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...
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