Tariq Bey’s Reviews > We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland > Status Update

Ballymun projects apparently tried to do things better & differently but failed miserably

Commercialization of Rising 50th anniversary, dhows the direction Eire is going. De Valera's still around somehow

Difficulties in Distinguishing a culture in an increasingly cosmopolitan world

"We were punished for perceived transgression, but the punishment itself could be wildly transgressive"

A brothers story - 'before, he had always been pushing for more pay, or looking for easier work, or something. But now he didn't mind getting the toughest job - and the dirtiest - and he as always willing to change his shift to suit someone else'

& this is meant to be a good thing ? Ofc the church is pushing for obedience & acquiescence

Brothers engrained with missionary attitude & English ideas "imagining themselves as missionaries from a mother country that was also mother church"

Ireland had educational aparthied. School was expensive, upper middle class kids could afford secondary school while the poorer ones could only get primary education. This changed in 1966 when minister of education Donogh O'Malley abruptly announced secondary education would be free, forcing the church & the rest of the governments hands

Christian Brothers schools taught militant nationalism & the story of the long history of oppression to the people of Ireland, helping to plant the seeds of the rising & independence movement.

Ireland is transitory & fluid, with no clear identity, similar to Byrne the actor

Ch7- Gay Byrne & The Late Late Show
His show provided an outlet where people can often anonymously say things that the pious culture wouldn't have otherwise accepted. Byrne himself was a representation of the ideal of the new Irishman, a true entertainer who previously fit in the British entertainment world. While Byrne personally was amicable with the state, the topics on his show often drew him the state's ire.