“I remember him when he had nothing”
I think it was Samuel Johnson that said “The Irish are a fair people; they never speak well of one another”
A piece in the Irish Times was pointed out to me today
Now in fairness to the guy who pointed it out he has also wrote on the subject.
I think we need to move away from this knocking mentality, we need to celebrate our successes and commiserate our failures not jump on people’s backs.
I am starting to notice it quite a lot lately with practically a sense of celebration from the pack when someone/company goes down, is this what we have become?, are we going to continue with the sins of our forefathers and maintain this “island mentality” or are we going to look west to our closest friends on that side where the success married by some failure is the mantra.
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Couldnt really agree more Pat. My heart goes out to other people in trouble and struggling as I know what it is like as a small company. If we can’t help each other here in Ireland in every way possible what chance to we have. Can’t remember the exact saying but Bono said…..The Yanks look to the person in the big mansion at the top of the hill and think I wanna be that guy and admire him, the Irish look at the same guy and say I fucking hate that guy. Can’t see it changing any time soon. Bunch of begrudgers the lot of us!
I don’t think it’s just an Irish thing. I’ve seen this in the US just as much.
One of the reasons I’ve gotten very involved in the Irish online community these past few months is because I have found them very supportive of people during their ups and downs — but it is a bit selective. When a person has been open and sincere, he seems to get support and understanding. If a person appears to be a chancer, benefitted from cronyism or stepped on us on the way up; we laugh at him on the way down. Perhaps it’s a strange sense of humour or a need to celebrate the dramatic irony in the situation — or a journalist desperate for an interesting headline.
I agree that a change in this attitude would be beneficial in these times when we should be working together – and it could be you next!
My economics teacher back in secondary school would always try to knock this attitude out of us. He would often say that Ireland is short on entrepreneurs not because of a lack of funding or competitions like the Entrepreneur of the Year, but because of our attitudes towards failure.
The example he’d give was this:
If a man’s business is about to close down, and he transfers some of his remaining assets to his wife’s name, so that when the business closes down, even though it might owe the bank a few bob, they’ll have some enough money to get back on their feet and get their next business venture off the ground.
In Ireland this would be frowned upon as sneaky and dishonest, but in America it would be a smart business move.
It wasn’t the perfect example, but it did get across the point that failure isn’t the end of the entrepreneurial process, most often it’s the beginning, and as long as we treat failure in the ways you’ve pointed out, we’ll always lag countries like America.
This isn’t uniquely Irish but because of our never ending naval gazing as a nation, we think it is.
You only need to read Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton to know that this is the case. It’s a universal trait we all suffer from (to a greater or lesser degree).
The guys on Wall Street suffer from it too. They are perfectly “happy” with their top of the line BMW until another trader gets something better than that, and then they feel “poor” because of it. The temporary high they had evaporates as quickly as their eyes turn green.
It we look to the Irish blogging scene – there are those who think of nothing of belittling Irish companies and individuals who didn’t “engage” in the right way in the social media space. The fact that a mistake may have been made doesn’t matter – they will get lashed from a height and the chorus will join in with relish. I’ve seen abhorrent interactions and behaviour on Twitter too that I seem to remember left a woman in tears.
But I digress…
Re: the American entrepeneurial spirit. An absolutely brilliant article in the New Yorker in April argues that America’s abolition of debtor’s prison in the late 1800′s and the country’s bankruptcy laws means that
“Americans came to see that most people who fall into debt are victims of the business cycle, and not of fate or divine retribution. Because our bankrupcy laws make taking risks less risky, for everyone, everyone takes more risks. We have lost and we have gained, yet, in the main, we have prospered mightily”
Article extract is at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/04/13/090413fa_fact_lepore
and you’ll have to register to read the full thing, but for the first time I think it may point towards part of the reason America is a place where it is easier to fail and just move on.
Maybe Johnson was right, but I’ll bet there were Johnsons in other countries saying the same thing but we’ve just never heard of it, because of that naval gazing thing I started off talking about.
Agree 100% Pat.
Let’s hope this changes. Ireland needs to celebrate wealthy successful people, not begrudge them and wait gleefully for their downfall.
Par for the course Pat. The begrudgers are the same ones that wallow in their own muck while the ones that work hard reach for the stars and get there. It doesn’t matter if they only tip them or grab on, they still got to the stars, even once.
The wallowers will be only too delighted when you come back down but at least you’ve traveled, while they just kept wallowing in the muck and bile. What’s tragic though and I see it a lot is that the begrudgers are like parasites, trying to latch on and sell their own crap based on what the winners have done. Friends on the phone, knockers behind your back when they don’t need a favour. We’ll no doubt see Pat Phelan mugs, t-shirts and calendars in the future from those that knew you when you only employed 20 people.
I’ve worked in dog-eat-dog offline adland for 20 years, and there’s no room for sentiment, but at least you know that coming in. From what I’ve seen of online entrepreneurial spirit in Ireland, the opposite seems true. A lot of people working bythe seat of their pants willing success to each other. Maybe I’m an absolute clown who’s missing the point but you’ll have to convince me. Corporations will try to claw each other down by fair means or foul. I don’t see the same scale of ill wished on individuals by others insimilar situations. There are exceptions of course, but in the main we all need success stories if we’re any of us to succeed. Begrudgery really doesn’t count, or oughtn’t to, as anything other than free incentivising.
Right. That’s my stupid head above the parapet. Fire at will.
Great post Pat. I think it’s a damn shame that we Irish have taken the worst of things from the US (the long working hours) but have completely glossed over the more positive ones (like attitudes to entrepreneurs).
Similarly we have the high tax regime of some of the more progressive European countries (scandinavia) but none of their health or welfare.
We seem to have done things arse way round.
Twitter: topgold
6th July, 2009 at 10:54 am
I think it’s the perspective you bring to the story before you read below the headline or sift beyond the tweet. Growing up in the States, I learned that failure begets success and that repeated stumbling marked the careers of the most-respected people my dad knew. So I didn’t see begrudgery in the story of a failed entrepreneur. Nor do I think examinership will stymie a true Irish entrepreneur.
Twitter: shanekny
7th July, 2009 at 12:20 am
I think Ann’s point is a good one. There is a LOT of cronyism here, as well as a lot poorly spent public funding in the name of business support. This leads to a default suspicion that success might not necessarily be earned though failure may well be.
re: Damien’s comment. We could just as easily see cupcakes, chocolate business cards or even iPhone apps. And taking the iPhone app as an example – plenty of them have built on/modified what the winners have done.and more power to any small business in Ireland doing their own thing. Success means different things to different people.
Hi Pat,
I hope it is clear from my own article that I was not in anyway glad to hear this news but was purely shocked because revenues as recently as 2005 had been €17 million. Sometimes with only 140 characters the message gets lost in translation.
There was a good piece on the same topic in the most recent Irish Times Innovation Magazine.
Title: “In Ireland, we do not tolerate failure any more than we tolerate success. We have to learn to do both”
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/innovation/2009/0706/1224250001256.html
A bathroom specialists goes out of business. Wasn’t flush with success then (how could you be when the property bullshit economy you’re tied to has gone down the plughole). this argument doesn’t wash.