From "unsettlement" to a new future
For our Future Heritage blog series, Professor Duncan Morrow draws on lessons from Northern Ireland's painful past to consider how disruption can lead to new ways of thinking.
People are on the move, climates are threatened and digital technology is changing societies and economics at an unprecedented rate. Global politics has been in a state of flux since 1989. The UK has its own turmoil, strained by a three-year Brexit debate. "Unsettledness" is becoming a way of life.
In Northern Ireland this has been true for a while. Here, peace has always been fragile and neither future nor past are settled. In fact, after decades of "normalised" violence, peace is still the surprise element.
After the Good Friday Agreement, enemies of many years became permanent partners in government. But violence is still always around the corner and looking back to the past risks re-opening painful wounds – often publicly.
Nothing threatens hoped-for futures like a polarised past.
Full article here
