This week's Independent News & Media Irish regional newspapers' column.
Michael Commane
What do you remember from your school days? Is there anything that stands out for you that you heard from a teacher, a lecturer a trainer that you remember from your years at school, college, apprenticeship?
So often it is the ‘sideshow’ events we remember.
In preparing this column I asked a colleague, who had studied philosophy, what he remembered from his years at college. He thought for a moment and then recalled how a lecturer once told them that it wasn’t necessity that was the mother of all inventions, but instead laziness. Not really a world-renowned philosophical principle.
A friend recalled a Br Minogue in CBS Synge Street covering his ears and saying ‘hell is noise’. And the friend quipped: ‘and now I agree with him.’
I was a student at the Dominican house of studies in Tallaght between 1969 and 1974. Our student master, Fr Delaney, had the nickname Dux. Before coming to Tallaght he had been teaching at the Dominican-run Newbridge College, Latin being one of the subjects he taught.
So the nickname Dux probably came from the Latin word meaning ‘leader’. But it may not have been as straightforward as that as he also had a pronounced waddle in his walk.
He was a kind man. Windows and doors were opening in the church and Dux was taking it all on board, even if he was a little nervous. He was a cautious man by nature. He could never understand why I had such long hair. If he were alive today he’d have no reason to suggest I get a haircut.
I remember next to zilch of the philosophy and theology I learned back then but I remember Dux making a comment about the advent of the skip.
Skips began appearing in Ireland as an everyday means of getting rid of rubbish in the early 1970s. I can still remember Dux announcing one day that skips were a sign of a throwaway society. He was not impressed.
At the time we paid no heed to what he was saying. It was just an old man having a rant at a new-fangled idea. He was in his 40s at the time. What would he know about the modern world?
It seemed the skip was the perfect way of getting a job done in as convenient a way as possible. It was and is the modern way of doing things.
All true. But Dux was spot on: the skip is also a metaphor for our wasteful society. The word accurately represents the throw-away society. It has taken us close to half a century to realise that the goods of the world are not infinite and it’s time to rethink how we manage our waste.
As a young man I always fixed my bicycle punctures. These days I bring the bike to a shop, the tube is replaced with a new one and the punctured tube is binned. It makes no sense.
One third of the food we buy ends up in the bin. This can cost the average Irish household up to €1,000 per year. Approximately 50 per cent of Irish people throw away food regularly.
It’s cool to go with the flow. But to read the signs of the times requires wisdom and thought.
So often it’s those throw-away comments from our teachers, those in charge of us, which leave lasting impressions on us.
A day seldom passes without my thinking about Dux and his comment on skips. A wise man indeed.
1 comment:
"So often it’s those throw-away comments from our teachers which leave lasting impressions on us". But far too many throw-away comments also end up in the skip ... discarded notes etc and school books.
A story about the skip. A group of students had spent three weeks in an Irish College. It came to the time for them to leave and so it was clean up time too for the staff. Black bags, boxes and bags of rubbish were loaded into a van and taken away to the council yard. I was appalled at what was being thrown out, new and almost new sports shoes, new clothes and socks, old clothes too, books and of course snack food. I was frustrated but it was best to throw it all away and not dare save any of it.
One black bag burst and the contents fell to the ground beside the council skip. I noticed a little box so I opened it - a dental brace to straighten teeth.
I had thrown away so much stuff already that I cleaned up the spilled items including the little box and threw it into the skip. What else could I do, the children were already on their way home to many parts of Ireland.
That afternoon I got a phone call from a distressed father wanting to know if anyone had found a dental brace. I told my story of the burst bag and its contents and the only thing that caught my eye was the small box which I had opened. I then had to say that I threw that too into the skip in my frustration at such waste been thrown away. I pointed out the location of the skip in the council yard, the area in which I had dumped the bags and the possible location of the box. A later phone call told me that it had not found...with the added information that the device cost over 2,000 euro by way of dental fees. This is my abiding memory of our throw-away society.
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