The architecture of a real Republic.

When I left Ireland in June 2005, everybody I knew was interested in holding only one conversation. I could talk sports and I would receive polite monosyllables, I could try religion and I would get an agnostic shrug, politics was for undergraduates only and even sex was kind of passé; the real juice was in house prices.  

Everyone I knew was a house price millionaire.  We had all bought our houses at roughly the same time, we had all sort of the same mortgages, we were all earning just enough to maintain our monthly bills, in fact some of us could afford to have that newfangled broadband installed.  I was still stuck on dial up.

But....no matter what our financial struggles were, we had a cast iron asset which was heading into the stratosphere and with one fell swoop could pay off all of our bills and wash us clean of debt.  Our houses became our religion.

So, like good devotees to this religion of architecture and finance, we studied its catechism of build quality, location, aspect, local schools and most importantly whether the garden was south-facing (South being the Mecca of our new religion).

We made regular pilgrimages to showrooms, garden centres and housing exhibitions; our Camino de Santiago involved stops at Blanchardstown, Dundrum and Liffey Valley on the ring roads culminating with a quasi spiritual ecstasy in the Botanic Gardens and the National Stud's Japanese gardens in Kildare.

So, given the amount of time and effort we put in to learning the new codes of home worship, I am going to use the language of this religion to describe how to rebuild our Republic in the manner it should have been built in the first place.

So, to begin with, let's look at the site.

When one builds a house one makes a good survey of the site (unless you're a 90's developer) to ensure that the ground is firm enough to actually support a decent structure and yet soft enough that the ground can actually be broken to lay a foundation.   Let's call this site 'My constituency'.

So the people need to be neither too soft nor too hard to build upon. This translates into that the people need to be neither too easily led nor too rigid in their beliefs. We can see that there are powers aiming for both of those constituencies:  The privately owned media wish to manipulate the easily led and the protest movements wish to shore up the rigid against negotiating with the other side. Neither position promises much for the future.  Nothing of lasting quality can be constructed in these places.

Yes, one can throw up a number of temporary buildings in a swamp but they will soon wash away with the first flood.  Even planning for the flood fails to solve the underlying problem of the swamp. Likewise, one can manipulate people's thoughts and even their wavering votes using media and well funded publicity stunts but in the end, those votes will just as easily flow elsewhere leaving you up a pole and isolated.

One can build a stone gravity wall on a stone escarpment but, without foundations, the wall will collapse if it is extended out too far.  Thus all the stone ground offers us is the chance to build a tower because everything else will crumble. Likewise one can hold a very narrow position for a long time using a committed, almost cult like vote but that level of rigidity will alienate other voters.  One is left in one's ivory tower unable to deal with a broad range of issues and challenges. 

My constituency certainly won't be the most common or widespread terrain available but it will provide the most security of tenure. My constituency will have a diverse nature, covering different levels and will offer great views and will suit its surroundings admirably providing a pleasant vista.
My constituency needs to be made up of rational people, capable of teasing out an argument and exercising critical thought. These people come from diverse backgrounds and classes, they are different generations and they have reached different outcomes in their personal and professional lives.  What they have in common is that they can fairly argue the merits of participatory democracy and convince others of their sincerity.  They retain their friends and neighbours who have different political positions so they know what is going on around them but, by not trying to 'convert' their friends, they earn us great respect.

As I said, My constituency is the rarest of constituencies but it is also the most desirable and envied.

Now for the foundations.

Depending on how high you want to build and what quality of materials you wish to use, your foundations will have to be dug sufficiently deep to support the entire structure. Plus there's no point in having a deep foundation on one side of your site and just gravel on the other side. The load needs to be borne equally and at regular intervals so that the entire structure can hold up. Now there is the added challenge that the building site needs to be leveled first to ensure  the easiest build, otherwise your architect is up against a whole patchwork of stresses and balances which will inevitably collapse the entire structure on the first jolt.

In short:  A Republic needs to recognise its people at the same level and to treat them equally, otherwise the stresses and imbalances will tear the entire state apart, A Republic needs this spirit level discipline to be maintained for each tier of the construction, (Social, Legal, Political, Financial, Services) or else it will inevitably collapse into the chaotic rubble of demagoguery, oligarchy or hegemony.

The Republics of Rome and Greece collapsed into Imperialism, the Republics of Raniassance Italy collapsed into incoherent factionalism leading to fascism, the Republic of Ireland is nearly completely dominated by the hegemony of international finance and domestic corruption.

It's time to show the zombie village builders and their ilk how it's done.

The monarchy, the empire, the dictatorship and the theocracy all require fear and oppression to operate,  The oligarchy, plutocracy, aristocracy or military junta require actual violent force to ensure they can continue. All these systems are in existence on the surface of our planet right now and living under such conditions is especially unpleasant to us because we have torn more and more rights and freedoms from our state.

The Republic is an idea which captures the imagination and loyalty of free thinking people because it offers the reward of more influence and better conditions for participation. It doesn't matter how much one participates in a monarchy, the king will always be the king. It doesn't matter how many rights one negotiates for in a dictatorship, the dictator decides. In all other political systems the power lies with the people at the top of the pile.  Only in a republican democracy does the citizen enjoy the power to control the government.

Now, how true is that of Ireland? Have we ever had a Republic?

Let's be honest, we've come a long way from the subject colony of the British Empire we were one hundred years ago.  True, Dublin and some of the larger cities enjoyed higher qualities of life than many northern English cities but having an Anglo Irish ascendancy came at the cost of  the common people's rights and incomes. The Irish ascendancy were quasi-feudal in their position and culture and, if you weren't one of them, then you weren't one of them.  It was a society that employed servants and maids, which treated workers and service providers with genuine disrespect.  It was a society completely at odds with the new realities brought forth by the advent of 20th century technologies.  It was doomed because it was far too rigid to adapt to a better educated and ambitious population.

What came after the passing of the Anglo Irish ascendancy was a group of people who had idealism enough to embrace and declare a republic however as time and a civil war passed, Ireland was left with a new class of elite family who were the proverbial 'beggars on horseback' and that is how it has remained ever since.
  

When we look at the great Republics of the world the political architecture is always the same; semi circular. Think Greek Symposium, Roman Forum, French Senate, Arthurian round table etc.  They are all semi circular surrounding a speaker's pedestal.  It is simply the best way to organise factions without favouring one over the other. All other designs offer an unfair advantage to one or two factions closest to the speaker. The 'long room' parliament design in use in Britain, which is not a Republic but a Constitution-less Constitutional Monarchy, infected our own Leinster House enabling two parties to bait and caterwaul at one another resorting to personal jibes and gaming the debate over exploring important issues an`d seeking good governance.

The secret to having a more efficient and honest government really is in the architecture.  So for a real Republic we need not only to change the form of democracy but also we need to change where that democracy is housed and expressed.  We need also a place for people to be able to congregate within the new Dáil where the deliberations and debates of our elected representatives can be seen by the public. Keeping our representatives holed up in a Georgian Ascendancy bunker isn't conducive to transparency and accountability

The Houses of Parliament in London and the Congress building in Washington are both very imposing edifices but I don't think that governance needs the drama of High Gothic or the authority of Neo Classical lines.  We simply require a building that is both functional and open to light and view.  If we want transparency in our politics then I would suggest that we should start with the buildings our government works from. There's no need to build one as we have already done that during the Celtic Tiger years;  Dublin's Liffeyside International Convention Centre would do just fine.  Think about it.