We are All Individuals

I am an individual.

So are you.

We are all individuals.

Or so we think.

So, I will take a moment to challenge myself on my individuality, my creativity, my freedom to make my own choices, the reason I make my own decisions.

And very quickly I realise that the concept of being an individual is rather more difficult than one might first think.

Here are a few things that I have to take into consideration.

I am a Manchester United supporter. I have been for almost sixty years. And so every time I watch a match, I am emotionally connected to millions of others around the world. I jump up when they score, and groan when they let in a goal. I read the endless clickbait stories about who they are going to buy for however many millions, even though I know it is bound to be rubbish. The only thing the same as the Manchester United that I started supporting is me. And I ignore other teams and other players.

Meanwhile, I followed in my father’s footsteps by working in advertising. I started when I was fifteen, going into the agency after school to help out in vouchers (the most hateful job in the ad world.) That path took me through an enjoyable career, with lots of hard work and great craic. But I was learning from others all the time, firstly Dad, then people I worked with, and then others learned from me. I see things from an communications perspective. How is the media affecting us?

I went to Inst, in Belfast, RBAI. I wore the yellow and black cap, the blazer and did all the Inst things. I went to the School’s Cup matches to shout for our team and berate the opposition. I assume a relationship with boys and men who shared the same school with no knowledge of who they are. I’m now an Instonian, and meet up, nearly fifty years on from leaving, with some of the boys I met then, on first Tuesday of each month.

When I was young, I was a Protestant. Church on Sunday with hair brushed and smartly dressed. Scouts and badminton in the church halls. And not Catholic. Oh no, definitely not, although most of the guys I played football with in Adeliade Park were. In 1968 the Troubles started to ferment, and my Unionism materialised. We holidayed in a caravan in Cloughey, and I happily went to the bonfire on the eleventh night, and followed the bands, one flute and one pipe, as they marched along the main road.

For the next nine or ten years, everything that happened in the Troubles was filtered through being a Prod Unionist. We were sectarian, justified we thought, by the IRA. We used sectarian language, thought sectarian thoughts, and hoped sectarian hopes.

In each of these individual identities there was always an opponent. Inst vs Methody, Manchester United vs Leeds, or Liverpool, Scouts vs Boys Brigade, Unionists vs Republicans.

Where is my individualism? Lost, or misplaced in a flurry of communication.

Add to all that the power of advertising, and we enter the world of media and marketing. fast cars are better than slow cars. Heinz Beans are the best. Tayto are the loveliest crisps in the world (that one is true!) All the so-called decisions we make on our own that have actually been made by the brands and products being on the telly. (I can bore for Ireland on this one!) I want Levi jeans. I want Timberland boots. I want Domino’s pizza; I want an iPhone. Advertising is how I choose, how I know what is best, what is worth my money, what will badge me. 

As an individual?

The power of the media is all around us, and it is unknown to most people. Imagine if aliens were looking in from outer space and wanted to take control of Earth. Would the best way be to arrive with ray guns and long metallic legs, or to take control of the media.

Every day we see the results. Joe Biden has turned around the US economy, which Trump had trashed, yet 55% of Americans would trust Trump more. 95% of scientists know that climate change is man made as it has been proven. Not because it is their opinion, it has been proven. Yet still the media mixes the messages and implies that the enemy is Greta Thunberg. A teenager. Not the oil companies whose only interest is to make more and more money. Nope. The big danger to the world is Greta. The Daily Mail was recently outraged that she wasn’t taken to court for protesting. They aren’t outraged that car companies are selling bigger and bigger vehicles that use more fuel.

Northern Ireland is not a great hotspot for individualism. You are all soothsayers. I bet you can tell in advance what Nationalist or Unionist opinion will be as soon as you hear a news story. Not just the politicians, the people who have their identity formed from an early age. Just like me.

We see it every day. Issues that should not be influenced by green and orange suddenly have a constitutional element. We hear people talk about identity as part of belonging to a different tribe but using the same emotional baggage of their upbringing and education.

I was shocked to hear an old friend using the language of anti-vaxxers and anti-climate change, claiming that her opinions were all the result of her individual research online, but using the same phrases and reasoning as all the others in that camp.

Is it possible to be an individual?

I am not sure.

There are hurdles to overcome. Each of the tribes I joined results in blindness.

As a Manchester United supporter, I was unable to appreciate the talent of Kevin Keegan or Kenny Dalgliesh. Or the brilliance of the Liverpool sides of the ’70s and ’80s. As an Instonian the success of Methody pupils in any walk of life was met with indifference. As a young Protestant, in a small u unionist family, I didn’t listen or learn anything about the hows and whys of nationalism. I knew what was true having to make an effort.

As a result, I didn’t listen. I didn’t listen to why Nationalists felt they were being treated as second class citizens. And if I heard Gerry Fitt on the TV, his voice would be drowned out by the determination of my parents to ignore and belittle him and any of his associates. I grew up through the first ten years of the Troubles with a clear vision of who was right, us, and who was wrong, them. With not a thought that the Catholic community was thinking exactly the same way, with the roles reversed.

And then I went to Queens. I got educated in History and Politics, but more importantly I met people from all over Northern Ireland. People from every county, who went to different schools, in different towns, and different churches, who liked different sports, and were from different economic backgrounds. My thinking was affected by friendships not ideologies. By being prepared to listen to stories of growing up in Fermanagh, in Andersonstown, in Coleraine, going to single sex schools, co-eds, studying a different curriculum, and having very different political opinions. It led me along a path to being open minded, to trying to make my own choices, not just following the path laid out for me.

Being open minded takes work. You decide to read something that would not normally be on your horizon. You listen to people educated in different fields, or with different backgrounds. You can develop an inquisitiveness that hops you from one topic and opinion to another. I have no idea about science, but used to watch the BBC2 programme Horizon as some genius in quantum physics made it all sound plausible, then when I tried to explain it to my Dad he became concerned that I was a blethering idiot. I read history, not simply to find out about great men and women, but to try to understand how ordinary people lived. I step outside my comfort zone and engage and listen to others that have expertise in areas that flummox me, yet we hear so often that expertise itself is being decried. I am still learning. Podcasts are a brilliant source of inspiration and knowledge, as are audio books.

I have asked the question in Twitter Spaces, “how many people in here have a different political mindset than their parents?” Not many hands go up. One could even say that the thinking processes behind being Nationalist or Unionist in Northern Ireland are the same, resulting from upbringing, not individual investigation of the circumstances. As a result, those in each community know nothing of why the others cannot understand them. Nationalists follow the simple trope that Northern Ireland was established to be a Protestant State for Protestant people, meanwhile Unionists ignore the reality of the institutionalised sectarian discrimination that ravaged it for over fifty years.

Each side is driven by conviction, yet neither is convincing in 2024.

The Unionists seem to believe that the clock can be wound back to 1966. Nationalists ignore that it has moved forward since 1972. Unionists refuse to see that acting in the interests of the whole community means accepting that the future will only work as Norhtern Ireland if there is compromise. Nationalists seem to have missed that the First Minister being from Sinn Fein is the most visible sign that there has been real change.

The determination to resist being an individual is a powerful force. Opinions are just there. They are immovable, with no point in even having a debate because no matter what the logic or the ideas, there is no desire for change or individuality.

By giving up your individuality you are also giving up your creativity. You are accepting the status quo of your thinking. Had Picasso, or Jobs, or McCartney simply joined in with the acceptance of group think, the world would be a very dull place. If all you do is accept what you been given, and not gone out to discover for yourself, nothing will ever get better.

I am right, sometimes. I am wrong a lot of the time. But being wrong can be a good thing, if you realise it and make adjustments. Being wrong and not seeing it, because of your fixed opinions, fixed when you were a child, is not a good thing.

It means you are not an individual, and you are missing out on the joys of challenging yourself.