Being an identical twin from political prospective

i am an identical twin.

Twins fascinate others.
We are used in medical studies because the idea that disease can be caused by environment and by genetics and by autoimmune difficulties interests the medics.

To determine if a disease is caused by a specific environment they may watch twins and see if they have a different environment and how different and what may be there that switches on disease.

Being a twin, identical, also in a political sphere has equal curiosity and also unequal bias toward the better and the worst of it.

Let me explain.

Difference in a population is very evident.
Many may discount it by saying 'ah no that would never happen.'
It does.
You can be from the same gene pool, have the same dna, same country passport, same education, equal intelligence but its what you do from the age of 18 onwards that makes all the difference in the world to what happens you and how you are viewed.

This is why identical twins are interesting politically.
How do people react to twins who are identical yet extremely different.
Who comes off better both economically and socially and also who can be relied on and who can be accepted and which will never be.

You couldnt have more difference to one identical twin being a senior social worker of international repute, with doctor in front of her name and one being a vibrant, blousy artist, with no doctor in front of her name and nothing of international repute.
What i share is the intelligence part, we both have more or less the exact same IQ.  its higher than average, so this isnt what stopped a professional educaition for one of us.

We then split at age 18 and chose to live in different countries.
Here is where it gets interesting.
Ireland had nothing to offer - hence one twin left.
Simply because she knew what she wanted to do and where she wanted to go.

One had no idea.  She stayed in the poor country and remained poor, very poor.
She remains a very fine artist.

We now have a divergence of sorts.
We have an academic versus a creative individual.

We have a wealthy nation in the 70's accepting one from a poor nation.
We have a poor nation with nothing to offer a bright intelligent sparkling individual who is broke and there isn't much one can do about it.

Grants for third level education was available for anyone, in the more wealthy nation.
There was no such thing here in ireland.
you went on the dole, you queued for the food mountain beef and cheese.
You squatted, got menial jobs and try to become famous!

If we add just a few other items to this identical twin gene pool.
Both twins had very difficult times adjusting to adult life.
But a lot of people DO!
In a wealthy nation you are given support and an education during the support.
In a poor country you are given the local asylum and darn all education - i assembled plugs and sat in a factory row packing black bin bags.
This i did under the name of 'industrial therapy'
I got 1.50p per week and that went on cigarettes.
(i had recourse to wander into such a day centre recently, in all the time i have been out of it and also in that system nothing has changed.  men sat round packing sanitary towels, i guess they still too call it industrial therapy)!

there is nothing one can do with poverty at the crossroads.
Crossroads in social adjustment
crossroads in education
crossroads in the game of 'chance'

There was nothing you could have done any differently.
I was shy and scared.
My poor mother saw how unhappy i was so she enlisted a daughter of a family friend to try and help.
a psychiatrist.
This led to decades in this system.

Who knows what life the other half, the identical twin had when away.
Did she run into the same difficulties?
If so how did she deal with them?

We are not to know.

What we do know for sure, she came home at the top of her career, she came home with a doctorate and creds to burn and rightly so.

I think if i had left i could have been afforded both the education and the chances that went with this.

I chose to do Artistic pursuits.
I loved it.
I guess being poverty stricken wasnt that nice but i didnt really care.
I was doing what i liked, just as the identical twin was.

I didnt like being lonely and scared and being in a lunatic asylum for THAT alone!

Nor did i like when my twin returned after 40 odd years to see the separation that can happen to identical twins of different social and economic status.
the difference is stark and is being visited upon both of us daily.

Ireland holds education as the key to advancement.
Ireland holds educated people dearly.
Ireland does not hold 'difference' well at all and considered those with difference are a bit like dandruff.  they fall on your shoulders constantly and never go away.

Lets look at these identical twins forty years hence.
If the twin abroad had social and economic stress she has overcome the best part of it through education and choice.

If the twin in ireland had social and economic stress and had overcome the best part of it, doesnt matter at all, for history is long in Ireland (we enjoy our sense of history too you know).

but if you have overcome the social shyness and fears it doesn't mean you are now on a level playing field.  You are not, for no one will ever let you forget that as a vulnerable niaive wee 18 yr old you found life frightening and ended in the lunatic.
There are notes to refer to - we are a small country so everyone has access to these, just about everyone can see a 'history'

but if in a wealthy country with 48 million who would care if you were once in a place like that.
they see you with the Dr. in front of your name and rightly so.  they would not be bothered to try and seek out the unsavoury unless you were a threat to the nation.

If you are poor with a doctorate - the doctorate part will help you no end.
it happens, i have seen it.
its an effective tool  Ireland adores educated people.
It doesnt adore those of us who though educated are not professional and thus again are nothing.

You can say you sold to the american ambassador.
you can say you have six irish book design awards for books i wrote for children and also illustrated.
you can have a commentator saying "a wonderful up and coming writer/illustrator for children in a article and book but if you have no money, were once in psychiatry for being shy, you will be treated differently til the day you die.

and when you see how this does work in identical twins and how they are constantly being split by the political systems of politics and health.
the educated doctor gets the better slice of the cake.
the other gets abuse.
We both see this.
its staring us in the face.

it is happening daily.

so this personal study of identical twins tells me all i want to know on the political level.

Ireland reveres the educated with Dr. in front of their names.
it hates Difference and even hates more the poor.
Read my previous blogs and i can account detail after detail of the running film of stigma, splitting, and acceptance and rejection.

Remember in all this at the end of life aged 60yrs.
we are back together after growing up in different economic and social and professional and career choices.
We are back together more genetically identical than we even thought - we have a rare medical combo for which as yet there is no diagnosis but an approximation to what is happening - we have a parkinsons type condition and also a muscle wasting component.

We are back together in the same country EQUALLY educated.
many who stayed did find education outside the universities.  Its called the education of life and also self education in all things of importance.
I just didn't sit an exam for any of it.

We BOTH can hold our heads up high for all we achieved.
In social life, in economic life and in the citizenship.
We both GAVE back in equal portions.
Do we get the same reverence, respect, approval and services - NO we do not.
one is revered, the other is cast aside like dirt.

MY friend we have a nation not ready to say its modern.  I did point out this before.
so my study in twinship from the perspective of both education, economics and status is quite an  interesting one.
Every day i watch how the services will treat this incident and i am usually right.
I win not.  i go jam side down on everything.

the buttered  and jammied bread is the swiss roll for the twin.

I defy anyone to consider this moral.
we are equal in all things, even now in desease yet treated so differently it beggars belief and understanding.
i detect another identical twin research project here.
I am yet, still proud of all i achieved.
very proud of all i have achieved.

it is wrong not to at least try understand the starting point before you make judgements at the end of life.  We are dying.
One is dying in better style than the other, even if its the same condition.
thats my country for you.

Its dirt poor in education right now, for i am at still at the door with my hand on the knocker, begging to be let in.