“We have no trouble getting universities for exchanges. They like us because we’re old and have cobblestones”

Jimi Hendrix roars from my computer and I’m briefly dislocated from my musings, part of which includes the above statement. My German tutor said it a few weeks ago, in a context that is now useless to try and recall. I’m always stunned at how modern Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix sound, especially live, without even whatever rudimentary sound technology they had in the sixties.
So anyway what I have to discuss and think about is a disembodied statement, which as usual I’m gonna play with and turn around in my head until the light shines on it just the right way, until what it really means can be spelt out. Other universities don’t like Trinity College because it’s old and has cobblestones. I like it because does. I feel secure walking over the cobblestones because they’ve been underfoot for 300 years, far longer than I’ve had feet to walk them. Bram Stoker walked on them, as did Oscar Wilde, Robert Emmett and Jonathan Swift. It’s a link, and a very definite one. After I graduate(if I graduate) and go on to something notorious and worthwhile, I’ll be considered to be one of their brethren.

The strange part, however, that I already consider them my brothers, by virtue of our being Irish. I’m sure people from other nations would share this view-”You’re Irish! Like Oscar Wilde!” This raises some questions in my mind however-as they were an entirely different breed of Irishman than I am. They were part of a Protestant Ascendancy, a ruling class when my antecedents were attending barren farms in the remote west of the country. Forty years earlier, in what was an essentially theocratic Ireland, I would have needed special permission from a bishop to attend the institution at all. We’re different-separated not only by time but also by culture and tradition.

I love tradition, and so I am a member of the Phil. The Philosophical Society is the world’s oldest student society, a paper reading and debating society. And during its debates any points of information are offered with one hand stretched out to the speaker and the other on one’s head. On one’s head that is, because to keep it at one’s side would render it a little too close to a vestigial sword for the speaker’s comfort. But no one has a sword anymore and without it what’s the point? Most of the guests to the Phil probably wouldn’t understand the significance, they’d be somewhat outside the joke so to speak. But more importantly, if Oscar Wilde wasn’t entirely decomposed, if his corpse was suddenly vitalised and he appeared on a Thursday night at the Graduates Memorial Building, he would recognise it instantly. And right there we have another layer of meaning of the seemingly innocuous phrase-”We’re old…” We are old, and what’s more-we’re still here.

Tradition isn’t only a great unifier of disparate generations. It also divides the people who live side by side in the same slice of time. Like forty years ago, the Provost, Fellows and Scholars living and studying within the walls of Trinity and the Catholic majority sitting without. This aspect of tradition troubles me-I don’t think there’s any justification for it. It is the same as was the tradition of white supremacy in the Southern United States and the tradition of imperialism in the former British Empire. It had (and continues to have) division as its objective and hatred as its inspiration, yet it serves the same purpose as the great western traditions of democracy and fundamental rights-it binds humanity through history. I can only suggest that such traditions, those that thrive on fear, are in some way repugnant to something deep within the human psyche, and certainly that is how it seems so far. At all times in human history injustice has only survived in cultures of ignorance and oppression. When people are equipped with freedom and sufficient education to distinguish vice and virtue, virtue has always triumphed. And I can only hope that it continues to do so. Tradition is that which we consider worthy in enough to be preserved. When it isn’t worthy it eventually breaks under the weight of its own tyranny, as it did with slavery and imperialism, and as it is doing in the case of economic oppression in the developing world. (Ed. Note: see The Economic Hit Men and Exploitation) It is essential to remember, however, that there has never been any guarantee that it will continue to do so. Faith should always tempered with doubt. My faith in the noble traditions of the world is always tempered by the doubt that they might just be as temperamental as those that have collapsed in the craven pit of their own ignominy. The onus is on all of us to ensure that the traditions we observe tie us to our living neighbours, as much as our dead relatives.

The music on my laptop has slid gently into the softer side of Smashing Pumpkins. And I have gradually come to the conclusion that other universities like Trinity because the real traditions have survived, and survived for centuries. People sharing the ideals of learning and fraternity have trod the cobblestones through the centuries And thus the traditions tie us to places like Bremen and Passau in this century…Trite it may be, but also true. We love the same things really…