by a peace deal; and nor will it necessarily be eased by the fact that former armed opponents have stopped creating new horrific memories for yet another generation.

All a peace deal can do is – maybe, just maybe – create and nurture the circumstances in which the hurt will be able to find some hope in their pain not being experienced by the post-GFA generation.

Yet it seems to me that ‘forgettery’ is not possible when, 32 years after the original ceasefire, the primary cause of the conflict has not been removed.

I’ve written before about talking to people over the years who still find it impossible to forget, or even sideline the past.

And their difficulty is not just about the hurt – physical and psychological – they still endure; rather, it’s their fear – and for many it is accurately described as fear – that nothing has really changed.

Yes, there may be superficial evidence that there has been change; yet below the surface things are pretty much the same.

Regular readers will be aware I believe we are trapped in a limbo in which the past is always in front of us.

That’s why we cannot move on to dealing with reconciliation, legacy, agreed narratives, truth and genuinely cooperative government.

It’s why the shadow of new-generational violence (maybe as a response to whatever way a border poll goes; or even the lack of a border poll) still hovers in the corner of our eye.

It’s why a post-GFA political/electoral generation hasn’t swept away the old ways and memories of the old days.

“Give it time, Alex. Give it time.” Bugger that.

At what point do we accept that the most persuasive factor in our way of doing political business in Northern Ireland/Ulster/the North/the Six Counties (we can’t even agree on the bloody name of the place) is how we view the past.

And here’s a challenge for you: apart from the general agreement that Westminster should stump up the cash every time the Executive holds out a begging bowl, on what other key issue is there collective agreement?

Go on, sit down with a pencil and a piece of paper – a mere scrap will probably do – and ping off the list to the letters page.

You can’t paint and keep on trying to paint over the memories of the past.

‘Forgettery’ will not work here. Impossible to balance one-situation-against-the-other legislation will not work.

Regular messages from the Pollyanna subset to focus on the good things hasn’t worked, either, because that is based on pretending not to notice the you-know-what still floating about after the toilet has been flushed.

You can’t just tell hundreds of thousands of people to let go and move on.

Crucially, you can’t tell anyone to keep on taking a risk for the peace/political process when it is, to all intents and purposes, still a shambles three decades later.

Before you ask: no, I don’t have an answer to any of this. Nobody has.

That’s because the primary cause of the modern conflict in the first case – partition – remains: and it’s not likely to change any time soon.

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