If the centre-left is to regain some influence in politics it will have to become more interesting. Accepted wisdom on becoming more interesting these days seems to revolve around finding the right “personality”. But let us not forget the importance of policies and ideas.

In the midst of growing despair over ‘precariousness’ and shifts in political support to the extremes, one oasis of progressive thinking has emerged. That it has been widely ignored is not surprising, since it comes from the consumer goods sector of the business world.

The last book from the late German sociologist Ulrich Beck offers a grim prognosis for our future as a society, with traditional political institutions helpless before the power of capital and the reactions of right and left devoid of intellectual content, functioning only to let off steam.

The current vogue for the term curation arose in tandem with the conceptual art movement, where the idea or concept of art took precedence over the traditional aesthetic, but accelerated in the 1990s when the boundaries between big art, big business and big data began to erode.

The drive for material goods may well be too deeply entrenched in human beings to be eliminated but perhaps a consciousness that we now have material prosperity beyond our spiritual competence to deal with could lead to more considered patterns of consumption.

There seems to be a dearth of evidence that political ad campaigns actually work. Nevertheless, politicians are always open to the advice of advertising professionals on how to simplify their message and get it across to the public in a way they will find palatable.

Alain de Botton has been the recipient of much sniffy condescension, being characterised as a chiropractor of the soul. But this is somewhat unfair: he is not trying to make us happy but to help us to understand ourselves better, and he sees art and philosophy as allies in this pursuit.

After the Gold Rush, after the slump, perhaps Ireland could just learn to relax, and regain its creativity and its cool.