When George Orwell said to imagine the future as "a boot stamping on a human face forever", he might well have done better to say to imagine: "an unthinking, overweight, self-ingratiated slob of a human stomping on everything that is beautiful and represents the spark of imagination within the human soul". However less catchy the alternative is, it is nevertheless precisely what is happening; an in fact more subtle sort of oppression against humankind than the original quote dares to suggest.

The recent push by the Irish government to level the Gabhra valley, at the foot of the hill of Tara, to make way for a commuter motorway emphasises this fact perhaps even more so than the previous attempt at a metaphor. Further, that within the political arena no individual or group has been bold enough to effectively stand up and refuse to let the several millenia-worth of heritage accumulated within the area disappear into a cloud of exhaust fumes, goes someway to evidencing just how empty our society has become.

Almost it seems the lone unquivering voice within Ireland has been the organisation Tara Watch and its affiliates. Desperately, gallantly, and with some effect they have pleaded with the people of Ireland to come out in protest against this; to see the significance of Tara as greater than whatever petty demands they may see fulfilled within the construction of the motorway (or at any given moment may be distracting them to apathy, for that matter).

Tara is the traditional capital of Ireland, having been the seat of the Ard Rí for at least as far back as there exists written record and continued to have deep significance to the Irish people even after the collapse of the Gaelic social system. In the wider international setting, it is the epicentre of a civilization known to be one of the most ancient and continuous anywhere, though the extent of its exploits and expanses remains shrouded in mystery.

Tara is the legitimising spiritual centre of Ireland, symbolising the unity and vitality of the Irish nation. That we could be so audacious and self-serving to destroy the material symbol of our solidarity just to cut a few minutes off a few peoples travel time on their way to their shitty jobs in Dublin seems a mere fact after the matter that our sense of shared transcendent purpose has long since died. Nevertheless, if for nothing else we should at least seek to preserve the area for the archaeological knowledge it possesses and the hope contained therein of reawakening our sense of collective (and individual) orientation.

Being a nation so thoroughly slandered and suppressed since our domination by the british we are left with little realistic account of our origins or history and have only begun to receive some clue of who we are at our deepest foundations from what has been unearthed in very recent times by archeology and genetics. To quote from Tarawatch.com: "As the personalities of these remarkable people are muted by a lack of recorded literature, archeology becomes the sole resource for understanding them. Therefore, the destruction in Tara Valley of what is a two thousand-year old time casket is an injury to the people of Ireland". Whilst two thousand years may be a cautious under-estimate, we may never know if we go through with what even to many powerful international onlookers seems unthinkable. The value of a strong sense of heritage is hard to underestimate. A people that knows of its heritage is emboldened by an awareness of the connection it has with the past and with the environment and people it is immersed within in the present. The need of a person to know of its origins is a fundamental part of the human psyche. Without it a person feels isolated & empty and loses the ability to understand themselves or the world within any significant context. In short, a loss of a strong sense of heritage makes for broken misguided people.

The battle to save Tara then is a reiteration of the same battle that has raged in Irish political and social life for some 400 years or more. As we have wandered further and from any natively created culture we have disregarded more and more the things which once were sacred to us. Continually the Irish nation has struggled inwardly to assert its energy as a unifying spiritual force, contending always with the reductive force of individualist materialism. It is a battle continually lost by those backing Ireland as a force for anything more than mutually assured indulgence.

Is there life in Ireland yet that we might stop this injury against the substance and object of our heritage and national consciousness? Or at last witnessing the culmination of Ireland's lengthy Twilight Of The Gods?

The people of Tara Watch deserve as much admiration and support as possible. For more information on them and how you can help, visit Tarawatch.org.

By LLD

http://ireland.corrupt.org/entry/10/Tara#body