Qualities of Propaganda

These are just some observations of my own. I'm not going to get into specifics (see number four). I'm not talking about all propaganda here. I'm talking about the propaganda put out by those whose agenda is dominant in a given society.

1) The Message is pushed unrelentingly, all the time, through every medium.

2) The trivial is catastrophized (when it suits The Message), while serious issues (that don't suit The Message) are trivialized, or even ignored.

3) Anyone who questions The Message is not simply dismissed as being wrong. They are condemned as malicious, ridiculous, or so far off the mark it's perverse.

4) Freedom to disagree is allowed in theory, but restricted or discouraged in practice ("free speech has consequences").

5) Fictional depictions of people who disagree with The Message (usually in a very mild way) inevitably depict them as unlikeable, stupid, backward, embarrassing, and so on-- though perhaps they have some endearing qualities. (If they are really nice, they'll have agreed with The Message by the end credits.)

6) In the case of admired figures who lived before the Message, and whose popularity is too deeply-rooted to be undermined, anything they said contrary to The Message is explained away; "He was a man of his time", etc.

7) Even wishing to debate The Message is portrayed as suspicious, and probably motivated by baleful beliefs.

8) To react angrily against The Message makes you an angry person. Anger which is in agreement with The Message doesn't make you an angry person. Hatred towards The Message makes you hateful. Hatred in agreement with The Message doesn't. Fear about The Message makes you a fear-monger; fear inspired by the Message doesn't.

9) Any reactions against The Message just prove the necessity (and intensification) of The Message.

10) The extent of popular disagreement with The Message can never be acknowledged, except in the face of undeniable evidence (such as a mass demonstration, or a referendum going the wrong way. In the latter case, the concept of "misinformation" can be easily is used to explain it ). All right-thinking people agree with The Message.

A Strange Sadness

I've just finished writing an article about a celebrated Irish priest-- or rather, a priest of Irish descent. I won't say who, as I like to keep it a secret until it's published. But I came away from it feeling rather sad-- or, more accurately, sorry for myself.

This priest had fingers in a lot of different pies, and buckets of energy. Consequently, he had several "bases" where he could stay on his travels. He always seemed to be meeting people for dinner and staying with them.

This is the sort of thing I've always daydreamed about, but never had. Coming close to my fiftieth year, it seems like a failure.

I've long been fascinated by "soft bonds". I'm particularly, for some reason, fascinated by Eamon De Valera's lifelong connection to Blackrock College-- a connection that continued when there was no formal relationship between them, when he was no longer a student or a teacher there. There's a whole book on the subject. John Henry Newman and his Oxford snapdragons are another example. Yeats and Coole Park is another.

I don't have anything like that. I have no mentor, no fire-forged comrades, no alma mater (in any meaningful sense), no old stomping ground, no war stories. No place where everybody knows my name, and they're always glad I came. There are no doors of institutions open to me when I have no particular business there.

I'm not really talking about friends here. I do have friends, and I'm deeply grateful for them. I'm talking about something different.

Although I've worked in University College Dublin for almost twenty-five years, and value being part of such a permanent institution, I can't really fool myself that I belong there in some deeper sense. Not even the Catholic community on campus-- though I've been going to lunch-time Mass in the church for about fifteen years. I gave a talk to the Newman Society, but it seems to have made zero impression. I suggested a spiritual retreat for staff to one of the chaplains, but after an initial show of enthusiasm, the idea was forgotten about.

Sometimes I like to think of this blog as an institution, but perhaps I am kidding myself.

Doubtless I am overlooking some things (although right now it doesn't seem like it.) I've realized before that my wide-eyed attentiveness to other peoples' stories has often given me unrealistic expectations. It's taken me decades to realize how much people talk themselves up, romanticize, and embellish. Maybe I just have to learn how to do that? And yet...that can't be all of it, can it?

I wonder if other people feel like this? Is it a feature of modern alienation? Is this something other people have, or even feel they lack?

I suppose I have an unfulfilled craving for gemeinschaft rather than gesellschaft.