64June 2015
Would there be an
ecological change if
photographs were
available of our
ancestors?
“
Time on the border
Co-operation is the lesson for separated communities and generations
Shirley Clerkin
ENVIRONMENT
IN THE STICKS
L
IVING on the border defines and determines. You
are on one side or the other. You go over it. You go
back again, developing an intense and intimate
relationship with its nuances and grey areas. The
border is the edge and the beginning, like two silk
scarves with rolled French seams lying end to end, but
also a place of buffering, transition and, because of
that, cultural richness.
Little details that ornament
south or north – the road surface,
the metric miles, the Slán
Abhaile’s, narrate the govern-
ment policies that have
accumulated a different finish to
the countryside and towns. If you
dropped me on either side, I
believe I would know which I was
on eyes-shut, because I am of the
border. It is in me. It is a unified
place, not a line, unified by its
edginess and the distinction of
experiencing many perspectives.
People interrogate you about it
– your experience of “living along
the border”. It becomes an exotic thing because it is
deemed to be by peace-builders, social scientists and
historians. Peace-funding and other EU cohesion
monies are available for storytelling projects that
allow you to get it off your chest, but only while a
person “from the other side” gets it off his or her chest
too. It is an ailment to be overcome, like a bad cough.
But, what if border belonging made you a better
problem-solver because of the unique experience, like
Kilkenny makes better hurlers because of the unique
heritage and self-belief of that place and people. Like
Cork people, being so far away, and having such a rich
and sophisticated hinterland, never lose the run of
themselves. The ingenuity of many home-grown com-
panies, particularly in engineering, on the border is
unreplicated anywhere else on the island for example.
Problem-solving is also about co-operation and collab-
oration, behaviours that have been hard-wired into
many, for reasons of necessity and because of initia-
tives to bring trans-border standards into line with
each other by public authorities. But also because
those woolly sounding “storytelling projects” are
much more than a hug from a warm jumper. It is not
easy: cooperating is challenging, but it can be learned
through doing.
We need to encourage and teach these types of
behaviour to force a change in how we manage our
resources and how we challenge climate change and
biodiversity loss. Because we in effect need to cooper-
ate with future generations as well as with each other.
‘Time Lapse’ from Lodovico Einauidi’s new album
evokes a moving through the seasons, beaten out on
the piano and other percussion – sparse, noisy, busy,
constantly rhythmic but with increasing franticness.
It sounds like years ticking past, generations flickering
briefly like-time lapse photographs from birth to death
in a glimpse – generation upon generation – each
dependent on the earth left by those who went before.
Ecologically.
I sometimes wonder if there would be a change if
photographs were available of our ancestors. Would
our sense of time shrink to see the real transference
between generations, past and future? Would we
become real geologists, and understand human time as
just a pinhead in the history of the earth, and would
this help us co-operate to protect our nature, our
DNA’s future?
Why people are willing, or unwilling, to make
present-day sacrifices for future generations is the
topic of a recent study called ‘Cooperating With The
Future,’ from researchers at Harvard and Yale.
They tested the conditions under which co-opera-
tion with future generations can occur in a game, the
Intergenerational Goods Game (IGG). Oliver Hauser et
al. developed this laboratory model of co-operation
that differs from previous games in which selfishness
creates social-efficiency losses for group members.
Instead, selfishness negatively affects subsequent
groups. Experiments involving more than ,
people demonstrate that when decisions about
resource extraction are made individually, the
resource is rapidly depleted by defectors. But, when
participants are forced to vote on how the resource
should be exploited, it is exploited sustainably across
generations. Voting allows a majority of co-operators
to constrain a minority of defectors, and as all players
receive the same amount after a vote, co-operators
need not worry about losing out relative to others.
To be honest, the study seems like a bit of common
sense, not a great discovery as such, but perhaps the
best ideas are already taken in the real world outside
the lab. My eye was drawn to it because if its snazzy
game-show name. Unfortunately without ever-cheer-
ful Bruce Forsyth to declare “Didn’t they do well?” no
matter how poorly the contestant performed, it will
hardly precipitate any great changes in behaviour.
Brucie was an encouraging and motivating host. We
need him now to tell us to stop the belt conveying
prizes to vested economic interests and to share the
cuddly toys among ourselves and our children. Time is
not what we think. And it is not, nor ever was, on our
side.
Like Einaudi’s composition, the metronome is
relentless. •
separated only in time

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