(The Nationalist, 17 December 2004)
Two years ago, on Christmas Eve, a powerful storm knocked out the electric power system over much of Ireland. It struck while many people were at their Christmas shopping. In one town it forced shop-keepers to close up. However, in one of them, a bookshop, they tried to keep going; they had a stock of candles ready for such an emergency, so they lit them, placed them on the shelves and used a pocket calculator to work out change. It wasn’t long, though, before the staff noticed that customers were taking advantage of the semi-darkness to take books from the shelves and walk out the door with them. So many were doing it that the staff couldn’t stop and check them all. They were forced to close down like the other shops.
Just suppose that you or I had gone into that shop before the storm began and we asked those customers a simple question: ‘Would you steal from this shop if the lights went out?’ What would the likely answer have been? I think we’d have received some short, sharp, indignant answers: ‘Certainly not!’ ‘How dare you ask such a question?’ ‘Are you accusing me of being a thief?’ But those very people did steal when the lights went out. (Don’t say, please, ‘It was only shoplifting’ – that’s stealing, too.) What kind of morals have we got if a power cut can suspend them?
Something similar, but worse, happened in New York in the 1970’s. The electric power system was designed so that, even if one station stopped generating, the others could take up the slack and cope. But one winter the unexpected happened. A violent storm knocked out first one power station, then, a few minutes later, another. The remaining stations could no longer cope with the demand; they stalled, then stopped. In the hours of darkness which followed, every crime that the human mind can imagine was committed. It was as if the power cut had short-circuited people’s humanity and returned them to barbarism for a brief spell.
How well do we know ourselves? How deep is civilization? How far does it penetrate into the heart of human life? Scrape away the veneer and what lies underneath? Isn’t there a barbarian just beneath the surface in all of us? In this most brutal and bloody of all human centuries, a little humility about ourselves is not out of place.