A Bit of Fry and Laurie

Today I found myself thinking about this sketch from "A Bit of Fry and Laurie" , a series which ran from 1989 to 1995. I can't easily find when this sketch dated from.

Basically, it's about a guy who goes to a psychiatrist and loudly announces he's mad and wants to be cured. The psychiatrist is sceptical until the client mentions, in passing, that he writes letters to the newspapers. The psychiatrist picks up some newspapers in his office and asks him if he wrote two (very banal) letters which appeared in them, to which the client cheerfully admits. The psychiatrist then asks him his chest size for a straitjacket (much to the client's satisfaction).

I find this funny because I've had a longstanding fascination with letters to the editor. For a good few years I was an assiduous writer of them. I'm rather proud of my letter-writing days because it's proof (in cold print) that I was pushing against political correctness and other progressive manias when I was relatively young and when such pushback was less common than it is now. (They were mostly written in my thirties. I am now exiting my forties.)

Someone who worked on a letters page once told me that she was, indeed, convinced that many letter-writers were mad.  I don't think mine were missives of madness. But then, I wouldn't, would I?

By the end of my letter-writing days, I had a very good publication rate. I'd guess three-quarters of my letters (or even more) got published, in national newspapers. Of course, I don't know how many letters they get, so maybe there's nothing special about this.

My days of writing letters to the editor were, possibly, a good training in concision of expression. People would often mention them to me and sometimes I'd get correspondence from strangers (always positive).

I'd imagine it's much more difficult to have a letter published in a British national newspaper, given the population is so much larger. I did send a couple of letters to a British film magazine, but those ones didn't get published.

I also enjoy reading the letters pages in archived newspapers.

Once, when talking to a colleague, I expressed disappointment that my letters had never provoked replies along the lines of: "Your correspondent Maolsheachlann Ó Ceallaigh is a complete idiot". He very wittily replied: "Well, it's like phoning for the fire brigade. Everyone presumes somebody else has done it already."

Friday the Thirteenth on my Traditions! Traditions! Traditions! blog.

Longtime readers might remember the Traditions! Traditions! Traditions! blog I set up a few years ago (in 2018, actually), and then promptly abandoned after a few posts.

My idea was for a blog about every sort of tradition, just for the fun of it. No pontificating, moralizing, flights of (attempted) lyricism, kvetching, or anything like that. Just a chatty, magazine-style blog, like Snopes.com (the urban legends blog) before it went all liberal and propagandistic.

I've decided to revive it, and I've begun with a post on Friday the thirteenth (considered as a tradition).

Yes, I know it's not Friday the thirteenth, or anywhere near it. The next occurrence of that date isn't until February. What the heck.

Read it here, if you like.

Belfield

I work in the library in University College Dublin, on the Belfield campus. (Its main campus is Belfield, though it also has a campus in Blackrock and various satellites in other places, even far abroad.)

Belfield is a large greenfield site. The architecture is sixties brutalist, there are lots of trees, several lakes, and a lot of statues. UCD moved here from the city centre in 1964. I've read that one of the biggest champions of the move was John Charles McQuaid, the Archbishop of Dublin, who has become a symbol of everything that is bad and reactionary in Catholic Ireland, but who won praise from many surprising quarters on individual issues.

Belfield is in Dublin 4, the most famous postcode in Dublin, which has been synonymous with the liberal intelligentsia for decades. (RTE, the national broadcaster, is also located there.)

There were various landed estates around Dublin 4 in the past. Belfield was one. Montrose (the plot of land on which RTE stands) was another.

Here's something I find very interesting. I have spent almost twenty-five years working in Belfield, and I've noticed that hardly anybody ever uses the name in Belfield itself.

You might not think that statement deserves italics, but I do.

Nobody ever talks about Belfield, only about UCD. Belfield is only ever really used in a historic context (the move to Belfield), or to distinguish between the Belfield campus and other parts of UCD.

Interstingly, people do use Montrose as a metonym (or stand-in) for RTE, nearly always in a snarky tone. But they don't use Belfield as a metonym for UCD.

How people use place-names is very interesting to me. For instance, it's fairly well-known that, after independence, various Irish placenames were changed for patriotic reason. Queen's County became Laois, and the harbour settlement of Kingstown became Dún Laoghaire (often pronounced Dunleary).

However, although Bagenalstown in Carlow had its name changed to Muine Bheag, the change never stuck. Nobody calls it Muine Bheag. Everybody calls it Bagenalstown. I've just read that there was a plebsicite to change it back in 1975. The "Yes" vote won comfortably, but there wasn't enough of a turnout to reach the threshold.

So why did all those other placenames change, but not Bagenalstown?

In a similar way, I've often wondered why, long after the West had been Christianized, the names of the days of week continued to honour pagan gods. Why was there no attempt to Christianize them, or indeed, to Christianize the months of the year?

I'm rather glad there wasn't. I like throwbacks. But it makes me curious.

March for Jesus

I was on a bus passing through Dublin city centre today when I saw a march leaving the Garden of Remembrance. As there were a lot of red banners, and I'd seen posters for an "anti-racism" march this week, I assumed that was what it was all about. But when I looked closer, I saw the name "Jesus" on the banners. I hadn't heard about this.

I got off the bus and joined it. It went from the Garden of Remembrance to Stephen's Green. There were several big screens, a lot of Christian rock music, prayers, speeches, and so on. RTE, Ireland's national broadcaster-- which rarely inflates figures when it comes to any religious event-- put the crowd at ten thousand. That seems right. There were people of every kind there. The event certainly had an evangelical flavour but there were also plenty of Catholic symbols on display.

It was great to see, and great to join in. To echo a phrase that was on many peoples' lips: praise Jesus!

The Sixth Work

Last night I dreamed I was transferring a small boy, a toddler, from its pushchair to a couch. It wasn't my child. I was taking care of him for somebody else.

The child could speak almost as well as an adult, for some reason.

As I put the child on the couch, he said: "I want the sixth work".

"What's the sixth work?", I asked.

"The Lord of the Rings", he replied.

I handed him the book, which was conveniently nearby. At that moment his mother came in and I woke up.

I've been mulling over this dream, and dreams in general. Why did the child call The Lord of the Rings "the sixth work?". What was my subconscious getting at...if anything? It's not the kind of thing toddlers do in real life.

Why didn't the child just ask for the book by its name? Why did my dreaming mind introduce a complication here, an apparently pointless mystery? Does the subconcious mind seek to reproduce to texture of real life, in which so much of what we experience is mysterious or at least unexplained?

I checked Tolkien's bibliography (once I was back in the waking world). The sixth book that Tolkien published (including both fiction and non-fiction) is The Two Towers, so it doesn't really fit.

Is The Lord of the Rings sixth in some other order of works, by authors other than Tolkien?

Or was it just gobbledygook? Probably.

Dreams are fascinating. Sometimes dreams have a lasting influence on me. I don't believe there's anything supernatural or paranormal going on, but I do believe that some dreams give a profound insight into one's own soul. I don't think this was one of them, but it's still curious.

Postcript: It occurred to me after writing this that it shares a similarity with my recurring dream of the fifth mall. In this dream I am back in the old Ballymun shopping centre, which had a cruciform shape with four covered rows of shops radiating from a central square. They were labelled the North Mall, the West Mall, etc. I found this usage fascinating as a child because I had never encountered the word "mall" before, and I don't think I encountered it till well into adulthood. (Of course, we say "shopping centre" rather than "shopping mall" in Ireland.)

As I mention in the post, in my dream the fifth mall is a much less busy mall, almost unvisited, and with far fewer outlets. It has a strange atmosphere; somewhat forgotten, even somewhat unreal. Its spatial relation to the other "malls" is never very clear, but it's not part of the cruciform.

And that reminds me of another recurring dream I've had, although I get the impression this is a more recent recurring dream. It's the early hours of the morning and I discover a small cinema which is still open (it's open all night) and which is a long way from anything else. I'm surprised to find it open, but I'm somehow aware that there might be another cinema-- even smaller and even more remote-- some distance away. I never go there in my dream, though I want to, and I'm never entirely sure it exists.

Bonkers, right?

Five Thousand Comments!

I never look at my blog statistics any more. Mostly because they're discouraging, but also because I suspect they're fairly meaningless with all the bots crawling through cyberspace. (Which makes them even more discouraging, in my case!)

However, I happened to look at them today, and saw that, as of now, I've had exactly five thousand comments! (On 2083 posts.) It seems like something that should be marked.

Many, many thanks to anyone who has ever commented (most of whom won't read this post, I'm sure).

I do attach considerable importance to comments. A post with no comments always seems a bit of a damp squib-- whether that's justified or not. (For instance, I was surprised and disappointed that there were no reactions to my recent post on why I'm increasingly drawn towards American conservatism. Doubtless it was healthy for my self-importance and pomposity to be deflated!)

Interestingly, I rarely get comments on old posts. I'm somewhat intrigued by that. They're still out there, how come nobody comes on them via random searches? 

The biggest exception to this is my post on why Groundhog Day is my favourite movie.

And also my memories of the Allen Library, since it seems like the only substantial record of the Allen Library online. (Although, funnily enough, I currently have a colleague who also passed through the Allen Library.)

Letter in The Irish Times Today

Sir, – After her failed attempt to secure a nomination in the forthcoming presidential election, Maria Steen remarked “rarely has the political consensus seemed more oppressive or detached from the wishes and desires of the public”. Really?

For most of the 20th century the political consensus in this jurisdiction was an everpresent oppressive reality and Catholic orthodoxy shaped the Constitution and the legal framework to the detriment of many.

Think of the large numbers trapped in loveless marriages because of the ban on divorce. Or the many gay people whose actions were criminalised until the law was changed in 1993. Or the lack of effective family planning. Or women forced to go abroad for an abortion. Or the women whose lives were ruined by the procedure of symphysiotomy. The list could go on.

Whatever its faults, and there are many, Ireland has, over the past 40 years, become a better and more tolerant place, and, contrary to Ms Steen’s contention, the current political consensus reflects the views and desires of the majority. – Yours, etc,

JOE KEHOE,

Celbridge,
Co Kildare

I'm sure there are many counter-arguments that spring to mind for any reader of this blog. However, it must be acknowledged that Mr. Kehoe's view of Irish history is the dominant one today. (I'll admit I had to look up "symphysiotomy".)

I think he's also right that the "current political consensus reflects the views and desires of the majority", at least as far as social conservatism goes. If we witness a radical challenge to the political consensus any time soon, it will probably come about on the issue of immigration and the wilder excesses of political correctness (especially in relation to gender). Whether full-blown social conservatism will piggy-back on such a reaction is another matter. In all honesty I'm doubtful this will happen. The Reform Party in the UK uses some socially conservative rhetoric. But so did the Tories. We'll see how it translates to reality, should they come to power.

I do think Catholicism is making a slow revival in Ireland-- for instance, seminarian numbers are very slightly rising after having flatlined for a few years-- but it really is going to be slow. 

Mr. Kehoe dates the advent of a "better and more tolerant" Ireland to the last forty years. I'm guessing he's thinking of everything that came after the 1983 referendum that introduced a Constitutional ban on abortion, by a majority similar to that which removed it in 2018. So the period of "Catholic orthodoxy" he describes lasted from independence in 1921 to 1983. 

Few people alive today actually experienced most of that period. The political consensus was then as strong in favour of social conservatism and Catholic ethics as it is against it today. Women had votes all that time. Gay people had votes. People in difficult marriages had votes. Yet many of them must have repeatedly voted for the political consensus that Mr. Kehoe considers a self-evidently bad thing. Why?

Popular Music Lyrics That I Like

Anyone who's read more than a handful of posts on this blog knows that I'm always complaining about the decline of poetry. Well today--

Hey wait! Wait! Come back! This post isn't going to be about the decline of poetry! I promise!

Actually this post is going to be about popular music lyrics that I like. By "popular music" I mean all genres of popular music-- pop itself, rock, heavy metal, etc. etc. I'm going to refer to it as "pop music", on that understanding.

I only mention the decline of poetry because, as I said in a previous post, I don't think pop music lyricists are the heirs of the classical poets-- despite frequent claims to the contrary. I don't think there's even any comparison. 

Good pop music lyricsts (and even mediocre pop music lyricists) often produce moments of lyrical brilliance. But they're only moments. A line here, a line there. It takes a lot more than that to make a poem. A good poem has to flow from beginning to end, to have a satisfying structure, and (most of them) to have depth of thought and subject matter. Pop music lyrics don't have this.

Having said that, there are many pop music lyrics that do I love, that do spark my imagination. Here are some of them.

I had the idea for this post when I was listening to a Rory Gallagher, "Bowed Not Broken", which is a bonus track on his latest album, Fresh Evidence. Like many Rory Gallagher lyrics, it takes inspiration from the seedier side of American life. (Gallagher was a fan of hardboiled detective fiction. Rather curiously, he never seems to have written a song with an Irish theme.)

Anyway, this is it:

"When will you tire of those crap-game casinos?

You've played every dice-game from Vegas to Reno..."

Simple, but I like its evocation of a whole way of life, a particularly atmospheric way of life, that has its own sort of bleary poetry.

It reminds me of another of my favourite lyrics, from "Pinball Wizard" by The Who:

"Ever since I was a young boy, I've played the silver ball
From Soho down to Brighton, I must have played them all..."

In my experience, there's a tremendous poetry in the past imperfect. I don't mean the grammatical past imperfect, necessarily. I mean the sort of thing it describes, a recurring event in the past. It summons up a vista.

Rory Gallagher has some other great lyrics, for instance, in his Prohibition-themed Barley and Grape Rag (which I must have listened to hundreds of times in my teens):

"Be my friend, and tell me where that place is

Where the whiskey flows and the dices roll till dawn."

That's pure poetry (the echoing "o" sounds are a nice touch), but the whole song has pretty solid lyrics, like this verse:

"I don't care if I get investigated

And the City Fathers they all black my name.

I'm pretty sure that you can smell the traces

But tomorrow morning, I take all the blame."

(I love the concept of "City Fathers", local worthies, etc.)

Another of Gallagher's songs, "Kickback City", would have made a brilliant song to play over the opening credits of some gritty crime film (as the camera slowly pans across the rough, foggy streets of some rundown metropolis). The opening lines fit this atmosphere perfectly, even if the fourth is a bit clumsy:

"They say this town will kill you, they say this town ain't got no soul

This town could take a child's smile, and turn it into stone.

But don't you think I know that? This place has cut me to the bone.

Trouble crawling up your back, fear just eats your soul..."

The last two lines are good, too:

"But I won't let it beat me, 'cause trouble's knocking on my door.

Somehow it's just your smile keeps me coming back for more."

Moving on from Rory Gallagher, here's another song with a similar theme and atmosphere: "Avenues and Alleyways" by Tony Christie, which was indeed the theme song to a TV show. (I even love the title; there's a hint of excitement about the words "avenue" and alleyway", and this song brings out that excitement.)

All of the lyrics are impressive in this one, but I especially like this verse:

In the avenues and alleyways, where a man's got to work out which side he's on

Any way he chooses, chances are he loses, no-one gets to live too long.

The avenues and alleyways where the soul of a man is easy to buy

Everybody's wheeling, everybody's stealing, all the low are living high.

Every city's got 'em, can we ever stop 'em? Some of us are gonna try..."

A bit cartoonish, but very evocative.

I hadn't intended to quote whole verses when I started writing this. I'd planned to concentrate on individual lines.

Here's one of my very favourite individual lines, from the Saw Doctor's smash Irish hit of 1991, "I Useta Lover". It's the first line of this couplet:

"Do you remember her collecting for Concern on Christmas Eve?

She was on a forty-eight fast, just water and black tea..."

(Concern is an organized charity based in Ireland.)

I wrote a whole blog post about this one, back in 2013! As I wrote then: "But what always strikes me, when I listen to it, is how perfect that line I've quoted in the title is, lyrically speaking. It flows so effortlessly, with such joyous euphony-- and it fits perfectly into the rhythm of the song, too."

Another line that I think has perfect euphony (in my opinion) is from "Life of Riley" by the Lightning Seeds, which Ian Broudie wrote as an optimistic ode to his young son: "All this world is a crazy ride so take your seats and hold on tight." Again, it just flows beautifully, and its sound mirrors its meaning. It sounds like a breathless carnival ride. A lyric like this actually fills me with light and optimism, for a moment.

I think I'm going to have to leave it there, since this post could go on indefinitely. Please let me know any evocative lyrics that you love, in the comment section. (But not more than a verse, please, since that's what I'm writing about here. I've included links to the songs I've mentioned in case people were interested, but in all honesty, I rarely-to-never watch videos people post in comments.)

No Conservative Candidate for Irish President

Maria Steen, the prolife and social conservative activist, has just missed out on getting nominated as a candidate for the Presidential election in Ireland.

The Irish President is pretty much a ceremonial role. 

"Rarely has the political consensus seemed more oppressive or detached from the wishes and desires of the public", Steen said. That seems fair.

I actually don't care who gets elected now and I'm not even sure I'm going to vote. Not voting might be the best way to send a message. The three candidates are backed by the main parties in the Dáil, all of whom have a liberal-secular-globalist outlook.

The President is supposed to be above politics, anyway, so what could a conservative President actually do for conservatism? Very little, surely. And what's the point of all the political debate at every Presidential election?

I'd much rather we had a monarch as head of state. (A purely ceremonial monarch.) I wish we had, not only a ceremonial High King (or High Queen), but also a scatter of ceremonial petty kings. Wouldn't you rather have your local supermarket opened by a king than a county councillor? Think of the fun we could have reviving all the old kingdoms!

1989 And All That

I've just finished watching Goodbye Lenin!, the 2003 film about a woman who falls into a coma just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and wakes up after the fall of socialism in East Germany. But her loving son, having been told that any excitement will kill her, goes to great lengths to covince her that nothing has changed.

It's a good film and I enjoyed it very much. It made me laugh out loud on several occasions. I didn't like it as much as I liked The Lives of Others, another film about the the last years of East Germany, which was made three years later. But it was still pretty good.

I had a few things to say about it, and once again I'm going to resort to the dubious expedient of a numbered list:

1) It was especially interesting to me because, last year, I read Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949-1990 by Katja Hoyer, which is one of the best books I've read in recent years.

2) Marxism is fundamentally evil because it's based on materialism and the denial of the Divine. The fall of communism was a gift from God.

Having said that...

I'm rather drawn to the aesthetic side of Eastern Bloc history-- the classical art, the big banners, the anthems, even the austere prefabricated apartment blocks. Conversely, the tacky Western consumerism that flooded in after the Wall fell hardly seems like something to be celebrated. (And Hoyer's book, sadly, makes it very plain that blue jeans and pop music probably had as much to do with the fall of the GDR as any more spiritual or humanistic ideas of freedom.)

3) Given Ireland's own experience of the 1990 soccer World Cup, it was interesting to see it feature so heavily in this film. West Germany winning the Cup seems (going by the film) to have been almost as important as liberation from communism and national reunification-- or, rather, it blended into the same euphoric mix. That this would have been the case never really occurred to me before, strangely enough.

4) The fall of the Soviet Union seems like a moment of historical clarity, a vindication of everything that is organic and enduring in society-- family, organized religion, nation. There was some discussion on whether East Germany should remain a separate country even after the fall of socialism. But, overwhelmingly, Germans wanted reunification, just as republic after republic of the old USSR demanded independence. And why wouldn't they? The nation is simply a natural institution of mankind. Communism tried to diminish it, and failed. Globalism is trying to destroy it, and encountering a massive resistance that seems to be gaining momentum all the time.

5) One of the reasons I'm so fascinated with this period is because it's always interesting to see how private life is intertwined with public life. Really, I think that's how it should be. Not every period can (or should) be as tumultuous as the fall of communism, but surely human beings are not meant to live in private bubbles of individual experience. Personally I love reading about moments that bring people together-- not in some glurgey "we are all one" way, but in a way that awakens meaningful unity-- or even division! Even, say, a hotly contested election or referendum. Sometimes we can come together by beating each other up. (Presumably anyone with a brain will realize that's a joke, and not to be understood literally.)

Is Anything Too Big or Too Small to be the Theme of a Creative Work?

Many years ago, I was watching a documentary (or a "featurette") about the Lord of the Rings movies. In one interview, Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn) said something like: "Ultimately, the story is about friendship."

I remember thinking this was a bit banal. Lord of the Rings has many deep and profound themes. "Friendship" seems a bit too basic to count as one of them.

Similarly, Jack Finney, the author of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, once had this reaction to people finding a theme of conformity (or non-conformity) in his novel: "The idea of writing a whole book in order to say that it's not really a good thing for us all to be alike, and that individuality is a good thing, makes me laugh."

Another example. I remember in school, when we were studying The Merchant of Venice, the teacher told us that one of its themes was appearance vs. reality. I can remember thinking: "Well, surely that is a theme of half the plays and books ever written."

I'm not saying any of these reactions are correct. But it's an intriguing question. Can a theme be too basic for an artistic work? Or is it the very greatness of great art that it addresses fundamental themes?

On the other side of the ledger...

One of the things that's often exasperated me about superhero movies-- aside from the fact that there's far too many of them-- is when a critic (or somebody) says something like follows: "This film reinterprets the whole Batman myth."

But what do I care about the Batman myth? If a Batman film aspires to be more than just entertainment, surely it should tackle some theme or themes beyond Batman stories?

Simlarly, when people are praising Dubliners by James Joyce (or some such book), they often said: "It brilliantly captures the Dublin of the Edwardian era."

Again, why should anybody care? This seems more a task for history books than for literature, which surely should have a more enduring relevance.

Or am I wrong? Maybe no theme is too big or small for an artistic work?

A Hobby For Someone

Going to public lectures, book launches, etc. and asking the most stupid questions you can think of.

It would be funny but I don't have enough audacity do it.

I went to a talk on horror fiction many years ago. The first question was: "Where does The Secret Garden fit into this?" Maybe this guy had already instituted this hobby.

(I've always loved horror, and The Secret Garden has been a special story for me since I read it as a kid. But no, I wasn't the guy. And yes, it was a stupid question.)

Free Speech for Everybody

Laura Perrins doesn't agree with right-wingers who lament Jimmy Kimmel's cancellation.

Was Kimmel cancelled? It's not entirely clear. It seems to have been a commerical decision made by the network, based on how many viewers he offended.

At the same time, I don't think conservatives should be celebrating anybody being punished for having an opinion. We certainly shouldn't be engaging in the same "free speech has consequences" argument that progressives have made so long.

("Free speech has consequences" could be used to justify any restriction of free speech.)

Laura's article seems to come close to a philosophy of "to the victor goes the spoils", which doesn't seem very civilized. I agree with most of her articles, but not this one.

I'm not a free speech absolutist (is there even such a thing?). But I'm definitely a free speech maximalist.

Edward Feser is, in my view, more sensible.

Knausgaard and Communion

A little of the way through the second volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard's six-volume novel series, I was on the point of giving up. Not because it was boring me. It wasn't boring me.

No, I was on the point of giving up because I thought: "Am I mad to allocate so much reading time to an epic work by some modern writer when I could be chipping away at my ignorance by reading something more substantial, like history, or Augustine's City of God, or something like that?"

In the end, I decided to keep going because I'm sick of starting things and giving them up.

And it must be said, it's very interesting. Knausgaard is writing about his own life. In the book, one of his friends comments on his ability to write about completely mundane events and make them interesting. He really can.

He's especially good at writing about all the little misadventures and diversions that occur in everyday life. At one point he drops his mobile phone on a train and he thinks it's fallen into the open handbag of a woman standing beside him, who then gets off the train. He doesn't follow her because the doors are about to close--and besides, how can you ask to look in someone's handbag? (You could ask her to have a look, but that doesn't seem to occur to him or anybody else.) Eventually he gets a friend to message the phone, but that leads to further complications...

There are deeper themes in the book, of course. The main theme is the conflict between Knausgaard's consuming urge to write, on one hand, and the demands of ordinary life on the other. Another theme is the disenchantment of human life since the Enlightenment, and there are even jabs at political correctness. (In the second volume, Knausgaard is living in Sweden, and as a Norwegian he thinks it's a crazy society-- but he also mentions that Norwegians in Norway actually look up to the Swedes).

Religion hasn't featured very much in the foreground, but it's always there in the background. The first volume opens when Knausgaard is a small boy and considers himself a Christian (which seems rather counter-cultural, although later his first girlfriend is a Christian). By the time he's in his teens he calls himself ani-Christian, though there's never much evidence of this.

When his father dies, Knausgaard and his brother (both of whom seem thoroughly secular, as was their father) agree they want a religious funeral, and not some "awful humanist ceremony"--I forget the exact words used, but they were something like that.

In the office where he writes, Knausgaard surrounds himself with bric-a-brac from the pre-modern past, including religious imagery. He reads the Bible.

Then, when his daugher is christened in volume two, he surprises himself and everyone else by taking communion at the ceremony:

The priest was a young woman, we stood around her by the font. Linda held Vanja as her head was moistened with water. Ingrid left when the ceremony was over, the rest of us stayed seated. It was a communion. Joe Olav and his family stood up and knelt before the altar. For some reason I got up and followed suit. Knelt before the altar, had a wafer placed on my tongue, drank the communion wine, was given the blessing, and went back, with mum's, Kjartan's, Yngve's, and Geir's eyes on me, disbelieving to varying degrees. 

Why had I done it?

Had I become a Christian?

I, a fervent anti-Christian from my early teenage years and a materialist in my heart of hearts, had in one second, without any reflection, got my feet, walked up the aisle and knelt in front of the altar. It had been pure impulse. And, meeting those glares, I had no defence. I couldn't say I was a Christian. I looked down, slightly ashamed.

There's more but I'm not going to type it all out.

Scandinavia has long been presented as the model secular society by secularists. It's interesting (and encouraging) to encounter evidence that it remains haunted by God and by Jesus-- which is what a Christian would expect.

As for materialism, it's always seemed to me like a dead-end for all art and literature. What is there left to say?

Is The Establishment Really All-Powerful and All-Seeing?

Probably everybody who reads this blog would agree that there's a recognizable ideological establishment in the Western world. It has a near-stranglehold on many of the institutions of our society and its propaganda is unremitting.

Lots of people seem to agree with this analysis. There's all sorts of different theories on the nature of this elite. Some people even think it's the Illuminati or the Knights Templar  or something like that.

My guess is that it's no single identifiable group, that it's simply a transnational elite who have common sympathies.

Alarmingly, many people seem to think that this elite is almost omniscient and omnipotent; that any apparent reverses it endures (Brexit, for instance) is simply a part of the Grand Plan; and that any apparent opposition to it (Jordan Peterson, for instance) is actually Controlled Opposition.

This theory seems unfalsifiable to me. The concept of the all-powerful, all-seeing elite is so flexible that it could wrap itself around any facts.

It also seems to fly in the face of experience. I've said that the propaganda of this elite is constant. What amazed me is how crude it is, as well.

Time and again we have seen that propaganda backfire. To take the example of Brexit again, "Project Fear" was so crude and alarmist that it couldn't be taken seriously.

Similarly, the sort of ideological propaganda that we're all subject to every day reaches such levels of overkill that it seems impossible that it wouldn't backfire.

I've heard some people argue that this is all a part of the plan. The reaction against it is also part of the plan. That just seems unlikely to me.

Another reason I think the elites can't be infallible is because human beings are too unpredictable. It regularly happens that somebody who's just too rich, too powerful, or too successful for the elites to silence breaks ranks and utters some heresy. Again, I'm sure you can think of many examples.

I don't think fatalism is a healthy attitude, and I don't think it's justified when it comes to this subject.

Ebert's Most Hated

Every few years, I get a good laugh by re-reading this selection of zingers from Roger Ebert's most devastasting movie reviews.

My favourite is definitely this one: "This movie doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels." (It's for a comedy with an obscene name so, if you're curious, you'll have to read the article. Or at least skim it.)

But don't get me wrong, I also appreciate this one: "Watching Mad Dog Time is like waiting for the bus in a city where you’re not sure they have a bus line". (This unfortunate film also won this unenviable accolade from him: "the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time".)

And then there's his verdict on the Spice Girls, the stars of Spice World: "What can you say about five women whose principal distinguishing characteristic is that they have different names?"

Mind you, I don't agree with all his evaluations. The Dukes of Hazzard is one of my favourite films, although I seem to be alone in my enthusiasm for it. (Even the cast disparaged it.) Halloween III isn't one of my favourite horror films, but it's definitely in the second division (to a great extent on the strength of that incredibly creepy jingle that plays in a sinister advertisement, "Three more days to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween..")

I watched all the Resident Evil films that had been made up to 2018 over the Christmas of that year, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. They're goofy, but fun. I saw Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo in the cinema and found it endearingly stupid. I laughed several times.

I thought The Village (and its twist) deserved much better than to be featured on this list, and The Usual Suspect is good by any standards.

Still, his put-downs are a hoot.

To find out what happened when Ebert ran into someone who'd been on the receiving end of one of these reviews-- probably the worst of them, in fact-- read here. It's both funny and heartwarming.

Real and Imagined Social Decline

There are, in my view, two mistaken attitudes to social decline:

1) There is nothing new under the sun. People have been lamenting social and cultural decline since the dawn of man, but nothing ever really changes.

2) Everything is declining all the time. Almost every example of change can be held up as a sign of broader social and cultural decline.

My suggestion is this: there are real examples of social and cultural decline, but dragging everything into this narrative makes it impossible to talk about it seriously. If we fall into a pattern of reflexive curmudgeonliness, nobody need take anything we say about actual social and cultural decline seriously.

A few of my recent blog posts have been along this theme. For instance, in this blog post on language change, and in this blog post on criticisms of social media (including the common claim that attention spans are shortening). I'm playing the sceptic in those posts.

However, I definitely believe there are real examples of social and cultural decline. For instance (and this will surprise nobody who's ever read this blog), the decline of poetry.

When I talk about the decline of poetry, I'm often presented with the argument that music lyrics are the poetry of today. So the successors of Yeats and Tennyson are actually Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Eminem.

I don't think this argument works. I'm not denying that the lyrics of popular music can often attain the level of poetry. I think they can. But only in flashes, here and there.

On the whole, there's no comparison. There's nothing like the same level of depth, nuance, and seriousness involved. Nor is there the same level of coherence. A poem by any great classical poet flows from beginning to end. Even the best popular music lyrics tend to be simply a series of phrases strung together. 

(I've noticed that many of the more well-read rock musicians were influenced by Dylan Thomas, a classical poet who did write in this montage style. Bob Dylan took his stage name from him. William Blake also tends to popular with rockers, partly for the same reason.) 

Besides, there were always popular songs and people always quoted them, but they once lived alongside classical poetry.

But I don't want to go any further down that bunny trail.

Here's something I've noticed about laments of social decline. Liberals and progressives seem to indulge in them at least as much as conservatives. Very often it points to a contradiction in their own thought which they seem reluctant to face. 

For instance, they'll (quite rightly) lament the sexualization of advertising or pop culture, but they won't relate this to the 1960's sexual revolution, or to the decline of Christian ethics. (Again, their panacea seems to be socialism; don't blame the sexual revolution, blame capitalism!)

But really, everybody seems to indulge in laments of social decline, all the time. Very often they have to do with everyday irritants like manners, customer service, etc.

Sometimes there are familiar laments that are entirely justified. For instance, inflation. The old codger nostalgically remembering everything he could do with a fiver, and still have change, has been a comic figure for decades. But he's been right all along. Inflation has continually skyrocketed for generations now.

Then there are other laments where I'm not so sure. For instance, the decline of small business in the face of big business. Chesterton was writing about this in the early twentieth century and it's seemed to be a constant refrain for decades. It's a perpetual theme in movies and TV. But small businesses haven't disappeared. Small shops haven't disappeared. It doesn't even seem to me like they've especially declined since my childhood.

And then there's the fact that people rarely seem to dwell on social and cultural improvements.

Here's an example. Many years ago, knowing my interest in movie posters, somebody bought me two books about them (and full of examples of them). One was about movie posters from the 1940s, the other was about movie posters from the 1980s. It took only a cursory flick through both of them to see that the movie posters from the eighties were clearly superior to the movie posters from the forties. The 1940s posters were all very boring, unimaginative compositions involving a few star faces and the title of the film. There was nothing like the famous image of ET passing over the moon on a bicycle. Or the little girl sitting beside a glowing screen, her arms outstretched, on the poster for Poltergeist.

Even when it comes to my biggest anxiety about social and cultural change-- the dread of cultural homogenization-- I'm not entirely sure it's really happening, considered as a whole. Is it simply the case that there have been recurrent waves of homogenization followed by fragmentation? Why do we have so many languages descended from Latin? How did La Téne culture become so widespread in an era long before modern communicatons? And what about counter-currents such as the recent revival of the Cornish language?

Now all has been heard, here is the conclusion of the matter: I think we should be slower and more tentative to make claims of social and cultural decline, without falling into the "nothing new under the sun" fallacy.

Places

Here's a very interesting post from Professor Bruce Charlton, "Meaningful Places Are Objectively Real to Me-- But Why?".

As I said in a comment, I wish he had elaborated more on why they're meaningful.

It's got me thinking about place. Well, I was thinking about it already, but it got me thinking about it more.

This post is just going to be about my own experiences and thoughts of place so it may not be of interest to anybody at all.

Here are some of my thoughts and experiences on place, in a numbered list:

1) I have a catastrophically bad sense of direction and geography. When I tell people this they generally think I'm exaggerating. It's worse than you would imagine. I don't even know Dublin well and I've lived here all my life. I don't even know Dublin city centre well. I can get from one place to another, of course, once I've done it a few times, but I can't mentally map the route (or describe it, without actually memorizing the description). It's like the password that you can tap in without thinking, but you can't remember when you have to think about it.

As for geography, I can now place all the counties on a map of Ireland (most of the time), and I'm pretty good at identifying the states of America and countries of Europe. But that's from taking internet quizzes repeatedly, over a period of years. And I still need to refresh that knowledge regularly or I'll forget.

2) I had absolutely no interest in geography or places as a kid, and even into my twenties. I developed an ego-protecting contempt for geography. I considered travel bores to be the worst of all bores (and I'm still inclined to think this). I didn't leave Ireland until I was twenty-seven. And this attitude still remains with me, pre-reflectively. For instance, I have a terrible habit of filtering geographical information out of whatever I'm reading, or whatever somebody is saying to me.

3) In spite of all this, over the years (decades) the idea of place has become fascinating to me. Especially this thought: that this place (wherever I am) is a unique place, different from any other. Even if it's totally unremarkable. Somehow, the thought of the uniqeness of a totally unremarkable place (like an industrial park or a dormitory suburb) is very exciting to me. The word "here" is exciting to me.

4) The indeterminacy of the term "place" excites me, too. What is a place? China is a place. Luton is a place. The Home Counties are a place. The Giant's Causeway is a place. The Rolling Donut on Dublin's O'Connell Street is a place.

I don't know why this excites me so much. I like everything that defies definition, that makes the world seem shimmering and eternally elusive.

I especially likes the way different ways of mapping the world cut across each other, for instance, old forms of demarcation like baronies and townlands which still have a sort of lingering existence.

5) Places are never really distinctive enough for my craving. I honestly wish every street and village had its own flag. When I went to Hull, I was seriously upset that there were more Yeats books than Larkin books in the local Waterstones.

6) Contrariwise, my innate loyalty to the ordinary (God knows where I got it from) has given me a sort of disdain for the picturesque. Disdain is too strong a word-- I'm happy the picturesque exists. I'm very happy it's there-- but it's not for me. It seems like cheating, too easy, even a kind of escapism. I need to find meaning and sustenance in the ordinary.

Of course, it's hard to really draw a clear distinction between the ordinary and the picturesque. Is Punxsatawney, the sleepy little town in Groundhog Day, picturesque? Or is it ordinary? I suppose it's both, but it's the sort of picturesque that doesn't seem like giving up on the ordinary. It's small town picturesque. There are lots of small towns.

7) As for particular places, that's such a big subject it would require a new post. I tried to write about Dublin a while back and I found it quite a strain, albeit an enjoyable one.

G.K. Chesterton on the English People in Politics

"You have seen English people perhaps for a moment in omnibuses, in streets on Saturday nights, in third-class carriages, or even in Bank Holiday waggonettes. You have not yet seen the English people in politics. It has not yet entered politics. Liberals do not represent it; Tories do not represent it; Labour Members, on the whole, represent it rather less than Tories or Liberals. When it enters politics it will bring with it a trail of all the things that politicians detest; prejudices (as against hospitals), superstitions (as about funerals), a thirst for respectability passing that of the middle classes, a faith in the family which will knock to pieces half the Socialism of Europe. If ever that people enters politics it will sweep away most of our revolutionists as mere pedants."

As quoted in Maisie Ward's biography. Originally from the introduction to a book called From Workhouse to Westminster: The Life Story of Will Crooks MP, by George Haw. Chesterton wrote a lot of introductions...

Midnight

On New Year's Day of 2025, I got a new watch in Lidl. It was part of my New Year's resolutions. I wanted to spend less time looking at screens, and thought having a watch would remove one excuse to keep checking my phone. It cost ten euro, and I never expected it to keep ticking along as long as it has.

As you can see from the blurry photo above, my watch had a bit of a mishap recently. The number twelve has fallen from its place at the top of the dial. One of the digits is trapped at the centre of the dial, another is stuck to the glass. I have no idea how this happened, but it was only a couple of days ago. It hasn't affected the watch's mechanism so far.

Strangely enough, I had already been thinking about the word "midnight" before this happened. Spooky, right?

"Midnight" has a strange glamour to it. Considered objectively, it's no big deal. It's simply the moment when one calendar day is succeeded by another. 

But the word can always be counted on to deliver something of a frisson, which means it often appears in the titles of songs, films and other works.

Midnight suggests all sorts of things; spookiness, danger, solemnity, pensiveness, anticipation...

I keep a spreadsheet of all the movies I watch, and all the movies I can remember ever having watched. (Pretty nerdy, I know.) It currently lists 1346 films, but the word "midnight" only returned two hits; one for Midnight Sting (1992), the other for Midnight Sky (2020), neither of them films that have lingered in my memory. (Indeed, I can't remember anything at all about the latter.)

There are lots of well-known films with the word "midnight" in the title, even though I haven't seen any of them: Midnight Cowboy, Midnight Express, Midnight in Paris, Chimes at Midnight.

(I love the phrase "chimes at midnight". It comes, as you probably know, from Shakespeare: "We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow". Meaning: we've lived it up.)

There used to be a fast-food restaurant in Dublin called Midnight Express, though I think it changed its name recently. (I've often wondered if naming a business after an artistic work has any copyright implications.)

There must be tonnes of folklore about midnight, although the only snippet that comes to mind is Cinderella having to leave the ball by midnight-- and in all honesty, I'm not even too clear about that. I don't want to look any of it up, because right now I'm interested in the popular associations that hang around the word "midnight", and I don't think most people would know any more of the folkore than I do.

I can think of at least one book I've read with "midnight" in the title. Four Past Midnight was actually the first Stephen King book I ever read. As you can probably guess, it's a collection of four stories. One of them, "The Sun Dog", actually spooked me. (It features a camera which takes inexplicable images of a scary dog coming closer and closer.) I started reading Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie but gave it up after a few pages. (The children of the title are Indians born at the moment of Indian independence.)

I've always loved the title Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, though I have no idea what the book is about.

The word "midnight" must feature extensively in poetry, I'm sure. But the only instance I can think of right now is the first line of "The Raven" by Poe: "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.."

Similarly, I'm sure there are hundreds of songs with the word "midnight" in the title. In fact, there are lots of articles listing them, like this one. My favourite is Midnight Confessions by the Grass Roots, which I came across on the excellent Jackie Brown soundtrack.

There's a sense of magic about midnight, I think it's fair to say. (Or at least, potential magic.) In this regard, I always recall a memory from my last year in primary school. My class were competing in a drama competition and we were staying in Ennis overnight. I can remember us sitting in the lobby of a hotel (although we weren't actually staying in the hotel). I made a reference to tomorrow, and another kid said: "It is tomorrow". So it was obviously past midnight. I was very impressed by this remark and I still think about it all these years later. I guess midnight is a "liminal space", a concept that has been much discussed in recent times.

I think we all have a sense of anxiety about disenchantment these days. And by "these days", I mean ever since the beginning of modernity. We are frightened of time and space becoming simply a grid, a contiuum. And we reach out for times and places that seem to have a soul of their own, an enchantment. It's nice to think that one of them comes every twenty-four hours.

(I timed the publication of this post for exactly midnight, but it shows as four p.m. I can't explain that! The obvious explanation is that Blogger, the platform I use, operates from a different timezone, but how would it be such a difference?)

Politics and the Irish Language

(The title of this blog post is a nod to Orwell's famous essay "Politics and the English Language", which I just happened to flick past while browsing a collection of his essays. I couldn't resist the coincidence.)

There are posters up all over Dublin for an upcoming protest in favour of the Irish language. They have given the protest the title "Cearta", which means "rights".

Here we see the thumbprint of the left once again. It's always about rights, it's always about government intervention, and it's always about more public money.

Personally I am entirely sympathetic to the preservation (and revival) of the Irish language, and I'm also sympathetic to increased public funding and to the compulsory use of Irish in various contexts, such as education.

But without increasing a public appetite for the revival of the Irish language, no level of government support will ever be enough. And it's hard to see what arguments could be used  to encourage people to speak Irish, considering anti-nationalism has become so engrained in modern Irish discourse.

And here we come to an interesting aspect of this campaign. Its website gives a list of ten problems, and here is number nine in its own words: "Over 50,000 students in secondary school are exempt from learning Irish and there is no plan at all to address this (the Department of Education has even made a point of saying that the upcoming 2 year Action Plan for the Irish language in English medium schools won’t deal with exemptions)".

The website avoids saying why so many exemptions have been given, but Dr. Matt Treacy spells it out in an article on the indispensable Gript.ie.

Personally I feel somewhat vindicated. I have been saying for many years that multiculturalism and the revival of the Irish language were going to come into conflict at some point. How can we have a "rainbow Republic" and still give special priority to one language over others-- a language, moreoever, that is now much more of a minority language than many others spoken here on a daily basis?

As far as I can tell, most immigrants to Ireland are very positive about the Irish language (and Irish culture in general) Many want to learn Irish. But, as always when it comes to this topic, it's the sheer weight of numbers that counts. All those new arrivals have their own roots and heritage, which they will naturally want to keep alive. It's asking a lot to co-opt them into a language revival that was already struggling (to put it mildly) before they arrived.

What's extraordinary is how the Irish liberal left refused to see this problem. Nearly all Irish language enthusiasts are from the liberal left persuasion and nearly all of them are pro-multiculturalism. And this has been the case for a long time. Either they couldn't accept that these two aspirations might conflict, or they reassured themselves with that old standby: Increased government funding (and eventually, the abolition of captalism) will resolve all contradictions. 

Incidentally, this is nearly always the line I'm given when I present liberal-lefties with some cultural or social tension to which their own policies are contributing: it's a purely artificial tension created by capitalism, sometimes even a deliberate effort by the Powers That Be to create division. All aspirations will be compatible once we get rid of poverty, or private property, or whatever it is they want to abolish-- which is never entirely clear.

European and American Conservatism

It's commonplace (and, I think, correct) to draw a distinction between European and American conservatism.

European conservatism is based on age-old traditions, slowly evolving institutions, and unwritten customs. It's like a web that has grown over centuries.

American conservatism is based on the Constitution. It's an irony of history that American conservatives are essentially revolutionaries in that they are loyal to the principles of the American Revolution.

You could say that European conservatism prefers the organic and piecemeal, while American conservatism appeals to the abstract and a priori.

I've always considered myself much more of a European conservative. But recently I've found myself changing my mind.

European institutions seem incapable of resisting the encroachment of the liberal left. It's very hard to think of any European institution that has not been captured by political correctness to some degree (and usually to a great degree). The liberal left doesn't have any time for gentleman's agreements.

The State is the major example. I've never been an anti-government type of person, but the ever-increasing reach of the State, and especially its ability to impose an ideology, seems relentless on this side of the Altlantic. It continues even in the face of economic privatizations and what's often called "neoliberalism". (The ruling elite is quite happy to work through HR departments and employment law.)

So I have switched. I've become much more of an American conservative and a believer in the principles of the American Revolution and the Constitution, which I've long suspected to have been divinely inspired (although that's just my own tentative theory and not essential to my argument here.)

Freedom of speech is under intense, concerted attack on both sides of the Atlantic. But the First Amendment makes all the difference in the world on one side of it.

America has an infratructure of Christian colleges, conservative think tanks, and religious organisations which seem impervious to the entryism of the liberal left. Europe has nothing like the American religious right and their network of organisations. And no, I don't think that's a good thing, I think that's a bad thing.

In Europe, libraries, schools and universities are mostly organs of the ruling ideology. In America they have to deal with pesky things like elected school boards and library boards. And so on.

America is the only country in the world that was set up with the explicit intention of limiting the power of government, and maximising individual freedom. I don't particularly value freedom for its own sake. But I do value it as a way to protect families, communities, churches, and institutions from a ruling ideology. Ironically, American freedom does more to protect the Burkean "little platoons" than European conservatism can.

I'm the biggest sentimentalist in the world when it comes to institutions, especially venerable institutions. But I think it's reached the point where European conservatives (and all who are opposed to political correctness) need to become pretty ruthless towards all human institutions. Hopefully the voters of the UK will be ruthless towards the Tories (and, of course, Labour) at the next election. Ultimately principles matter far more than institutions.

Don't fantasize about reviving monarchies and aristocracies. They'd almost certainly be woke, anyway. (As long ago as 1910, G.K. Chesterton saw this: "The simple key to the power of our upper classes is this: that they have always kept carefully on the side of what is called Progress.")

I'm sure I'm still enough of a European conservative to exasperate some of the more radical anti-government Republicans. But I feel I've made a significant switch.

A Pinch of Incense

One thing that often strikes me about the modern-day religion of political correctness: just like the worship of the Roman Emperors, it requires very little actual commitment. Just a pinch of incense at the shrine.

For instance, if you are a member of one of the supposed oppressor groups, you don't actually have to live any differently in order to expiate your supposed guilt. All that's required is to make the right ritual professions at the right time. You have to profess guilt and shame, but that's really all you have to do.

For instance, it's often been noted that people who lament their own group's overrepresentation in leadership roles never seem to willingly vacate those roles, in order to make room for a member of an oppressed group.

I sometimes think this is why politically-correct people get exasperated at those who refuse to play along. I imagine them thinking: don't you realize how easy it is to play along? Why are you being such fools? 

A Good Passage from Karl Ove Knausgaard

I'm onto volume two of Karl Ove Knausgaard's excellent series of autobiographical novels, My Struggle. (As I've said previously, the title's echo of a more famous work seems to be deliberate and ironic.) 

It's really excellent, and I'm surprised I'm enjoying it so much, because I mostly don't like modern literature (to put it mildly). I generally find it pretentious and banal.

Anyway, when volume two begins Knausgaard (a Norwegian) is living in Sweden with his wife and young children, and finds himself musing on the eternal question of heredity vs. environment:

When I was growing up I was taught to look for the explanation of all human qualities, actions and phenomena in the environment in which they originated... Such an attitude can at first sight seem humanistic, inasmuch as it is intimately bound up with the notion that all people are equal, but upon closer examination it could just as well be an expression of a mechanistic attitude to man, who, born empty, allows his life to be shaped by his surroundings.

...Out with spirituality, out with feeling, in with a new materialism, but it never struck them [his parents' generation] that the same attitude could lie behind the demolition of old parts of town to make way for roads and car parks, which naturally the intellectual left opposed, and perhaps it has not been possible to be aware of this until now, when the link between the idea of equality and capitalism, the welfare state and liberalism, Marxist materialism and the consumer society is obvious because the biggest equality creator of all is money, it levels all differences, and if your character and your fate are entities that can be shaped, money is the most natural shaper, and this gives way to the fascinating phenomenon whereby crowds of people assert their individuality and originality by shopping in an identitical way, while those who once ushered all this in with their affirmation of equality, their emphasis on material values and belief in change, are now inveighing against their handiwork, which they believe the enemy created...

Although Knausgaard goes on to add that "like all simple reasoning this is not true either", I think he's pretty much right.

(These kind of political or historical reflections have not been very common in the novel so far, but I anticipate they'll get more frequent as it goes along, from what I've read about it. So far it's been more about the protagonist's individual lived experience.)

A Word for Today

Scofflaw. Never heard that one before!

Read about its meaning and origin here!

Boring Criticisms of Social Media

I haven't been on Facebook or Twitter since the end of 2024. Well, whoop-de-doo for me. I mostly left for petty reasons. I only mention it in case it gives my case here a little bit more "cred".

Basically, I get tired of hearing boring criticisms of social media and I'm very sceptical of them.

I'm not banging the drum for social media. I'm just jaded from hearing the same criticisms over and over, and always with an air of something profound and insightful being said.

So here we go...

1) People use social media to present a false image of their lives.

True. But how is this different from any other aspect of human life? As Dr. Gregory House says, "Everybody lies". There was a time when Irish people would stay away from Mass because they didn't have good enough clothes, and we all know about the "good room" that was only used for visitors. Putting on a show seems to be a perennial human behaviour. 

It took me a long, long time-- well into my forties-- to realize just how extensively people play up their achievements and experiences. I was very naive.

Someone who didn't put on a show (to some extent at least) would probably be treated as a weirdo and avoided.

You could say all these false images are coming at you thicker and faster on social media than they ever did before. Maybe. Is it so different from channel-hoping or flicking through glossy magazines?

2) Social media is polarising.

I notice the mainstream media only object to polarisation when there are two poles (or more, so to speak). They are perfectly happy to whip up intense emotions when it's on the right side. (For instance, fostering animosity to the Catholic Church.)

What's wrong with polarisation, anyway? I think a healthy society should have clashing ideologies and intense debate. Conformism is much more dangerous. (And that's what we have in Ireland.)

If you ask me, the internet's biggest virtue is that it makes it very difficult to suppress dissent.

3) Social media dumbs down public discourse and shortens attention spans.

Please. I can't remember a time when people weren't complaining about "soundbites". It was a constant refrain when political spin-doctors like Peter Mandelson and Alistair Campbell first came on the scene, in the late nineties. It only takes a glance at history to realize there were always soundbites in politics. "Homes fit for heroes", "Up Dev", "Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right", etc. etc. You might argue these were slogans, but really, what's the difference?

Before that the "shortening attention span" claim was made about video games and channel-hopping.

I don't buy for a second that attention spans are shortening. Netflix bingeing has become a very familiar phenomenon, and the public appettite for massive multi-volume literary works such as A Song of Ice and Fire seeems instiable. Also, movies are actually getting longer.

On the other hand, just look at some television from the early days of the medium. It was mostly pretty vapid stuff. I think it was even more vapid than it is today. (But more wholesome, too. I watched an episode of Mr. Ed the other day and keenly felt the loss of wholesomeness in entertainment since those days.)

4) People crave dopamine hits from "likes", views, etc.

Again, what's different? When have people not been approval junkies? You could argue that social media accelarates this tendency. Perhaps it does, but I think this can be overstated.

What frustrated me about social media, personally, was that (in my view) a thoughtful and substantial post would get so little engagement compared to something more trivial or polemical. But again...is that anything new?

There are legitimate criticisms of social media and I don't think society would be any worse off if social media just disappeared tomorrow morning.

What really bothers me is the way people produce these cliches as if they were wonderful insights that haven't been said a million times already.

Or people who say with affected bewilderment: "I don't understand social media", like they want some kind of a prize for it. Grrr!

I guess this is all the comedy of humanity and I should regard it with affectionate indulgence. But then, can my undue irritation be a part of the comedy of humanity, too?

I Hate Political Correctness.

I hate political correctness.

I hate defences of political correctness.

I hate the false equivalence of political correctness with some imaginary opposite extreme.

I hate the suggestion that political correctness is something that mostly happens on university campuses and in quirky places like Seattle.

I hate the term "political correctness gone mad", since political correctness is already mad.

I hate attemps to justify political correctness with ironic, knowing humour.

I hate the equation of political correctness with good manners and courtesy. People's careers and lives have rarely been destroyed because of a lapse in good manners or courtesy. (The British TV chef Fanny Cradock was a rare exception.) Nor do conventions of good manners and courtesy change overnight, arbitrarily.

I hate the pretence that political correctness has been an organic evolution rather than a series of sudden changes imposed (mostly) from above.

I hate the pretence that there's a "political correctness of the right". Yes, there are sacred cows on the right, but the right doesn't have the power to impose those on people in general, outside their own (generally beleagured) institutions. Even when the right is in government in any given country, the left is in permanent control of education, the public sector, the entertainment industry, etc. There's no symmetry here.

I could go on and on, but I won't.