‘Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane 

A large crowd got off the train in Killarney. I was in the front of the train, it meant I could see all the passengers heading for the exit. Observing the milling passengers on Killarney platform I asked myself how does the word hold together with all the different shapes and sizes.

The previous day a BBC reporter conducted a vox pop in Norwich, asking people what they thought of newly elected MP for Makerfield, Andy Burnham, who is odds-on favourite to be next UK prime minister. Some thought he was great, some had no time for him. How had they come to their decisions.

How do we form our opinions? 

On Friday I had a discussion with a young man; there was no way I was going to change his mind on the topic. His certainty shocked me; I felt he was sticking to his view more on a hunch than on basing it on sound reasoning. He would not accept recognised statistics.

I was back thinking of the people at Killarney platform, wondering how they inform themselves.

Is the world of constant information saturating our minds? Those who cycle know what it means to be saturated.

Does an objective law, the idea that something is either right or wrong, no longer hold? Then again Shakespeare (1564 - 1616) raises the issue in Hamlet when the prince says: ‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’.

There is a tendency to move away from binary thinking. I had first-hand experience of that when reading a Department of Education form for new teachers. The appointee is required to tick one of 11 boxes. It was a totally different world when I began teaching in the 1980s.

This is the question as it is presented on the appointment form:

‘Definition of Civil Status (As recognised under Irish national law):

Options that describe a person’s relationship in law with another, please tick:

☐ Single/☐ Married/☐ Civil Partner/☐Divorced/☐ Co-habitant/☐ Judicially Separated/

☐ Separated/☐ Former Civil Partner/☐ Widowed

☐ Surviving Civil Partner/☐ Unknown. And then at the end it asks: ‘If Civil Status is not known ‘Unknown’ is selected until status is determined.’’

It is one example of how the world is changing. There are people who think those questions are relevant and there are those who will think they are ridiculous, another sign of the nonsense that is going on. They will say it’s the world of woke.

Maybe the best teacher/lecturer I have ever had would regularly say: ‘I know nothing’. When it comes to reality what actually do we know?

All those people at Killarney platform are a microcosm of the world, in other words a conglomeration of everything; one might even call it one big mess. Some might call it one big happy family.

Or is it that we always see the world from the vantage point from where we are at that moment? A young person walking in a park with a small happy child is going to see the world differently than an old feeble person sitting exhausted in a park bench? 

Cycling in that park last week, observing those two people, such a thought struck me; as did observing those at Killarney station.