To be specific, "The Best Spiritual Books of 2018" on the Catholic Herald website.
If that inspires you to buy the book, you can do so here!
Monday, December 17, 2018
Attic Thoughts
Yesterday, I was inside an attic for the first time in my forty-one years of life. (Although I have to be honest and admit that I was once inside an attic converted into a bedroom. It hardly seems the same thing, though.)
I can't claim it was a life-changing experience. It was a fairly standard attic, with nothing in it except a water tank and some boxes of clothes.
All the same, it got me thinking about attics, and my life-long fascination with them.
My experience of attics so far has been confined to literature, films and TV. In these media, attics are always dusty, musty spaces full of memories; boxes full of old letters, photograph albums, magazines, toys and so forth. Characters are often confronted with their past or with their former or true self in them; for instance, through re-reading an old school essay which reminds them how idealistic they used to be.
I'm fascinated by many sorts of spaces; lobbies, corridors, foyers, store-rooms, bathrooms, and so forth. Common to these is the fact that people generally pass through them on the way to somewhere else, or don't linger in for long.
My interest in attics is quite specific, though. Attics are unique.
Attics are often places where people keep things they don't want to throw away but don't have any current use for, either. For instance, when I said there was nothing in the attic I went into except some boxes full of clothes, I may have made them seem more mundane than they are. The clothes belong to a dead person. Presumably this is why they were never thrown out, and yet put in a place where they will never be accessed.
Putting something in the attic signals closure, or giving up (the exercise bike in the attic), or losing interest, or even repression.
This is interesting to me for many reasons; but one reason is that it reminds me of the many different ways we relate to the past, another question that fascinates me. (Hey, lots of things fascinate me.)
You can be sure that, in the same house where there is an old poker table or fishing rods in the attic, there are framed photographs on the wall, or letters carefully kept in a biscuit tin in a chest of drawers, or some kind of memorabilia that are lovingly displayed or preserved, rather than shoved into storage.
In the same way, there are the memories we linger over, the ones we present to the world, and the ones we simply put away-- that we keep in the attic of the mind.
I've written several posts about the concept of the recent past on this blog. It's a concept that-- yes-- fascinates me, even if nobody else seems to share the fascination. This poem is probably the best of my musings on the subject.
The recent past is that period of time that has been simply put away. It's no longer the present, nor yet fully the past. There is something ghostly about it. There is no definite time limit for it, but I would generally place it at about ten to twenty years. I think this holds good for both societies and individuals. (For younger people, of course, there are differences of scale.) Nostalgia has not yet taken hold, nor has reassessment, but "the carnival has moved on", to draw on a deliciously poetic book title.
But that's almost incidental. The attic usually doesn't contain memories from the recent past, but from the more distant past. However, they share this characteristic with the recent past-- they are unregarded. They are not carefully put away, but rather unthinkingly put out of sight. Nearly every attic scene I've ever encountered involves a character rediscovering something in the attic which they were not looking for, which they come upon by accident. The encounter is not always welcome.
This seems quite symbolic of how we interact with our past-- again, both our individual past and our societal past. The memories we strive to preserve are not necessarily the memories that turn out to be the most important. The repressed returns. The forgotten is remembered. Memories and souvenirs we treasured turn out be less important than we expected them to be, or even inaccurate. The ones we shoved into the attic, or perhaps preserved through complete accident, often turn out to be more meaningful. The past is an enigma.
(An example of this is when an author who was not considered important to his or her contemporaries turns out to be far more important to posterity than the more popular or well-regarded authors of the day. Or, perhaps, a particular work that was not well-regarded, compared to the author's other works, seems far more important to posterity.)
Attics are also fascinating as spaces in themselves, aside from whatever might be kept there. Some years ago, I wrote a blog post about a library store-room where I was doing a lot of work, and this was my closing paragraph:
I've only been working in this room for a few weeks but I find it's rather haunting my imagination. Out-of-the-way and unregarded and purely functional places like this have a certain soulfulness to them. Boiler rooms, cellars, attics, warehouses, box rooms, changing rooms, post rooms...they're so unapologetic, so blunt, so uncomplicated. They cleanse and refresh the spirit-- or my spirit, anyway. And the silence they hold....well, I always find something in their silence that I can't find anywhere else. But I can't really describe it. Maybe I don't have to?
Sometimes I surprise people by admitting to a strong dislike for silence. I'm not being a contrarian-- I do genuinely dislike silence. At least, I dislike most forms of silence (especially theatrical and ostentatious silence, like pregnant pauses in films and drama).
But I like the silence of out-of-the-way spaces such as store-rooms or attics (especially when they are deepened by random noises such as the tapping or sighing of pipes). It is somehow less showy, less self-congratulatory, gentler. There is a great pleasure to finding oneself outside, back-stage, in a place which is hardly a place at all-- somehow it makes the drama of life going on around you, the life from which you have suspended yourself for a moment, all the more exciting.
(The title of this blog post is a reference to the book Attic Nights. I have always loved anything with the word "nights" or "days" in the title. Attic Nights was a title that had somehow floated into my consciousness without me knowing where I had heard it, or what it was. When I did look it up, I discovered it was a kind of almanac or commonplace book that an ancient Greek author had put together to pass the long winter nights in Attica. Funnily enough, it is somewhat appropriate to the theme of my blog post, since excerpts from many ancient authors are only preserved because of this book.)
I can't claim it was a life-changing experience. It was a fairly standard attic, with nothing in it except a water tank and some boxes of clothes.
All the same, it got me thinking about attics, and my life-long fascination with them.
My experience of attics so far has been confined to literature, films and TV. In these media, attics are always dusty, musty spaces full of memories; boxes full of old letters, photograph albums, magazines, toys and so forth. Characters are often confronted with their past or with their former or true self in them; for instance, through re-reading an old school essay which reminds them how idealistic they used to be.
I'm fascinated by many sorts of spaces; lobbies, corridors, foyers, store-rooms, bathrooms, and so forth. Common to these is the fact that people generally pass through them on the way to somewhere else, or don't linger in for long.
My interest in attics is quite specific, though. Attics are unique.
Attics are often places where people keep things they don't want to throw away but don't have any current use for, either. For instance, when I said there was nothing in the attic I went into except some boxes full of clothes, I may have made them seem more mundane than they are. The clothes belong to a dead person. Presumably this is why they were never thrown out, and yet put in a place where they will never be accessed.
Putting something in the attic signals closure, or giving up (the exercise bike in the attic), or losing interest, or even repression.
This is interesting to me for many reasons; but one reason is that it reminds me of the many different ways we relate to the past, another question that fascinates me. (Hey, lots of things fascinate me.)
You can be sure that, in the same house where there is an old poker table or fishing rods in the attic, there are framed photographs on the wall, or letters carefully kept in a biscuit tin in a chest of drawers, or some kind of memorabilia that are lovingly displayed or preserved, rather than shoved into storage.
In the same way, there are the memories we linger over, the ones we present to the world, and the ones we simply put away-- that we keep in the attic of the mind.
I've written several posts about the concept of the recent past on this blog. It's a concept that-- yes-- fascinates me, even if nobody else seems to share the fascination. This poem is probably the best of my musings on the subject.
The recent past is that period of time that has been simply put away. It's no longer the present, nor yet fully the past. There is something ghostly about it. There is no definite time limit for it, but I would generally place it at about ten to twenty years. I think this holds good for both societies and individuals. (For younger people, of course, there are differences of scale.) Nostalgia has not yet taken hold, nor has reassessment, but "the carnival has moved on", to draw on a deliciously poetic book title.
But that's almost incidental. The attic usually doesn't contain memories from the recent past, but from the more distant past. However, they share this characteristic with the recent past-- they are unregarded. They are not carefully put away, but rather unthinkingly put out of sight. Nearly every attic scene I've ever encountered involves a character rediscovering something in the attic which they were not looking for, which they come upon by accident. The encounter is not always welcome.
This seems quite symbolic of how we interact with our past-- again, both our individual past and our societal past. The memories we strive to preserve are not necessarily the memories that turn out to be the most important. The repressed returns. The forgotten is remembered. Memories and souvenirs we treasured turn out be less important than we expected them to be, or even inaccurate. The ones we shoved into the attic, or perhaps preserved through complete accident, often turn out to be more meaningful. The past is an enigma.
(An example of this is when an author who was not considered important to his or her contemporaries turns out to be far more important to posterity than the more popular or well-regarded authors of the day. Or, perhaps, a particular work that was not well-regarded, compared to the author's other works, seems far more important to posterity.)
Attics are also fascinating as spaces in themselves, aside from whatever might be kept there. Some years ago, I wrote a blog post about a library store-room where I was doing a lot of work, and this was my closing paragraph:
I've only been working in this room for a few weeks but I find it's rather haunting my imagination. Out-of-the-way and unregarded and purely functional places like this have a certain soulfulness to them. Boiler rooms, cellars, attics, warehouses, box rooms, changing rooms, post rooms...they're so unapologetic, so blunt, so uncomplicated. They cleanse and refresh the spirit-- or my spirit, anyway. And the silence they hold....well, I always find something in their silence that I can't find anywhere else. But I can't really describe it. Maybe I don't have to?
Sometimes I surprise people by admitting to a strong dislike for silence. I'm not being a contrarian-- I do genuinely dislike silence. At least, I dislike most forms of silence (especially theatrical and ostentatious silence, like pregnant pauses in films and drama).
But I like the silence of out-of-the-way spaces such as store-rooms or attics (especially when they are deepened by random noises such as the tapping or sighing of pipes). It is somehow less showy, less self-congratulatory, gentler. There is a great pleasure to finding oneself outside, back-stage, in a place which is hardly a place at all-- somehow it makes the drama of life going on around you, the life from which you have suspended yourself for a moment, all the more exciting.
(The title of this blog post is a reference to the book Attic Nights. I have always loved anything with the word "nights" or "days" in the title. Attic Nights was a title that had somehow floated into my consciousness without me knowing where I had heard it, or what it was. When I did look it up, I discovered it was a kind of almanac or commonplace book that an ancient Greek author had put together to pass the long winter nights in Attica. Funnily enough, it is somewhat appropriate to the theme of my blog post, since excerpts from many ancient authors are only preserved because of this book.)
Thursday, December 13, 2018
Wednesday, December 12, 2018
The Need for Conservative Spaces
In the year 2002, I was trying to work on a play for my local arts centre, along with a couple of professional actors. Nothing ever came of the play. During our discussions, one of the actors suggested I read Angels in America, a two-part play written by the American playwright Tony Kushner. Kusher also wrote (with Eric Roth) the film Munich, which I greatly enjoyed, and Lincoln, which bored me to death.
I can't say I enjoyed Angels in America, though it held my interest and the concept intrigued me. Its subtitle is A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. The story involves actual angels, or at least, angels that some of the characters take seriously.
I'm intrigued not only by the play, but by the playwright. Kushner is a gay Jewish American socialist. One thing that intrigues me is that he describes himself as being an agnostic who is genuinely open to religion. He's also willing to be unabashedly political in his work, and to feature fictionalised versions of real-life characters.
I group him with other figures such as David Bowie, Clive Barker (the horror writer), and even (on a grander scale) W.B. Yeats. That is, they are artists who seem to see the life of the imagination as paramount (not always the case for artists), and who are determined to draw from every source for their art. They always want everything to be "in play"-- generally, they are interested in religion but opposed to dogma.
Although I could never be like that-- I'm a dogmatist through and through-- I find the type quite attractive.
Recently, I found myself watching a YouTube recording of an interview with Tony Kushner. (Well, it wasn't so much that I was watching it as that I had it on while doing something else-- a very frequent practice of mine.)
The discussion turned towards the use of political themes in drama. Both Kushner and the interviewer seemed like nice chaps, but one thing about the interview really irritated me. It was the shared assumptions. Both interviewer and interviewee, for instance, agreed that gay marriage was an unquestionably good thing-- this wasn't even something stated, it was simply the unspoken assumption behind their discussion of that topic. Similarly, they obviously agreed that Donald Trump was an abomination.
Now, some of my readers might think that Donald Trump is an abomination. Some of my readers (though I doubt it) might even be pro-same sex marriage. I'm willing to accept that people think differently from me on those topics. I'm willing to respect those different views. I'm sure everybody reading this has family and friends who are pro-abortion, and while that may grieve us, we still love them.
But, in almost any public forum-- especially those at the higher end of the intellectual and cultural scale-- conservatives must always deal with assumptions that everybody (or everybody worth considering) holds a full set of liberal, progressive, secular views.
We can respond to this in different ways.
One response is to keep your mouth shut and essentially lead a double life. Many of us have to do this out of practical considerations-- is it really worth losing your job to make your voice heard? Many of the rest of us will keep our mouths shut anyway, at least sometimes, just out of a desire for an easy life, or for the sake of a pleasant atmosphere, or out of sheer fatigue.
Another response is to accommodate the ruling ethos more and more until there isn't much left of your conservatism. It's salami-sliced away, at first under the guise of "using respectful language" or "accepting the truth of somebody's feelings", until there really isn't any of it left anymore. The cognitive dissonance of living in two mental worlds becomes too hard to take, and we slowly and gradually reduce the tension by accepting the ruling ethos, bit by bit.
A third response is to become a die hard. Not an inch! You might have to strategically keep silent now and again-- at work, especially. But no way in hell are you going to bend an inch aside from that. In fact, you're going to push back with all your force.
I think all these responses are unfortunate (the first one might be inevitable, for some people).
What's wrong with becoming a die hard, you might ask? Well, one of the reasons I think it's wrong is the coarsening effect it has on your own character. A person can't be angry or combative all the time without sacrificing some of their humanity, some of their range as a human being. You cannot live in the trenches without becoming a fighting machine.
And so I come to the actual subject of this blog post. (Please excuse the oblique approach. This is something I generally detest, but in this case it seemed justified.) I believe that conservatives today, more than anything else, need conservative spaces, both physical and virtual. We need places where we can talk to each other free of the liberal-secular-progressive-globalist assumptions which reign elsewhere. We need a sub-culture.
I think this is less true of America than it is elsewhere. American conservatives do have a sub-culture. There are Christian colleges and conservative news networks and conservative think tanks and so forth. (First Things magazine is an outstanding example.)
Outside America, however, this hardly seems to be the case anywhere-- at least, in the anglophone world. (A friend tells me it is very different in France and other non-anglophone countries.) The supposedly conservative media in the UK have given up the fight long ago, and now take refuge in irony and sarcasm. Whenever there is an exception, such as the excellent Conservative Woman blog, or Peter Hitchens's blog, it's surprising.
And in Ireland...? There is almost nothing in Ireland, other than the Iona Institute. Indeed, the Catholic Church itself tends to be a liberal voice in Ireland, except when it is backed into a corner and very reluctantly has to take a conservative line on some social issue. This is even truer of the other churches.
The crying need, in my view, is for conservative spaces where we can discuss things other than politics, religion, and the controversies of the day. Where we can talk about everything. And I won't even say "where we can talk about everything from a conservative perspective", because I think it's even simpler than that-- we need places where we can talk about everything without left-wing assumptions.
The main reason I think conservatives need spaces of our own is because we need somewhere to relax.
We're often told that it's good to have your ideas and preconceptions challenged. Yes, it's good-- some of the time. But surely not all of the time, or even most of the time.
As I've said, a person cannot always be in fight mode. I think this is true, not only in an emotional sense, but in an intellectual and artistic and cultural sense.
It's not good to be always on guard. To really develop, we have to be allowed to explore ideas, express uncertainty and conflicted feelings, question ourselves (without fearing that this will be immediately punished), be playful and whimsical, and basically behave like rounded human beings rather than politicians toeing the party line, or door-to-door salesmen.
We need to have internal debates and discussions. And not simply to refine our ideas, or to develop strategies, or anything like that-- we need them for their own sake. Because every collective entity that has ever existed, from a nation to a football supporters' club, has these things. They are quite simply signs of life.
We need places to breathe. We need places to hang out. We need places to be at home.
One area in which I feel this absence particularly acutely is movie reviews. Look for a review of any movie, past and present, and you'll discover it's very hard to find a review that isn't laden with left-wing and PC assumptions. Sometimes this doesn't matter, but often it does.
I often find myself looking for a conservative review of a movie-- not a critique of its liberalism, but simply an ordinary review which doesn't get hung up on the liberal talking points.
I can imagine a left-wing critic responding to this by saying: "Yes, but that's because most people are what you call "politically correct". Of course they're going to call out the racism, sexism, homophobia etc. of that old movie they're reviewing. It sucks for you that this is what most ordinary people do naturally, now. But it's not some kind of big conspiracy."
I don't agree with that critic, however. I don't think it's just a case of doing what comes naturally. I think many people feel obliged to go along with this-- even private individuals uploading movie reviews onto their own YouTube channel.
And this cuts across everything. Sports. Book reviews. History. Horror. The Irish language. Comedy. Everything.
I think, as far as possible, we need our own places where we can be incidentally conservative, or traditionalist, or old-fashioned. (And that's another thing-- I'm not talking about any one sort of conservatism here. I'm basically talking about all the social philosophies which find themselves outside the tent of liberal-secular-globalism.)
This is what I was aiming at when I set up the Irish Conservatives Forum, which has been surprisingly successful (though it could always do with more contributors). From the first I was clear that it was open to all definitions of conservatism, and even open to non-conservatives who were willing to get into the spirit of the thing.
At one point, I banned a contributor who was not a conservative but who was also not (in my view) conducive to the atmosphere I was trying to create. He was, to be blunt, a buzzkill. He did nothing but challenge other contributors from his liberal perspective and I felt completely justified in banning him, even though some regulars thought I was too harsh (as did he). He was perfectly polite, but that was irrelevant to me.
As well as being open to all forms of conservatism, my conception of the forum was that it wouldn't just be devoted to conservative topics but have a place for everything. For instance, I have a thread for original creative works, although it hasn't been terribly active. There is also a thread called "Conservatives Go to the Movies", for accounts of trips to the cinema. I was trying to create exactly the sort of space I am describing in this post.
This idea has also occurred to me in connection with the G.K. Chesterton Society of Ireland, that ghostly entity whose "flickering and wayward existence" perpetually haunts me, just like the ghost of Michael Furey haunts the protagonist of "The Dead". (I have spent a ridiculous amount of time asking editors to stop giving the address of its blog, which has not been updated in many years, in my author description.)
The Chesterton society was a good idea, and I do hope it gets off the ground again, but it often occurred to me that it would have been better as a simple Catholic book club. Many of the people who turned up knew very little about Chesterton and it seemed rude to exclude them from the discussion. So every meeting was always stuck at first base, and turned into a discussion of the latest Catholic controversies anyway. It served as an opportunity for Catholics to turn up and talk with like-minded people about all sorts of things. That was fine by me, but it was hardly a Chesterton society. (The same thing happened to a Hilaire Belloc Society, which was more or less the same people in the same place. I wanted to merge the two-- in fact, I think they would have been better off as a general Catholic culture club.)
I would love to see other conservative spaces come into being, both online and in the real world. For instance, conservative movie reviews which don't set out to be conservative "take-downs" of the films in question, but simply ordinary movie reviews which are not hampered by left-wing taboos. (The Catholic News Agency website does have a section of this kind. But the reviews are not very long, not very numerous, and not all that well-written.)
The same approach could be taken to any number of other subjects.
The Irish journalist John Waters has often said that he is sick of being set up as the angry guy on the panel, the token conservative, wheeled out to say "No" to whatever the other three panelists were saying "Yes" to. Conservatism is going to shrivel and die if it continues to occupy only this role. It needs its own spaces, spaces where it can say not only "No", but "Yes, "Maybe", "I'm not sure", "This is quite interesting", "Good cinematography", "Terrible goal-keeping", and "Cool!". Places where it can breathe, and relax, and be at home.
I can't say I enjoyed Angels in America, though it held my interest and the concept intrigued me. Its subtitle is A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. The story involves actual angels, or at least, angels that some of the characters take seriously.
 |
| Tony Kushner. Not a conservative. |
I group him with other figures such as David Bowie, Clive Barker (the horror writer), and even (on a grander scale) W.B. Yeats. That is, they are artists who seem to see the life of the imagination as paramount (not always the case for artists), and who are determined to draw from every source for their art. They always want everything to be "in play"-- generally, they are interested in religion but opposed to dogma.
Although I could never be like that-- I'm a dogmatist through and through-- I find the type quite attractive.
Recently, I found myself watching a YouTube recording of an interview with Tony Kushner. (Well, it wasn't so much that I was watching it as that I had it on while doing something else-- a very frequent practice of mine.)
The discussion turned towards the use of political themes in drama. Both Kushner and the interviewer seemed like nice chaps, but one thing about the interview really irritated me. It was the shared assumptions. Both interviewer and interviewee, for instance, agreed that gay marriage was an unquestionably good thing-- this wasn't even something stated, it was simply the unspoken assumption behind their discussion of that topic. Similarly, they obviously agreed that Donald Trump was an abomination.
Now, some of my readers might think that Donald Trump is an abomination. Some of my readers (though I doubt it) might even be pro-same sex marriage. I'm willing to accept that people think differently from me on those topics. I'm willing to respect those different views. I'm sure everybody reading this has family and friends who are pro-abortion, and while that may grieve us, we still love them.
But, in almost any public forum-- especially those at the higher end of the intellectual and cultural scale-- conservatives must always deal with assumptions that everybody (or everybody worth considering) holds a full set of liberal, progressive, secular views.
We can respond to this in different ways.
One response is to keep your mouth shut and essentially lead a double life. Many of us have to do this out of practical considerations-- is it really worth losing your job to make your voice heard? Many of the rest of us will keep our mouths shut anyway, at least sometimes, just out of a desire for an easy life, or for the sake of a pleasant atmosphere, or out of sheer fatigue.
Another response is to accommodate the ruling ethos more and more until there isn't much left of your conservatism. It's salami-sliced away, at first under the guise of "using respectful language" or "accepting the truth of somebody's feelings", until there really isn't any of it left anymore. The cognitive dissonance of living in two mental worlds becomes too hard to take, and we slowly and gradually reduce the tension by accepting the ruling ethos, bit by bit.
A third response is to become a die hard. Not an inch! You might have to strategically keep silent now and again-- at work, especially. But no way in hell are you going to bend an inch aside from that. In fact, you're going to push back with all your force.
I think all these responses are unfortunate (the first one might be inevitable, for some people).
What's wrong with becoming a die hard, you might ask? Well, one of the reasons I think it's wrong is the coarsening effect it has on your own character. A person can't be angry or combative all the time without sacrificing some of their humanity, some of their range as a human being. You cannot live in the trenches without becoming a fighting machine.
And so I come to the actual subject of this blog post. (Please excuse the oblique approach. This is something I generally detest, but in this case it seemed justified.) I believe that conservatives today, more than anything else, need conservative spaces, both physical and virtual. We need places where we can talk to each other free of the liberal-secular-progressive-globalist assumptions which reign elsewhere. We need a sub-culture.
I think this is less true of America than it is elsewhere. American conservatives do have a sub-culture. There are Christian colleges and conservative news networks and conservative think tanks and so forth. (First Things magazine is an outstanding example.)
Outside America, however, this hardly seems to be the case anywhere-- at least, in the anglophone world. (A friend tells me it is very different in France and other non-anglophone countries.) The supposedly conservative media in the UK have given up the fight long ago, and now take refuge in irony and sarcasm. Whenever there is an exception, such as the excellent Conservative Woman blog, or Peter Hitchens's blog, it's surprising.
 |
| A British "conservative" |
The crying need, in my view, is for conservative spaces where we can discuss things other than politics, religion, and the controversies of the day. Where we can talk about everything. And I won't even say "where we can talk about everything from a conservative perspective", because I think it's even simpler than that-- we need places where we can talk about everything without left-wing assumptions.
The main reason I think conservatives need spaces of our own is because we need somewhere to relax.
We're often told that it's good to have your ideas and preconceptions challenged. Yes, it's good-- some of the time. But surely not all of the time, or even most of the time.
As I've said, a person cannot always be in fight mode. I think this is true, not only in an emotional sense, but in an intellectual and artistic and cultural sense.
It's not good to be always on guard. To really develop, we have to be allowed to explore ideas, express uncertainty and conflicted feelings, question ourselves (without fearing that this will be immediately punished), be playful and whimsical, and basically behave like rounded human beings rather than politicians toeing the party line, or door-to-door salesmen.
We need to have internal debates and discussions. And not simply to refine our ideas, or to develop strategies, or anything like that-- we need them for their own sake. Because every collective entity that has ever existed, from a nation to a football supporters' club, has these things. They are quite simply signs of life.
We need places to breathe. We need places to hang out. We need places to be at home.
One area in which I feel this absence particularly acutely is movie reviews. Look for a review of any movie, past and present, and you'll discover it's very hard to find a review that isn't laden with left-wing and PC assumptions. Sometimes this doesn't matter, but often it does.
I often find myself looking for a conservative review of a movie-- not a critique of its liberalism, but simply an ordinary review which doesn't get hung up on the liberal talking points.
I can imagine a left-wing critic responding to this by saying: "Yes, but that's because most people are what you call "politically correct". Of course they're going to call out the racism, sexism, homophobia etc. of that old movie they're reviewing. It sucks for you that this is what most ordinary people do naturally, now. But it's not some kind of big conspiracy."
I don't agree with that critic, however. I don't think it's just a case of doing what comes naturally. I think many people feel obliged to go along with this-- even private individuals uploading movie reviews onto their own YouTube channel.
And this cuts across everything. Sports. Book reviews. History. Horror. The Irish language. Comedy. Everything.
I think, as far as possible, we need our own places where we can be incidentally conservative, or traditionalist, or old-fashioned. (And that's another thing-- I'm not talking about any one sort of conservatism here. I'm basically talking about all the social philosophies which find themselves outside the tent of liberal-secular-globalism.)
This is what I was aiming at when I set up the Irish Conservatives Forum, which has been surprisingly successful (though it could always do with more contributors). From the first I was clear that it was open to all definitions of conservatism, and even open to non-conservatives who were willing to get into the spirit of the thing.
At one point, I banned a contributor who was not a conservative but who was also not (in my view) conducive to the atmosphere I was trying to create. He was, to be blunt, a buzzkill. He did nothing but challenge other contributors from his liberal perspective and I felt completely justified in banning him, even though some regulars thought I was too harsh (as did he). He was perfectly polite, but that was irrelevant to me.
As well as being open to all forms of conservatism, my conception of the forum was that it wouldn't just be devoted to conservative topics but have a place for everything. For instance, I have a thread for original creative works, although it hasn't been terribly active. There is also a thread called "Conservatives Go to the Movies", for accounts of trips to the cinema. I was trying to create exactly the sort of space I am describing in this post.
This idea has also occurred to me in connection with the G.K. Chesterton Society of Ireland, that ghostly entity whose "flickering and wayward existence" perpetually haunts me, just like the ghost of Michael Furey haunts the protagonist of "The Dead". (I have spent a ridiculous amount of time asking editors to stop giving the address of its blog, which has not been updated in many years, in my author description.)
The Chesterton society was a good idea, and I do hope it gets off the ground again, but it often occurred to me that it would have been better as a simple Catholic book club. Many of the people who turned up knew very little about Chesterton and it seemed rude to exclude them from the discussion. So every meeting was always stuck at first base, and turned into a discussion of the latest Catholic controversies anyway. It served as an opportunity for Catholics to turn up and talk with like-minded people about all sorts of things. That was fine by me, but it was hardly a Chesterton society. (The same thing happened to a Hilaire Belloc Society, which was more or less the same people in the same place. I wanted to merge the two-- in fact, I think they would have been better off as a general Catholic culture club.)
I would love to see other conservative spaces come into being, both online and in the real world. For instance, conservative movie reviews which don't set out to be conservative "take-downs" of the films in question, but simply ordinary movie reviews which are not hampered by left-wing taboos. (The Catholic News Agency website does have a section of this kind. But the reviews are not very long, not very numerous, and not all that well-written.)
The same approach could be taken to any number of other subjects.
The Irish journalist John Waters has often said that he is sick of being set up as the angry guy on the panel, the token conservative, wheeled out to say "No" to whatever the other three panelists were saying "Yes" to. Conservatism is going to shrivel and die if it continues to occupy only this role. It needs its own spaces, spaces where it can say not only "No", but "Yes, "Maybe", "I'm not sure", "This is quite interesting", "Good cinematography", "Terrible goal-keeping", and "Cool!". Places where it can breathe, and relax, and be at home.
Sunday, December 9, 2018
Self-Doubt
On this blog, I always imagine myself writing to a friendly and sympathetic audience. Sadly, in the past, I have had the experience of one of my more introspective and self-questioning posts being rather unchivalrously used in another context. So I ask anyone of this tendency to either stop reading now, or to refrain from taking advantage of my candour here in an ungallant way.
I haven't blogged for a while, and I've been absent from other online spaces. Some readers were kind enough to contact me and ask if I was OK-- which I greatly appreciate. I did not respond to everybody, for which I apologise.
I have been suffering from a lot of self-doubt, in a way that I'll try to explain.
I have a very contrasting attitude towards my beliefs on the one hand, and my own holding of those beliefs on the other. When it comes to my beliefs, I am quite willing (even eager) to take on the world. I've never had the slightest difficulty in going against the stream, arguing with everyone in the room, or being mocked and ridiculed for my convictions.
When it comes to myself, however, I am extremely prone to self-doubt. I have spectacularly low self-esteem and I am willing to believe any criticism made of me, directly or indirectly-- or even criticisms that originate in my own head. I don't only take them to heart, but they can take a hold of me, grow to enormous proportions, even consume me.
So sometimes (often) I find myself in the position of holding a belief, but feeling that I don't have a right to assert it, or that I hold it for the wrong reasons, or that I'm a bad advertisement for it and would serve it better by keeping my mouth shut, or I'm ashamed to assert it because I feel open to some personal accusation.
Take, for instance, my love of tradition (and especially of particular traditions), which I have often written about.
I'm a traditionalist through and through. But what if my traditionalism is rooted in my own inadequacies, neuroses, weaknesses? What if it's a craving for the familiar and the predictable out of a fear of change? Do I have the right to be a traditionalist?
There are many other elements to this self-doubt, big and small. Take, for instance, the matter of children. I don't have children. This might be considered just hard luck, but one can't help blaming oneself or feeling a personal sense of failure, and I blame myself for all sorts of reasons, rational or not. (Fellow conservatives, please hesitate before pointing to a politician's childlessness as evidence of some agenda. It might be the biggest regret of their lives.)
Well, children are the great carriers of tradition. In a book about endangered languages, a linguist put it like this: Children don't so much learn languages as recreate them. He called the process mysterious and magical. In fact, the linguist was clear that the survival of any given language is really based upon whether it is being passed on to children. And this seems true of many or most traditions, including personal ones. (And one never feels this more than at Christmas time and other holidays, especially when you look at social media.)
I know it's irrational to think "I have no right to be a traditionalist because I have no children". I wouldn't think it of anybody else. I only think it of myself.
The criticism extends to smaller things, as well. I know somebody who has extremely liberal (and anti-Catholic) beliefs, is strongly anti-Brexit etc., but who speaks Irish fluently and plays the harp. Isn't she a truer traditionalist than I am? She is keeping actual Irish traditions alive. What right do I have to criticise her? What right do I even have (this is how deep this complex of mine runs) to argue with her about any subject that touches upon traditionalism, identity, etc?
It even comes down to quite small things. It's borne upon me more and more that the kitchen is the room where a huge amount of national, regional and family traditions are kept alive. But I can't cook, except very simple things, and my knowledge of cuisine is incredibly limited. Not only that, but for years I was very dismissive of cookery books, cookery shows, and conversations about food-- something I keenly regret now. That's a fairly small thing because I could doubtless change it easily enough. (Although my low self-esteem means I always assume everything will be much harder for me.)
Another way this self-doubt afflicts me is when it comes to my attitude to Catholic Ireland.
My nostalgia for Catholic Ireland, and the Irish Catholic tradition, deepens all the time. If I write another book, my plan is to make it a celebration of Irish Catholicism. (I love it when books have the word "celebration" in the title-- ironically, they are often cookery books.) In fact, the sense of duty I feel to the memory of Catholic Ireland becomes painful at times, when I read some article or see some old clip that cuts me to the quick with the atmosphere of Catholic Ireland-- its gentleness, solidarity, appreciation for the spiritual and cultural, etc.
But again-- what if this is mere nostalgia on my part? What if it's simply an escape from the present world, or from my own inadequacies, and so forth? I love Catholic Ireland, but do I have the right to this love, do I have the right to its expression?
But again-- what if this is mere nostalgia on my part? What if it's simply an escape from the present world, or from my own inadequacies, and so forth? I love Catholic Ireland, but do I have the right to this love, do I have the right to its expression?
Here again, there is the same pattern. If anybody were to attack Catholic Ireland because it was backward, reactionary, lacking in compassion, etc. etc., I would pay little heed to such criticisms-- I would feel confident they were either untrue or simply missing the point.
But if anyone were to criticize my motives for loving Catholic Ireland, for looking back yearningly to it, then I would feel completely devastated. In fact, I anticipate such criticisms, and if I hear them made of others I apply them to myself.
As you can guess, my self-doubt is particularly oppressive recently, but it's always there.
I'm sorry for the sombre post, after the long delay. You can imagine how reflections like these might make me hesitate to join in public discussions-- though they are often overcome by my sheer hunger for the fray. I wish you all a happy Christmas-- God bless you-- and thanks to everyone who reads this blog, and who bought my book.
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
Monday, November 19, 2018
So Much for the Traditions Blog!
The traffic to my Traditions Traditions Traditions! blog has been very light indeed. So today I decided to junk it-- or rather, to leave it floating in cyberspace.
The lesson: every blog I've launched, except this one (and its predecessor Practicing to be Catholic) has been a bit of a flop.
I think I'm better off sticking to this blog, blogging wise. Any new ventures can be hosted here.
There are other reasons for the decision, though. I wanted to write quality articles about each tradition. Over the years I've built up a fund of Catholic knowledge, so I can draw on that whenever I write about Catholic topics. But when I started writing about garden gnomes or rubber ducks, I had to start from scratch, and come up with a blog post that wasn't just a rehash of every other online article on the subject. So it would take a lot of time.
Perhaps Catholic and Irish traditions are enough traditionalism for anybody? I have an article on the Chaplet of the Seven Sorrows of Mary coming out in the Christmas issue of Annals Australasia, a magazine for which I've often written in the past. This is a solid Catholic tradition I've added to my daily routine over the last few months. The magazine is worth subscribing to anyway-- you don't have to be in Australia! I may write something about it here, too, in the not-too-distant future.
The lesson: every blog I've launched, except this one (and its predecessor Practicing to be Catholic) has been a bit of a flop.
I think I'm better off sticking to this blog, blogging wise. Any new ventures can be hosted here.
There are other reasons for the decision, though. I wanted to write quality articles about each tradition. Over the years I've built up a fund of Catholic knowledge, so I can draw on that whenever I write about Catholic topics. But when I started writing about garden gnomes or rubber ducks, I had to start from scratch, and come up with a blog post that wasn't just a rehash of every other online article on the subject. So it would take a lot of time.
Perhaps Catholic and Irish traditions are enough traditionalism for anybody? I have an article on the Chaplet of the Seven Sorrows of Mary coming out in the Christmas issue of Annals Australasia, a magazine for which I've often written in the past. This is a solid Catholic tradition I've added to my daily routine over the last few months. The magazine is worth subscribing to anyway-- you don't have to be in Australia! I may write something about it here, too, in the not-too-distant future.
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