John Waters and The Addiction to the Reactionaries Type Blues
Sep 10th, 2007 by Donagh
Reading the writings of reactionary columnists is habit forming. In fact, its highly addictive. When you think about your dirty little habit you hate yourself, but you can’t help the sick pleasure it gives. The shitty need is too deep in your bones and finally you have to admit that you’re an addict.
So, with fingers shaking, you pick up the Irish Times of a Monday and read John Waters’ column (sub req). Once his crap enters your brain you can relax, knowing that its going to be bad, very bad, which is just what you need, right?
John Waters is talking about suicide again and this time its very bad indeed. Time (or impatience) does not allow me to go on at great length about how bad, and even down right dangerous the article is. I had thought about delving in to dismember it, but WorldbyStorm has done this already (and much better than I could), when Waters tried to write on the subject in a previous column back in August.
Waters’ argument can be drawn up thus: Western (and more specifically Irish) society is abandoning its core religious values in favour of more sexy secular ones. This jettisoning leads to the elimination of the eternal belief that God created everything, which leads inevitably to nihilism, as the ‘dominant culture’ forces people to see themselves merely as blimps on ‘the radar of time’ who will soon ‘be gone without trace’. This is what is making more people suicidal. However, its more of a male problem than a female one:
“Men feel this more acutely because women have a natural working hypothesis of their existences that men, for ideological reasons, are no longer permitted. Women bear children. Men donate sperm and then turn around to a culture intent upon questioning their humanity in every conceivable way.”
Jinkies!
In general, Waters is not worth arguing with. But his use of suicide to make his case that ‘Ireland is going to hell in a doily lined handbasket’ is actually offensive. It’s insensitive to those who suffer from depression, a condition he doesn’t even attempt to respond to intelligently, and with his agenda driven drivel, hurtful to the families and friends of those who have fallen victim to suicide.
Or am I being too oversensitive? How can his arguments be offensive if he’s not taken that seriously? Am I giving Waters too much credit? Perhaps he is just there, plugging away at our need for spiritual values, to ‘balance out’ the thoroughly fashionable liberal opinion of the typical Irish Times reader? A release valve of sorts, to help ease the pressure on an older generation during a period of rapid change? But if that is the case, why was he trotted out on the Late Late Show in the run up to the election to offer his opinion? It was almost as if he had a sign ‘Leading Irish Thinker’ hanging around his neck.
However, there is one aspect of today’s column that I think is worth mentioning. The last time Waters decided to write on the topic of depression he felt he needed a ‘scientific’ authority to back up his argument, you know someone with Dr. in front of their name. The last time it was Dr. Theodore Dalrymple, someone who had worked ‘as psychiatrist in British prisons and mental institutions’. It also turns out that Dalrymple, aka Anthony Daniels is a reactionary columnist himself, having written many times on a similar subject for the Spectator.
As Crocodile puts it in one of the comments added to WbS’ article:
“[Dalrymple] weekly message was that the underclass among whom he worked had abdicated all responsibility for its own actions. Every prisoner claimed to be innocent because the culture of victimhood was so deep-seated that there was no room for guilt or even self-examination Their crimes had no motives because they were simply fulfilling their needs for drink, drugs etc - needs that ’society’ had created and, incomprehensibly, required them to work to satisfy. To ascribe ‘motives’ would be to credit them with too great a degree of free will. Of course all this is deeply reactionary and indicates a fairly bleak, Hobbesian view of human nature.”
So now Water is at it again, except this time he looked no further than the letters page of the Irish Times. Waters says:
“It was liberating, then, to read on last Tuesday’s letters page the succinct and cogent analysis of Dr Desmond Fennell. The increase in Irish suicide statistics since the 1960s, he argued, has to do not with mental illness but with “a steep increase in the perception of life as senseless”. In the past half-century, we have jettisoned the time-tested framework of sense, based on the principles of Western civilisation, which previously provided a reasonable basis for human life. “The new collection of rules”, Dr Fennell wrote, “thrown together pell-mell and containing many contradictions, does not make sense. As such, it offends the deep human need for a life-framework that does this. So consciousness of this presented, senseless life offends, and a sane desire arises to annihilate consciousness of it”.”
In the interests of thorougness I’ve read this paragraph a few times and I still can’t make any sense of it. Maybe, as a kind of self protective reflex I don’t want to. However, the sentence “The increase in Irish suicide statistics since the 1960s…has to do not with mental illness but with a steep increase in the perception of life as senseless” stood out as being particularly bananas and that need kicked in again.
So I went back to the original letter to get a pure undiluted hit, whereupon I found this:
“Sensitive young people are particularly attentive to the framework of rules presented to them. Little wonder, then, that many of them, over the past half-century, have practised various methods of annihilating consciousness temporarily - through drugs or drunkenness or reckless sex, through motorised speed or disco dancing or mass raves or rock concerts, or by means of personal stereos plugging ears and removing minds. And increasing numbers of them have opted for annihilating consciousness permanently.”
If you’re an addict of this stuff, the full letter is the equivalent of freebasing crack cocaine. Its so pure that it forces the veins in your temple to throb as you read.
But the good (non medical) doctor knows how to get the non-addict hooked. Give them a free taster, and then lead them to the good stuff. At the end of the letter Desmond Fennell says:
“In the current issue of the magazine Ireland’s Eye, I have dealt with this matter more amply.”
Excuse me, I think I need to take a shower.
Great post about a really really unpleasant article.
You know you need to get out more when you read an article in the morning and think: “Worldbystorm is gonna be sooooo pissed”…
Yes, yes indeed…
Thanks, WorldbyStorm. I don’t think I’ve read such garbage in a long time, but I find it particularly unpleasant that he seems to have adopted this issue. Madam should be chastened for publishing it.
You should Pidge, you should, its always good to get out more. But WbS did such a good job of lashing his nonsense last time that I don’t blame for thinking that. Anyway, I’m sure your reaction was “Oh, My God, what an asshole” first and then swiftly followed by “WorldbyStorm is gonna be soooo pissed…”
I’ve told you before Donagh - stop reading stuff that does your head in. Waters is to the literate public as Dunphy is to football fans - a wilful contrarian.
That said, this is one of my bugbears - religious people who are convinced that those of us without the guiding hand of a religious belief system have no moral compass. It’s a lazy arrogance you see all the time - if you don’t believe, however nominally, in a God, then must you have no direction, no sense of right and wrong. Grrrr.
Yes, you’re right, I remember now. Don’t read them. Right, got it.
if you don’t believe, however nominally, in a God, then must you have no direction, no sense of right and wrong.
And are more likely to top yourself. As I said, its insulting to everyone.
How’s California, by the way.
California was great. I’m in Oregon right now. It’s great too.
I clicked on that Ireland’s Eye.com link and found nothing to do with your discussion. Please advise.
Ah, I should have checked the link more thoroughly, but it seems that the real Ireland’s Eye currently doesn’t have an online presence. Considering its retrospective worldview, that’s not too surprising. However, I did link to a Des Fennell essay and it seems that, in order to write the letter he took text verbatum from it. Scanning it now I’ve just come across this paragraph:
“Sensitive young people, on the threshold of life, are particularly attentive to the framework of rules presented to them. Little wonder then that many of them, over the past half-century, have found and practised various methods of annihilating consciousness. Recurrently, for such periods as their work or study allows, they do so through drugs or drunkenness or reckless sex, through motorised speed or disco dancing or mass raves or rock concerts; or, ubiquitously, by means of personal stereos plugging ears and removing minds. Or else, increasingly, as we have seen in Ireland during these last forty years, they opt for annihilating consciousness permanently; if female, often irresolutely and unsuccessfully, if male, usually with full resolution and success.”
Which are the exact same words used in the passage from the letter I quoted. You can read the full essay here if you like.
Many thanks for that link. An essay with disturbing conclusions. But if drugs, sex, rock ‘n roll, fast cars, raves and other youthful diversions are not attempts to ‘annihilate consciousness’ then they must be plain good fun, right? But pretty expensive I’d think. Tickets to rock concerts are exorbitant, and make millionaires of some organisers and stars. The burgeoning youth culture is increasingly expensive for parents who have to hand over pocket money to their pre-employment offspring.
Er, what accounts for the alarming rise in Irish suicide rates, specially among lads?
An Irish friend in China has put me on to this at the point where Charlie, after reading the essay on my website - the same essay that is being published in Ireland’s Eye - asks what has caused the tenfold increase in suicide in Ireland since the 1960s, especially among lads? Well, I happen to believe that the explanation given in my essay is true - an increase in the perception of life as senseless for the very good reason that I outline. Leave aside the world-saving role for the Irish that I propose in the essay - that is a challenging Irish angle put in for an Irish readership. The point of the essay is its depiction of how the new set of rules-for-living that has replaced the old set throughout the West is chaotic, does make sense, and how a senseless framework for life offends human beings intolerably. But it offends males more than females because, generally speaking, males tend to assess the life presented to them with their minds, while females tend to do so with their feelings - hence the greater number of male suicides. But my essay is only incidentally about the suicide question - really it is about all the results for the West, present and future, of this contemporary senselessness - the disastrous decline in reproduction, the coming social chaos when the increase in money stops, etc.
Hi Charlie, One would consider the conclusions of the essay disturbing only if one were to accept without question the foundation upon which the argument was made, that somehow in the immediate post-war period ‘Western’ society (or as Desmond called them ‘Post-Western society’, a term that seems to be completely non-sensical) jettisoned its value system. This is a completely bogus claim, which is not supported by the evidence, but I’ll return to this in a minute
On the expense of rock concerts, what’s that got to do with the price of bread. Its shocking I know, but has little bearing on the apparent decline of Western civilisation.
Er, what accounts for the alarming rise in Irish suicide rates, specially among lads? Charlie, I don’t know, I don’t have a simple pat answer to that one. I could go on a length here about the possible causes which have been researched, some being environmental, societal, economic, biological or medical or are just down to personal circumstances. Unfortunately suicide rate amoung men are high internationally. Although there are many theories, some informed, some not, the reason remains a mystery.
It should be noted though that the reporting of suicide is still far from accurate and it was worse in previous decades. The attitude towards suicide is only beginning to change so by comparing the rate of suicide in the 60s and 70s to now presents a very inaccurate picture, as many suicides in the earlier decades were simply not reported.
On the possible causes of suicide I direct you towards the WHO website which has many informative articles like this one.
But what it doesn’t seem to depend on is the decline of religion, although the negative attitude towards suicide within a highly religious society does tend to reduce the number of suicides. To argue this fact I have to direct you towards an academic article which unfortunately isn’t available to the public. The abstract for Suicide and religiosity—Masaryk’s theory revisited, which examines the Irish situation says:
Desmond, thanks for responding, although I have to admit that I’m surprised that you did.
You say ‘the point of the essay is its depiction of how the new set of rules-for-living that has replaced the old set throughout the West is chaotic, does make sense, and how a senseless framework for life offends human beings intolerably’.
I reread your article and unfortunately its full of such generalisations that I can’t say whether I agree or disagree with it because I’m not sure of what point its making. You seem to be saying that the rise of liberal values in the post war period led to a sort of politcal correctness, which condemned old forms of personal conduct and led people to go all dolalay.
Is this the sort of political correctness that condemns sexism? If so, then condemn me because I find the statement ‘males tend to assess the life presented to them with their minds, while females tend to do so with their feelings’ completely sexist, so completely out-of-date and offensive to reason that I’m wondering why I’m responding to your comment at all.
Perhaps I’m only doing so because in order to research my points I came across Ronald Inglehart and his work with The World Value Survey. Using the data from the WVS, which gathers information on values and beliefs across eighty societies worldwide to monitor how values change in different parts of the world.
In this book Modernisation, cultural change and the persistence of traditional values, it shows that contrary to your central thesis traditional values in the West have in many cases persisted. But considering that he is working using a complicated set of data the conclusions are considerably more elaborate:
But more recently, 2004 to be precise, he brought out a book called Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide, which provides an analysis of values worldwide.
From the introduction:
Rather than going on about senselessness as a basis for your clearly reactionary views, you should read Inglehart work and base your theories on the evidence.
Donagh, with respect, ‘reactionary’ like ‘fascist’ is a word
which people use of other people to mean simply ‘I disagree with you but cannot spell out the reasons why.’
It means nothing in itself. Try doing without it.
2. In my essay I am not concerned with the rest of the world, only with the West.
3. I say that the hierarchical set of rules of western (European) civilisation has been replaced in the West, not entirely, but largely, by a chaotic, unorganised collection of ad hoc rules. I give a varied sample selection of the reigning don’ts, a sample of the do’s - those that apply to young married women - and a fair sample of what I call the ‘virtual do-as-you-likes’. You will recognise that these rules exist and that they are preached every day by the Correctorate, largely through the mass media. (You add a current ‘don’t’ that I omittted - ‘DON’T think or say that the sexes tend to behave differently in some respects, for that’s the sin of sexism’ and you show that you obey this and ignore the evidence of observation and experience.)
Anyhow I say that this collection of rules does not add up to sense, does not make sense as a framework for living, as the rules of western civilisation - and the rules of every other civilisation - did for their respective communities of adherents. Instead this ‘postwestern’ or ‘post-European’ collection of rules presents senselessness to the human beings (contemporary westerners) who are confronted by them, and senselessness is intolerably offensive to human beings endowed as they are with minds and feelings requiring to see sense in life. I explain how the resulting pain is buried for many westerners through the consumerist system etc, but insofar as people do not succeed in doing this - many young people especially, but also people of all ages in moments of clear vision - they try to escape from the awful sight of senselessness by annihilating consciousness temporarily or permanently, and they lose the will to reproduce at a replacement rate - to have enough children - as your friend Inglehart says - so that the white western population is set to diminish in the years ahead of us.
All that is said clearly in my essay at www.desmondfennell.com, which is not driven by any ideology, as you seem to be driven, but simply by observation of what is going on around me and by experience and knowledge of how human beings are.
Certainly contest what I say if you feel I am wrong in any respect, but then do so with rational arguments, not by using mere booh-words such as ‘reactionary’ or by charging me with being ‘politically incorrect’ (disobeying the Correctorate) as if that mattered a damn to any free-minded human being.
Wow, what did I let myself in for when I asked a simple question about the sharp rise in suicide among youngish lads around Ireland!? I’m going to have to click on all them sources Donagh gives and really mug up this problem. And it’s a heart rending problem, as I’ve talked to people who’ve lost friends from schooldays to sudden unexplained acts of suicide.
Won’t say anything about Desmond Fennell and yourself, it’s a matter between the two of you. But thanks for the detailed answer. Bye and hope we can all buy cheaper tickets to rock concerts.
Desmond, I’m sorry if my reply appeared bad tempered or disrespectful. That was not my intention. However, while I agree that the word ‘reactionary’ is part of a certain political argot, I also think I used it accurately. After all, it’s a term with a precedence and history, which, from what I know, is used as shorthand for someone who is trying to argue for a return to an old order. Looking up wikipedia now I see that it describes the exact context in which I chose to use the term:
“Later on in the early 20th century, the term also came to describe those favouring a stronger role of the Catholic Church in society, as well as - pejoratively - the diverse groups and individuals criticizing certain aspects of ideologies like liberalism, democratic socialism, secularism, and other leftist ideologies.”
While I have no idea what you feel about the role of the Catholic Church in society I think your timeline, that there has been some sort of declined in Europe since the 1960s, matches a similar historical decline in the influence of the Catholic Church during a similar period.
You say I should engage with your arguments using reason rather than boo-words. Well, I don’t mean to be rude but I would if I thought it were possible. Unfortunately, I don’t understand what you are talking about. I understand the complaint about the rise of liberalism or liberalist thought in Western society. There is some historical basis for this. However, you describe it in very simplistic terms (in fact, your use of history generally is very slipshod).
But I simply do not understand this stuff about rules being replaced with other ad-hoc rules, the rise of ’senselessness’ or the ‘annihilating consciousness’. I guess what you are trying to do is analyse how Europe has changed in last 50 years.
But I suspect you are not being entirely honest about it. I say this because you seem to arrive at particular conclusions, especially the one about the reason for the increases in male suicide in Ireland, without any credible proof. The reason I highlighted Inglehart is principally because he is someone who is conducting a similar survey of how societies change (including a detailed look at changes in Europe) but does so in a logical, informed, empirically sound, verifyable way. He has extensive references to established and new data; he surveys the large amount of literature already written on the topic; he describes and justifies the methods he uses to establish his conclusions and he does all this in a coherent and transparent manner.
Finally. Suicide is a complicated issue that must be dealt with in an informed and intelligent way by Government. It is an increasing problem, but the reasons for this are still not known. It can be reduced, however, if there’s a willingness to tackle it head on and to adequately provide the resources for better social and psychiatric services. Your ‘annihilating consciousness’ concept, I would argue, hinders rather than helps that happening.
There’s a line from Milan Kindera (Risibles Amours, 1984) where he talks about engaging with ridiculous arguments.
“If you meet a madman who says that he is a fish and that we are all fishes, do you take off your clothes to show him that you do not have fins?”
Fennell argues that Western civilisation was “Constructed from around the year 1000 in western Europe by Latin, Germanic and Celtic Christians, out of values and rules that had been tried and sifted for centuries previously, that civilisation had crossed the Atlantic and other seas and had lasted almost a thousand years. It ended when the West’s democratic rulers led by those of the USA, and in close collaboration with business corporations, rejected most of the civilisation’s core and introduced new rules in place of the rejected ones.” See http://www.desmondfennell.com/html/essay.htm
So. Western civilisation solidified around the year 1000, and was then sustained for a further 1,000 years, before ending in the last 40 or so years. This civilisation solidified in a pre-industrial, pre-enlightenmnet, pre-medical, and pre-scientific, world, was then somehow sustained and UNAFFECTED by 17th century, 18th century, 19th century revolutions in philosophy, medicine, art, literatire, industry, politics, human rights, etc, but only really AFFECTED in the last 40 years, with the rise of the “New Deal”?
Poppycock. Absolute poppycock. This is flat-earth stuff. and John Waters ENDORSES this guy?
One more quote, on how the 1,000 year-old western civilisation that was UNTOUCHED by any of the changes in 16-19th century, was finally brought down.
“The rulers did this in two ways. President Truman’s method in 1945, when he justified the nuclear incineration of two Japanese cities, was unique. Papally, as it were, and with the acquiescence of the West’s other rulers, he declared legitimate, given good intentions, the indiscriminate massacre of human beings. The standard method used by the rulers to establish the new norms was to endorse and enforce, with an eye to their own interests, the post-European rules that were being preached by late arrivals on the western scene: the ‘new’ or fundamentalist liberals.”
Oh wait. I can’t stop there. another quote from the “succinct and cogent analysis of Dr Desmond Fennell.” (John Water’s view of the man.)
“From the 1960s the American state began endorsing many of these new rules through Supreme Court rulings, by federal laws, and administratively. The teachers of the new correctness came to function as a sort of secular state church, which for convenience we can call the Correctorate. As often before in history, it was a case of political power and a new idealist vision working together towards their distinct objectives. Rulers who wish to increase their power and wealth finding substantial common cause with innovative idealists who want to render human life as they believe it ought to be. The rulers empowering themselves by selectively supporting the idealists’ programme, while the latter celebrate them as enlightened and virtuous rulers. The idealists ending up powerful in a semblance of their envisioned life that has been tailored to suit the rulers’ interests.”
Remember, the Enlightenment, birth of modern medicine, birth of science - all of these had NO effect on the civilisation created in the year 1000. The biggie was this, the american Supreme Court in the 1960s.
John Waters, really, with arguments like these, who needs analysis?
[…] that they are the ‘world’s foremost authority’, to quote Tony Soprano. They’re a bit like Desmond Fennell […]
Well, of course, that’s what I meant to say:)
Jouanlists can lose a lot and still keep the public’s faith in them - I mean, take Eamon Dunphy for example - but, when you lose credibility, that’s it. Scanning over your own paper’s letters page to find someone to back up your argument is simply not a credible way to back up an argument. Once you’ve done that and the author of said letter turns out to have absolute poppycock behind him, well, that’s you up opinion creek without a paddle.
John Waters: as much credibility as an Irish Times letter writer. But, of course, vastly more paid. A bit like www.myhomes,ie actually.
Donagh, thanks for outlining your view calmly. Neither my essay nor anything i said here recommends - how nonsensical! - a return to the past. Read it again and you will see that from the start and again at the end, I say the only way to overcome the present Western senselessness is to create a NEW, post-European civilisation i.e. a new system of rules-to-live-by THAT MAKES SENSE. So the word ‘reactionary’ - i.e. advocating a return to the past - is not applicable. (Incidentally, you seem obsessed with the Catholic Church, which I do not even mention. When I talk about the rules of Western civilisation I am talking about the rules of behaviour generally subscribed to by rulers and ruled in the West up to World War II or thereabouts.
Conor, you are right that during the thousand years of
Western civilisation some ancillary - circumstantial - rules of behaviour subscribed to by rulers and ruled did change, but the essential rules - the core rules - were
maintained (in religious or secular form) until the middle of the last century. In that sense, Western civilisation remained intact. Everyone knows that from the approval of massacre in 1945 to all the rules that changed from the 60s on, there has been a vast change of the dominant rules governing most aspects of life. About that there can be no dispute. Western civilisation has been decried by our new teachers - whom I call the Correctorate - as an anti-human and oppressive system full of injustices. Hence all the new supposedly liberating and just rules.
Final note: it is not necessarily a bad thing that a civilisation ends - many civilisations have ended and been replaced by new civilisations. That’s history. What is bad is that,in the intervening period of chaotic rules, senselessness reigns and people suffer from this in various ways, including by killing themselves and others in growing numbers and by losing the will to reproduce their population.
Why has suicide increased tenfold since the 1960s? Obviously something has caused this, something CAUSATIVE of suicide has increased tenfold.
I have identified that growing cause, and no amount of psychiatric services willl make this increasingly senselesss Western life sense-providing. Only a new civilisation will do that.
The essential rules did not stay the same. That’s just daft. you’re talking about a feudal system in Europe in the year 1000. how is that in any way comparable to JUST before the new deal in 1930s America? I suppose the French revolution was just an extension of the feudal system. and I suppose Capitalism was just an extension of the feudal system until the new deal came along as well.
how about 18th century mercantilism - essentially the same as feudal Europe?
how about the rise of the nation-state, essentially the same as Europe, 1000AD?
Desmond, you’re talking daft.
Now. No problem about that, as such. This is the web after all. But, you’re making points about suicide and are trying to bring history into your argument, and all you’re doing is making a pig’s ear of it because you simply do not know what you are talking about when it comes to history.
you’re going to have to find something else to base your theories on, ‘cos history aint doing it for you.
Oh. Can you tell me what the core rules were in the year 1,000AD that remained essentially the same? and I’m talking rules here, Desmond, not phrases like “we all know” and “essential rules” and “core rules” and “everyone knows that”. you know, name the rules that were around in the year 1,000AD that can easily be applied to, say, 1922.
And also, the ancillary, circumstantial, changes that you say occurred to them over 1,000 years?
you know. Facts.
Conor, here are some of the rules that held for rulers and ruled from around 1100 until 1922. The community shall worship, obey, and seek the aid of, the Christian God. Indiscriminate massacre, especially of women and children, is banned. The young shall honour and obey the old. Reproduction shall take place through a marriage of a man with a woman, which shall be a lifelong commitment. Men shall work to support women and children while women shall care for children and the home. A female shall not give birth outside marriage. Matters of royal succession occasionally excepted, men shall rule women and women shall have fewer legal rights than men. Men shall honour women by courteous behaviour and shall protect them and children from assault. Homosexuality is an unnatural vice. Pornography is an abomination and shall be forbidden publication or circulation. Children shall be kept innocent of sex. Treaties between rulers shall be faithfully observed. The unborn shall not be aborted. The rich shall give material assistance to the poor. Business contracts shall be kept. An educated man shall know Latin. And so on.
“Pornography is an abomination and shall be forbidden publication.” Published by who? Are you telling me there was a publication industry, as we know it, in 1100AD, for which rules around pornography existed? Where are you getting this stuff from?
“The unborn shall not be aborted.” In 1100? Again, you’re just making this stuff up. you’re using 20th century concepts here.
“Men shall work to support women and children while women shall care for children and the home” Same question. And, what documents are you talking about that had these rules in them?
you have not cited your sources. And, an educated argument shall cite its sources.
Also, are you seriously arguing that the emasculation of your phrases, the ones you’ve listed here, has led to a rise in suicide? Is this what John Waters means by your “succinct and cogent analysis”?
and so on.
I personally put the modern increase in suicide in the West down to the abolition of slavery. After all, man can only arrive at the conclusion that life is not worth living when he knows that life could, under certain conditions, be worth living. Back when people were miserable 24×7, they were less likely to kill themselves. So perhaps we should ask ‘The Correctorate’ to re-introduce slavery. For the laugh.
The questions with which this discussion began remain.
1. Suicide has increased tenfold in Ireland since the 1960s. What is the MAIN factor leading to the suicides now occurring in Ireland?
2. Why has that causative factor increased tenfold since the 1960s?
3. Why are the great majority of suicides by males?
In my essay, I give very incidentally - the essay is not about suicide - answers to 1. and 2.
To 1, the senseless framework for living which is presented by the new and currently dominant rules for living (these, like all such rules, are made up of dos, don’ts and do-as-you-likes).
To 2, because that presented senselessness has been increasing since the 1960s and hitting new generations head on.
As to question 3, I now add the answer ‘because men tend to assess the life presented to them predominantly with their minds (hence being more offended by the lack of sense), while women tend to assess it predominantly with their feelings (a different method of assessment).
I have not yet encountered better answers to questions 1,2 and 3, but would be interested to encounter them.
Some possible alternative answers:
1) [i] Reported[/i] suicide has increased tenfold in ireland since the 1960s - it is simply impossible to know how many suicides were misreported due to the severe social and religious stigma attached.
2) Logic, Desmond; why does there have to be a MAIN factor? it’s just as possible that many different - related, unrelated or additive - factors may be involved (if there is an actual increase in suicides rather than in reported suicides) - one effect does not automatically presuppose one cause. And even if there is a main cause, that main factor does not need to have increased in exact step with the effect; other causes could have contributed more.
3)It is undeniably true that men commit suicide - ’successfully’ - in much greater numbers than women; what doesn’t follow is that need be an ontological explanation - one that goes men do X because men (’naturally’ ‘ontologically’) are Y. It is just as possible that an explanation of the order men do X because men are expected/ conditioned to be Y could work. I would suggest tentatively that the disjunct between competing and incommensurate ideas of the good life, allied with the impossibility of their achievement presented by the machinery of global capital thrusts people into a mode of isolated, mistrustful competition and breaks bonds of familial, generational, local and class solidarity and that men are more susceptible to this because of expectations about maleness that linger from the sort of social order you describe. (and because women seem to be able to communicate better - again not necessarily an ontological fact about women, but true of women as social constructs)
I’m not suggesting I’m right; but your argument rests on logic of the kind that goes; A (of which I disapprove) happened at time T1; B (malign social fact) happens at time T2; therefore A causes B. (so does mine, actually, but perhaps with a little more plausability based on what we know of the world rather that what we hope for it)
Desmond, you base your answers on a stunningly naive approach to history.
Historians do not just take words from documents a thousand years ago and link them to words today. history and meaning are all about context. you are talking about a cosmology 1,000 years ago, which you then say - apart from some “ancillary” and “circumstantial” changes, remained the same. you even date when the breakdown in these rules occured, 1922.
That means, no changes in concepts of time, distance, place, community, law, religion, belief, family, politics, etc, even though the languages used 1,000 years ago are gone. We do not speak the same languages today, nor do we have the same terms of references (or signifiers/signified) in order to arrive at meaning.
We do not see distance the same way. We do not see simple thoughts like “the world” or “village” the same way. And you think you can use our words like pornography and unborn and educated about the year 1,000AD?
you are basing your arguments on the belief that meaning stays the same, even though not entire languages have died and new ones arisen, with new grammars and new concepts.
Language is not just used to express philosophical concepts - there are philosophical concepts hot-wired into the very structure of language itself.
And yet, in your argument, none of this affects meaning, because you’re got some (as yet unnamed documents) which you say show 1,000 years of frozen meaning - broken only by 1922 and the rise of the “new deal” in America.
The following quote is from your own essay.
“In a process that began at the end of World War II, and that continued for the rest of the twentieth century, the West effectively rejected many essential rules of European ( alias western) civilisation and thus its defining core. Constructed from around the year 1000 in western Europe by Latin, Germanic and Celtic Christians, out of values and rules that had been tried and sifted for centuries previously, that civilisation had crossed the Atlantic and other seas and had lasted almost a thousand years. It ended when the West’s democratic rulers led by those of the USA, and in close collaboration with business corporations, rejected most of the civilisation’s core and introduced new rules in place of the rejected ones.”
It is not a case of your methodology being flawed, it is altogether entirely useless, because you have no idea of the importance of context to credible historical research.
and yet, you then take this stunningly naive approach to historical research and use it to explain suicide in Ireland?
Simply terrible.
Desmond, in your comment to me you say “When I talk about the rules of Western civilisation I am talking about the rules of behaviour generally subscribed to by rulers and ruled in the West up to World War II or thereabouts.”
And the quote provided by Conor also mentions this crux incident occurring around the time of World War II.
“In a process that began at the end of World War II, and that continued for the rest of the twentieth century, the West effectively rejected many essential rules of European ( alias western) civilisation and thus its defining core.
At the beginning of your essay you quote yourself when you say:
“The contemporary West is built, not on Auschwitz and Treblinka to which we have said ‘No’, but on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to which we have said ‘Yes.’
The Postwestern Condition: Between Chaos and Civilisation, p. 79”
And again, early on in your essay you say:
“Faced with the situation brought about by the demolition of that civilisation on both sides of the Atlantic during the last sixty odd years, and the pressing need of westerners for an equivalent replacement, our comparative advantage is evident.”
Is it possible to divine from this that you believe that the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki precipitated the ‘demolition of that civilisation’?
If so, why didn’t you say so at the beginning? If it was a simple before and after situation we wouldn’t have needed all this who-ha.
Desmond you remind me of the character De Selby who featured as the thinker of preposterous philosophies in Flann O’Brien’s Third Policeman. I’m very reluctant to speculate where you were when you wrote the essay (I don’t want to make it personal, we are after all talking about ideas and an undisciplined use of history) but I’d like to think that you wrote it in the pub.
I say that because it would allow me to expound the following logical argument, also taken from Flann O’Brien. Desmond, if you think (without developing the argument I might add) that civilization was simply and cleanly demolished with the dropping of the bombs on Japan at the end of World War II then your syllogism is fallacious, based as it on a licensed premises.
Which may be facetious, but at least it isn’t as ridiculous as your essay.
I am grateful to those contributors (not all of them reading carefully what I actually wrote) who have scrutinised my website essay for faults. I’m working on defects I had myself noticed. After it appeared in July, six men (only men, I notice, contributing also to this blog!) responded and I responded to them. I put these exchanges together in a document which I circulated to the participants. It may interest some of you to read this – it follows. It is important to remember that true (original) thoughts about the world can be thought in Ireland. Too many Irish people – victims of our intellectually colonised history – still believe, provincially, that true thoughts about the world can be thought only in foreign power centres, and that our role is merely to acquiesce, comment or quote.
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Exchanges July 2007
Martin writes:
‘Ireland’s Call’ articulates many of the feelings and reactions that I have towards Ireland, western Europe and America. Locally in my own home town, Derry, the latest manifestation of the environment caused by the consumerist society is the dramatic rise in suicides amongst young men. Combine that with the dramatic rise in alcohol related health problems, particularly amongst women of all ages and you can see a day when the public health bodies will not be able to cope with a dysfunctional society. Eventually the carers themselves will succumb to sickness.
I was curious as to whether you thought the emergence of Ireland as a
‘tabula rasa’ is actually a good thing. I believe you see it as an
opportunity for a new start but I feel personally uncomfortable that we
can jettison a ‘past’ so rich in literature, music, heroism and religion
- as these and many other areas of historic Irishness are what give many
of us an identity, something which we should not underestimate.
In the light of the senselessness I see around me I find myself
gravitating more and more to the idea of Christianity (Catholicism in my
case) as the most perfect and compassionate structure and set of
guidelines available - of course many evil people have corrupted the
rules of Christianity and continue to do so, but for me I have yet to
see a secular set of guidelines that can compare. This is not a
fashionable idea in Ireland or western Europe but Christianity will
never be fashionable in a consumerist society as it preaches self
sacrifice over self gratification.
Finally I would like to put forward the idea that perhaps there is an
optimum time or optimum state of affairs which mankind or society could
consider residing in. Like the law of diminishing returns in economics,
there might well be a time when the correct mix of consumerism,
socialism and religion etc. combines to produce a stable, generally
contented and spiritual people and that we don’t always have to progress
maniacally in science, technology, wealth and leisure. Maybe that point
was reached in the post world war society of the 1950s - who knows for
sure. But it is worth considering.
DF replies:
I seized on that initial ‘we’ve thrown away everything, hurray’ quote from Bob Quinn -
which was actually intended by him as bitter irony - to engage in a wake-up experiment in thinking. No, I do not think that the rejection of our past and cultural
heritage is a good thing, however much it may be a fact. Until the early 1990s I was devoted to the completion of the Irish Revolution in the sense of intellectual self-determination and cultural self-shaping. However, the essay is mainly a summary of what I have discovered about the present condition of the West in ten years thinking which began with a breakthrough in Seattle in 1995.
I am a believing Catholic, but my essay leaves open what content the
recivilising of the West will have. I say explicitly that its new, sense-giving hierarchy
of rules must draw on some rules of western (essentially Christian) civilisation,
as well as on some elements of the current mish-mash. What I omitted to say, and
may yet put in, is that any such effort will inevitably run up against -
especially in Europe - a bid by Islam to provide the new framework.
What you say in your last paragraph is an interesting speculation. After
all, Chinese civilisation achieved something like the self-restrained
stability you speak of for a couple of thousand years. Our present western
condition cannot because it is drunk on the limitless pursuit of collective
and individual power – God-like power? - through a combination of increasing wealth
and advancing technology. The Chinese were content to live ‘under Heaven’.
Bill writes (from the USA)
Just finished ‘Ireland’s Call’ and find much in it spot on, although I think you are too hopeful on who and how might come to recivilize the West. I think Mark Steyn, (America Alone) and writers like Victor David Hanson (Nuclear Iran?) and Daniel Johnson, (Contra Iran), as well as thinkers such as Bernard Lewis, perceive presciently the Islamification of Europe particularly and North America secondarily.
Islam has all the comprehensive core hierarchical values which you correctly discern as the glue which provides sense and cohesiveness for a civilization ; it has the adherents, the conversion rate and it has the world-wide birthrate which you correctly discern as the suicide pill all of the European nations (and, to only a slightly lesser extent, North America). It has the militant detestation and disdain for the West’s secular mish-mash cobweb of contradictory values which you point out. I think you are the first I’ve read who diagnosed the falling (failing, non-reproducing) birthrate in the West as being due more to a confusion about core values than to a rejection of historical values in favor of the drift of consumerism, and I think you may be on to something by portraying the ennui in that light. I had been thinking about it in terms of self-absorption, selfishness, self-centeredness and a neo-pagan and flabby materialism.
The West is going to have to generate quickly and soon a set of the core, hierarchical values you reference in order to compete ideologically with the Islamists. I don’t personally think the Ipod culture can reinvent itself in time to avoid sharia becoming the dominant set of rules in tomorrow’s Europe.
DF – while he rewrites the last three pars of the website essay to make express references to possible roles of Islam, Christianity or new creeds in recivilising the West - replies:
‘Ireland’s Call’ is an attempt – in the context of my investigation of the western world since Seattle – to ‘bring it all home’ by relating it in some way, even if visionary or only semi-serious, to Ireland as it is now. I take note of what you say about Islam.
The title is the title of a song sung/played at international rugby matches when an ‘Ireland’ team composed of Northern Ireland and Republic players is playing some other country. It is sung/played instead of the British or the Irish national anthem. A banal piece of music with a banal text, it is generally held in abhorrence. So by using ‘Ireland’s Call’ as my essay title, I am giving the familiar words a new content.
Tim writes:
Was reading that provocative article. One cannot but notice an ongoing disintegration of the cultural and societal entity, “nationalist Ireland” as time goes by. You notice it with the young women from privileged addresses speaking to you unselfconsciously in American accents, the now almost universal practice of what used be called “soccer” being called “football”, the shopping trips to New York for Xmas. There is a new emerging entity in internet terms called “the UK and Ireland”.
The sense of history is disjointed and being massaged and manipulated. One sees this clearly in how the story of the First World War is being treated by the state and by mainstream historians. People are also history-wise less well educated. Basically, there is a process of further absorption into the Anglo-American world going on. How far this will go only time will tell. Will the result in the end be more Anglo or more American, or more made of something else, only time will tell.
There is a prevailing delusion (from which some dissent) that this state has become a “normal European country” (or NEC for short). There is EU membership, full employment, great affluence, much immigration and much more. But the economic miracle has to do with multinational companies (mostly American) using this state as a tax haven. They provide 90 percent of exports. Indigenous industry is not well developed, with some noteworthy exceptions… This is not a developed economy in the conventional mould. Ireland, we are told, is the most “globalised” country in the world!
On the back of the new multinational generated prosperity a massive traditional Fianna Fáil boom was generated. Such a boom is characterised by a building boom, matched with increased public spending and an expansion of public service employment, rather like the 1977-1980 boom. Now the orgy of property speculation is turning into a property slump as these things do eventually. As the building boom subsides government revenues will contract severely. There is the longer term threat from the drive towards EU tax harmonisation.
The Irish have tried to escape into a series of delusions about having become an NEC. As these will come unstuck, they will be forced to confront the questions they have been avoiding, the questions Irish nationalism attempted to answer at various earlier times, questions of identity, of governance, of various political relationships, of the meaning of history, of justice, of economic development.
DF replies:
Let me say straight away that the meat and point of that essay is its account of how it is with the western world and why - the summing up of ten years thought and observation since my breakthrough in Seattle. But to ‘bring it all properly home’ I have started and finished with that provocative, attention-catching Irish angle which is pure speculation, an exercise in speculative rhetoric.
When you write ‘One cannot but notice an ongoing disintegration of the cultural and societal entity, “nationalist Ireland”‘, perhaps you see the point of my undermining those who are promoting this disintegration by joining with Bob Quinn in saying ‘Bang! So we have got rid of all that awful Irish stuff. What do we do now?’ It leaves them speechless because their minds are only of the imitative and destructive kind, incapable of intellectual or indeed creative enterprise..
The aim of the Irish Revolution was to make Ireland a Normal European Country in terms of the 1920s. (See my Corkery epigraph to the ‘About Behaving Normally’ essay.) That would have meant an Irish-speaking Ireland, with elite schools where young men were very well educated to serve the Irish state, a cafe society in the capital city where the specific intellectual discourse and debate of Ireland was determined and disseminated through home-published journals and books, universities that dealt learnedly with the world from ancient Egypt on and that had departments of Asian and African studies, a state administrative structure taking account of the native historical divisions of the country, a foreign policy involving associations and alliances with nations of similar historical/cultural background and experience, etc. It can be argued that our Revolution came too late for that enterprise to succeed - given the extreme degree of our colonisation and developments in Europe since World War II.
Tim writes again:
There is more cultural continuity than one might at first appreciate.
Despite drastic change there is much that survives in Ireland as
before, if in a different form. There is the confusion about identity …
There is the (often comic) political culture of clientelism…
Associated with clientilism is a widespread notion that government
contracts, jobs etc., are secured with “pull”, the possession of
some of which is of great importance.
There is the concern with the otherworld, the spiritual, the religious
in a loose sense despite the withdrawal of the exclusive franchise
enjoyed by a multinational Rome based organisation. There is
widespread interest, (especially among females) in angels, spirits, God,
the unknown, in all generations, as far as I can see.
Irish provincialism seems to be undergoing a serious modification. In the early 1980s those young women from Dublin’s southside who now talk with American accents, spoke with something like a north of England working class accent – a fusion of a residual Dublin accent with an acquired “posh” accent and a flavour of television “soaps” like Coronation Street.
.
Ireland, has a problem of “mindlessness”, as you have referred
to it. This word covers a number of diverse phenomena, I would think. The
directionlessness of the disfunctional state, the pedantry of
discourse (for which I hold the Catholic Church partly responsible),
the lack of a real, well established ruling class, the lack of centres
of moral and ideological authority in society (which the Church once
provided) and, last but not least, sheer ignorance. However, considering
the degree of change undergone, people have coped rather well.
No, I do not expect this country to make a great contribution to the
development of civilization anytime soon; too mindless, too smug, too
pedantic, too “clueless”. The evasive ultra banalities of a Bertie Ahern…
Joseph writes:
Curious that your essay steers clear of the implications of de facto creeds - which are not the same as the professed ones. They include the de facto secularism creed that is, arguably, the dominant one, as it feeds off 50 years of Catholic Freefall - in Ireland today. I think that ‘the Irish’ has always been an abstract construct that lets abstract thinkers play games among themselves, with outsiders ignoring them. We are, and always were, a bunch of groups of de facto creed adherents.
Still doing some thinking and writing myself. For some reason the Irish Times seems to have a policy of not publishing my letters. I got much more scope from Gageby, the Northern Protestant, than from Kennedy, the Catholic from my own Tipperary county. But, then, that non-publishing saves me from being distracted by the ephemeral, useless thing that letters-to-editors are. I reckon I have achieved zilch by way of my hundreds of letters over the years.
DF replies:
I don’t know what you mean by saying that the ‘essay steers clear of the de facto secularism which is the West’s dominant creed’. In dealing with the fundamentalist-liberal creed I deal with it. That is the particular form which secularism takes now in the West. It took another form in the communist/socialist Soviet Union and satellites. Secularism simply means a creed which denies or excludes a supernatural dimension.*.
Regarding Douglas Gageby, how I miss that good, intellectually generous man! In all my campaigning in Ireland, but especially regarding the North, individual Protestants, not Catholics, have been my main support. They were more open to new thinking generated in Ireland – as distinct from arriving in Ireland from elsewhere.
Regarding letters to the editor and other forms of written activism, I must say that I have ceased to be an advocate of any radical change of societal behaviour only to get mocked for my failure by the secure establishments, Irish and western, and thereby increase their self-confidence. In all spheres I prefer simply to describe the state of affairs truthfully and therefore subversively and to leave it at that. The hortatory Irish element of my essay is tentative speculation. The essay’s main business is its cool description of how things are and are likely to be in the future in the West.
*(DF says: I think I could have defined secularism a shade more accurately – perhaps ‘excludes in practice a supernatural dimension’!)
Joseph writes again:
I agree that “Secularism simply means a creed which denies or excludes a supernatural dimension”. The trouble is, without being explicit, all media writers must de facto abide by that creed. That includes the new crop of Catholic writers - Breda O’Brien, David Quinn, Ronan Mullan, and so on. Our media - led by RTE - have peddled the secularism creed, de facto and by default, since the 1950s. We who write and broadcast have all been sucked into it.
The trouble, having made that diagnosis, is that sucking in can only be countered by writing and talking that allows for the supernatural dimension. As our media cannot allow for that, neither can it allow for writers and broadcasters who allow for it. We who wish to do so are reduced to spectator roles or rather ineffective pamphleteering or blogging outside the mainstream.
Seàn writes:
Arising from your new book ‘About Behaving Normally’ and some of your other books, I have a question. with regard to The Postwestern Condition and the Sense Problem.
Do you think that societies with some organised meaning - with no sense problem - behave better than societies that have a sense problem? or am I missing the meaning of your argument? I teach a Study of Peace course at Saor-Ollscoil for mature students.
DF replies:
About the Sense Problem, as you call it. First, in what I have written about
this in various places, I am making no ‘argument’ apart from what I write. So I have not
argued anything about whether, morally speaking, a society perceiving sense
in its life - i.e. a civilisation - ‘behaves better’ or worse than a society
not perceiving sense.
Living in a time of oppressive moralising, I avoid moral judgments
as much as I can. So you raise an interesting question which I have not
considered. And to answer it I would need to judge whether civilisations,
from Babylon on, have ‘behaved better’ than societies - typically those
between one civilisation and another - which do not perceive sense in their
collective life. And as you see, that’s a very difficult question to answer
and which I shrink from answering now.
I have not really thought about qualitative differences of any kind between
societies with or without perceptible sense, apart from suggesting that in
those ‘without’ there is a high degree of psychic or spiritual suffering and
in those ‘with’, very much less. But now that you make me think, I would
add that those with perceptible sense are marked by high cultural creativity -
intellectual, artistic, etc - and the others not. But leave that with me.
In ‘Ireland’s Call’ I have given my fullest statement hitherto - a sort of
summing up - on this senselessness question in our times. I have
since done minor revisions on it. Ignore, for the present argument, the
first two pars and the last ones, where I provocatively and speculatively
relate the central argument to Ireland and the Irish. That serves as an
attention-catching device for the Irish public - to which I have returned,
physically, after ten years in Italy!
Seàn No.2 writes:
One thing surprised me in ‘Ireland’s Call.’ You do not mention the Church or Christianity as a possible source for the recivilising of the West which you think will come about. Have you despaired of the Church? It seems to me that the Catholic Church is probably the only global organization capable of resisting what you (correctly) call the Correctorate and of providing an alternative, personalistic, vision for the future. The popular reaction to John Paul II is a witness to that. And the gentle but profound thought of Benedict XVI is providing us with the intellectual foundations for such a future.
I am in favour of promoting Christianity even in secularised Europe. It is
true that our elites are hostile to it especially in its Catholic form but that doesn’t mean we should simply fold our arms and give up the fight. I note that in there are numerous Christian intellectuals in the US (not just the religious right) who are challenging the prevailing secularist orthodoxy.
DF replies:
I deliberately leave open the form which the recivilising will take. I don’t want advocacy of a particular formula to distract from my main argument that the present condition is not a civilisation and that a recivilising is necessary. I expressly say that the values and rules of the new civilisation could draw on some elements from western (i.e Christian) civilisation and from the current mish-mash. I omit to say, and will add it, that in Europe Islam will be a strong contender. I am sure that Christianity will continue to be a strong presence in the world, but WHERE it will be the core element in a future civilisation I don’t know - perhaps China, on the analogy of ancient Rome! The West has used it to form a great civilisation. Whether it will use it again, I don’t know.
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DF adds: A review I did recently of Joe Cleary’s Outrageous Fortune: Capital and Culture in Modern Ireland (The Irish Book Review, Spring 2007) - or rather, the second, critical part of it - is relevant to this discussion.
Hey Desmond,
in case you haven´t noticed - I don´t think you actually read what I write - I think your ideas are worthless.
And you can quote me on that.
Lat time, I had to rush off to my spanish class so I couldn´t respond in more detail.
Desmond, I asked you for evidence to support your theories, and instead you give us a long list of quotes about how great you are.
you remind me of an episode of Father Ted: the one where the priests are trapped on a plane. There´s only two parachutes and so they have a competition to see who´ll get them. Each priest has to write about why they should get the parachute. One priest, however, doesn´t write anything. Instead he just draws a picture of himself, in the nip, with a dog.
and that´s what you´ve done. I asked you for evidence to support your 1,000 years of frozen meaning in western intellectual, cultural, political, and economic life and thought, and instead you give me a drawing of yourself, in the nip, with a dog.
John Waters is welcome to your “succinct and cogent” points on suicide.
Conor, you are good at insults but they are no way to conduct a discussion. If you don’t know that a civilisation - all the civilisations of history - is essentially a hierarchical set of rules of behaviour, with a cluster of constant rules at its centre which distinguishes it from all other civilisations, then I can’t help you here. It would take too long. But by investigation you can find it out for yourself.
That, my dear boy, is not what you are arguing. You are arguing that one particular set of rules has remained constant for a thousand years. I´m telling you that´s rubbish. Furthermore you will not find an historian who will agree with you - at least, not one´s that qualified.
Here. Let me help you. and for free as well. you are getting the general - in this case civilisation - mixed up with the particular - rules of behaviour. You are arguing that just because civilisation has been around for a thousand years (and more), the rules have to have been as well.
That is what I mean by your stunningly naive view of history.
Investion is something you lack. The proof of that is that I´ve have asked you time and again for evidence to back up your claims, and yet all you do is tell me how great you are? That “Sean no.2″ thinks you make valid points? As does “Bill from the USA”?
“succinct and cogent”. What piffle.
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