I've frequently noted this "triple-take" in my own mind, including this morning:
1) Reading about some other time or place, before I was born, and finding myself yearning for the idyll I have constructed around it. In this case (although I've never really been a proud Dubliner) it was an ill-defined idyll of old Dublin life, the sort I would glimpse when I heard people talking about "the rare auld times": images of barefoot children playing hopscotch and chanting rhymes, streets without billboards or engine fumes, thick Dublin accents, "porter running from the taps with a head of yellowed cream", broad Dublin salt-of-the-earth accents, a general atmosphere of piety, shabby gentility, patriotism, etc.
(It could, of course, just as well be some other idyll attached to some other time and place.)
2) The painful realization that it wasn't like that...that people back then also made stupid, smutty jokes (as I frequently have), that there was just as much small talk, that people craved excitement and novelty and convenience and garishness, that the washerwoman would have preferred a washing machine (who can blame her?) and the kids playing hop-scotch would have dropped it for video games at the speed of light.
3) The sudden, momentarily overwhelming urge to at least-- as far as I can-- live my life as purged of banality as much as possible, even to the point of caricature and becoming an object of ridicule. Much as I love jokes and comedy, I have very frequently felt the sudden urge to become completely humourless, as a a sort of counter-weight to all the tedious and depressing buffoonery around us.
Of course, this "overwhelming urge" has quickly passed on every occasion...
you're not alone in this. very good post.
ReplyDelete.Laeth
Thank you, Laeth, and I'm glad to hear it!
DeleteYes Laeth. Agreed!
DeleteIn haste: I appreciate, as ever, your pained, sensitive, idealistic struggles in these regards.
ReplyDeleteAnd no it wasn't like your ideals or mine. Humanity is so deeply broken and fallen in every era and the Redemption *in time* seems a long way off.
But you recently remarked to me about the degeneration of Ireland and I don't think you were wrong there. Ireland was closer to my ideals even in 2004 when I first arrived and she was in the materialistic frenzy of the Celtic Tiger.
Struggling to find time to say more with you as with so many others . . .
Thanks Roger! I absolutely agree that some times and places ARE closer to specific ideals than others, and that Ireland was closer to our ideals in 2004, and even more in 1984, and even more in 1964, etc...
DeleteOf course, when you say this, people instantly accuse you of conjuring a "Golden Age" and a "utopia".
So both are true...no era instantiated any ideals perfectly (or even anywhere close to it), but some are significantly closer than others...
You have expressed your point well. No era is perfect, but if it's all the same, then why isn't it the same? There are so many different features of any place or time that no era is better than another in all ways or worse in all ways. And yet, things can indeed be better in some ways. And I would say that it is valid to judge one time as overall better, the same way anything can be judged as overall better.
ReplyDeleteIf people were actually trying to have a discussion about the features of different times and to evaluate them that would be one thing, but often, the people trying to say everything is the same are trying to push for even more changes, so they don't even believe what they are saying. It is just an attempt to get people to shut up.
Exactly! I couldn't put it better than that. And especially the point that those who accuse nostalgists of lamenting social changes are also pushing forward towards other social changes, so there MUST be a difference and everything can't possibly be equivalent! I must remember that one...
ReplyDeleteI was thinking some more about this topic. One thing that I keep saying to myself about many issues is "if it was true, that would be one thing, but it isn't."
DeleteIf every change from the past was made up for by something new in the present if you just look hard enough, okay, that would be one thing, but where are they then?
If the "end of history" really was an endless cornucopia of choice where you can live however you wish, including traditionally, okay, that would be one thing, but then why was it not like that?
If we really were heading towards a "post-scarcity" society that would be one thing, but then why are all these people making low quality junk and charging more and more for it?
Well, indeed. I thought stasis and banality were the thing most too be feared in the "end of history", but that seems to have been a transitional phase!
DeleteVery good stuff - I like the description of a "triple-take", which helps make it memorable.
ReplyDeleteAnd in a gentle way, you are making a very important point. Things really have changed.
Since most people are prepared to believe that several things are much *better* now than they used to be (so modern people look-down morally on people of the past for their attitudes and behaviour) - it is hardly possible that the ways in which things are worse nowadays would *exactly* balance these improvements.
At a much more mundane level, and going-on from NLR's point; it is very annoying when people won't even believe things I have lived through - painfully!
For example, the collapse of honesty in science - from scientists being almost-always honest to almost-never - which only took about 25 years.
Far too many people now adopt a global cynicism that projects back the near-total fakery of current "science" (especially medical science!) right back to its origins. They are factually wrong, and incoherent, but regard any correction as evidence of dewy-eyed gullibility!
I would say much the same *kind* of thing happened in British politics, with respect to corruption in the leadership class (in all types of institutions).
Going back to the period up to the middle 20th century, it seems that Britain, in particular, was a bit of a bye-word for incorruptibility in politicians, civil servants, judges etc - at least compared with other places.
This "decency" collapsed especially rapidly through the 1990s, and especially in the Tony Blair administration when it was actually explicit and boasted-about (the "spin-doctor", such as Peter Mandelson*, became the most celebrated - admired and feared - figure in British politics); and the process could be observed in real-time.
This must surely mean that - in *this* respect - things really used to be better, our leaders really used to behave better than is usual now - at least in the sense of being significantly more functional, and less dedicated to selfishness and short-termism.
*I actually met PM, at a friends house, in Hartlepool, during 2-3 hours over lunch during a general election campaign - I'm not sure which, maybe 1992? Sadly I recall very little of the meeting - except that he made no impression on me, said almost nothing, and was completely focused on the ongoing electoral situation. I failed altogether to recognize or realize the kind of person that PM so extravagantly has turned-out to be.
Thanks, Professor Charlton. When I was writing this post, I found myself thinking of your posts on the futility of trying to live in a heightened state constantly. I can't rid myself of this aspiration!
DeleteAs for Tony Blair, I'm ashamed to admit I was a big supporter back in the day.
I do think cynicism tends to spread exponentially, and cancel itself out eventually. If everything is awful, then why prefer anything to anything else, or even disapprove of anything?
You can certainly see the decline in Irish politics-- for instance, our first generation of political leaders, although they were willing to execute each other now and again, they were quite strict about not benefitting from office.
This is such a complicated issue and one that is regularly on my mind, almost on a daily basis in fact.
ReplyDeleteI have to say after years of romanticising past periods I'm currently trying to fight such tendencies. At the risk of sounding boring, would one would really want an era less developed in medical science, anaesthetics etc?
Plus I've known women who have been victims of domestic abuse. None of them wish to be back in an era when this topic was swept under the carpet. I have zero truck with reactionary "masculine" nostalgia, which finds its worst embodiment in horrible figures like Andrew Tate etc and lesser equivalents such as Jordan Peterson.
Sure, I don't care for the Globalisation of Ireland that has really sped up over the past nine years or so, but there we are.
Incidentally, I know a real old school English guy in his 60s who surprised me when he said England in the 70s was an utterly miserable place and it was much nicer now.
To finish, I know you don't care for 'Ulysses', but one of its great features is how complete a picture it paints of 1904 Dublin in all its good, bad and indifferent features. You can take it or leave it according to taste, and let's be honest, one's view on past periods will entirely come down to those tastes so attempting to say 'Things were better in the past' is probably ultimately nonsensical. I'll go as far to say it's legit to say there were elements in a past period one may have preferred, but blanket affirmations or condemnations strike me as highly suspect.
I think there is a danger of flying to the anti-nostalgic extreme, a tendency I have seen in myself. I do think in principle it surely has to be possible to come to a verdict on an era, although to be fair there is SO MUCH data to be taken into account that it's very difficult.
DeleteI can see that the appeal of Ulysses might be its documentary lens on Dublin. I guess I'm just not willing to spend the necessary time hunting through reference books to work out what it's saying on the literal level...
It's good that domestic abuse is taken seriously today, but I think we've gone from the social pressure (or support) being on the side of marriages staying together, while today all the pressure is in the opposite direction.
Also...that guy must clearly have been lying, because the seventies were obviously a golden age, despite everything I've said here. Zep, Slade, Bee Gees, earthen interior decoration colours, bell bottoms, Mary Whitehouse...what's not to love?
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