More Musings on Atmosphere

As regular readers will know, I'm almost obsessed by the concept of atmosphere. I don't mean the gases and vapours in the sky. I mean atmosphere in a more metaphorical sense.

Atmosphere surrounds us all the time. Or perhaps I should say, atmospheres surround us all the time. They contribute to our well-being, our choices, and even our deepest loyalties. I'm convinced of this.

I've looked for scholarly writings on the concept of atmosphere. Despite my access to a university library (and all its e-resources), I've found very few. If you know of any, tell me. I'm interested in non-scholarly writings on the subject, too.

I went to the Central Catholic Library today. I went to the reference library upstairs. As is often the case, there was nobody there. I basked in the silence and the deep sense of peace.

To browse the bookshelves in the Central Catholic Library is to view the world from a radically different perspective. Not our contemporary secularist perspective, but a perspective which sees a deeper drama going on under the surface of life, and which especially sees the romance of this.

It's the clash of atmospheres between contemporary Ireland and Catholic Ireland that, to a great extent, leads me to prefer the latter.

We are told to believe that pre-sixties Ireland was intolerant, fanatical, joyless, puritanical, grim, austere, etc.

How grim and joyless!

But all you have to do-- or least, all that I have to do-- is to read the books, look at the photographs, and in general attend to the primary evidence of Catholic Ireland. They don't show me the caricature that we are presented with.

Yes, there are a million qualifications a critic could insist on here. The critic could point out, for instance, that Catholic Ireland lasted for many centuries. Which Catholic Ireland am I talking about?

But really, that sort of objection is just carping. Everybody knows what I mean by Catholic Ireland. I'm defending the thing our establishment is always attacking.

Catholic Ireland set up a high and noble ideal for Irish people (collectively and individually) to work towards, and to admire. Contemporary Ireland is obsessed with grievances, and obsessed with identities based on grievances. The cost of everything, the value of nothing.

I don't think the kind of reaction I'm describing here-- a reaction to atmosphere that can actually influence one's view of public events, or of history-- is at all unique. It reminds me of Chesterton's description of the Boer War, and his own reaction to it, from his Autobiography:

I saw all the public men and public bodies, the people in the street, my own middle-class and most of my family and friends, solid in favour of something that seemed inevitable and scientific and secure. And I suddenly realised that I hated it; that I hated the whole thing as I had never hated anything before.

What I hated about it was what a good many people liked about it. It was such a very cheerful war. I hated its confidence, its congratulatory anticipations, its optimism of the Stock Exchange. I hated its vile assurance of victory. It was regarded by many as an almost automatic process like the operation of a natural law; and I have always hated that sort of heathen notion of a natural law. As the war proceeded, indeed, it began to be dimly felt that it was proceeding and not progressing. When the British had many unexpected failures and the Boers many unexpected successes, there was a change in the public temper, and less of optimism and indeed little but obstinacy. But the note struck from the first was the note of the inevitable; a thing abhorrent to Christians and to lovers of liberty.

Chesterton very often writes about atmosphere in this way; some of his best writing, in my view, has to do with atmosphere. Come to think of it, that will probably be my next blog post.