Do we know what is happening to our countries in the West, in the Euro zone? Yes we do? We are experiencing unprecedented demographic change. Let us not discuss whether that is a good or a bad thing, it is just a fact and though it has been said that ideas have consequences I feel that the empirical salience of that change is more important than the ideology which drives it. In 2022 the population of Ireland was 5.1 million an increase of 10.3% in 10 years. Has there been a significant increase in infrastructure during that time, houses, hospital beds, etc. etc.? No not at all. Competition for scarce resources drives up prices, homelessness is becoming commonplace, waiting lists for serious conditions grow longer, the general immiseration is rising. Unsurprisingly this has led to unrest particularly in the poorer working class areas who are lumped with the bulk of this new population whose mores are often inimical. The leafy suburbs escape all this. Take a trip out to Greystones where our taoiseach (prime minister) is from and you will notice that the visible minority passengers are mostly gone before you are half way there: unless they are staff.
There doesn’t appear to be any particular advantage to this influx for the mass of the native population. Unrest is growing and the angry marches are gathering numbers. Dublin is becoming an unsafe place which will put off multinational corporations from setting up there. X is under attack from government ministers who want to control the narrative. The rest of the media are supine, grovelling cheerleaders. The outlook is not good. Expect righteous wrath if our patient complaints are not heeded. That phase of calm insistence must avoid violence.
Patience, however, is something quite other than the indiscriminate acceptance of any and every evil: “The patient man is not the one who does not flee from evil, but the one who does not allow himself to be made inordinately sorrowful thereby.”(Aquinas) To be patient means to preserve cheerfulness and serenity of mind in spite of injuries that result from the realization of the good. Patience does not imply the exclusion of energetic, forceful activity, but simply, explicitly and solely the exclusion of sadness and confusion of heart. Patience keeps man from the danger that his spirit may be broken by grief and lose its greatness.
(Josef Pieper on Fortitude)
