Great line about Irish life being reliant on a fire that has now gone out.
Are we are now living in a country littered with the religious iconography that is completely inexplicable without its context? (. -
I can tell you trying to explain an Our Lady of Lourdes statute to a 5 year who has never been to church is very difficult.)
It reminds me of the aftermath of independence and the effort to paint postboxes green and rename streets.
The question is what do we replace the scaffolding of Irish life with? Humanist ceremonies? Pagan goddesses? There seems to be a grab bag of differing options, none of which are thought through….
When one ideology dies we’re tempted to believe people discover something new but actually whatever existing, moribund status quo is already lingering in the background rushes in to fill the void, and I think that’s what happened in Irelands case (though to be crystal clear I’m not a religious person, and am a bit more ambivalent about the change than it sound like you are)
‘It’s important to realise that for the people of Shakespeare’s time religion was not so much a set of beliefs as a set of rituals and the loss of those rituals with the rise of Protestanstism left a large gap to be filled….the..rituals were abandoned … but the anxieties which had created the need for them had not disappeared.’Fintan O Toole. p 49. Shakespeare Is Hard But So Is Life.
Interesting parallels with our own time. I Toole makes the point that Elizabethan theatre filled a lot of the needs previously filled by religion and much of the plays explicitly address this sense of being in a liminal time.
Maybe as formal religion is abandoned we need to find ways of retooling those rituals so that they can address the needs they were designed for?
Btw have started on some of the same themes myself recently in a couple of essays called the Children of Lir… got sidetracked but am tempted to return to this theme…
I agree, but at least the Catholic Church was upfront with what it believed. ( Istill remember being asked aged seven to ‘reject Satan’. )
Our new ideologies imo are smuggled in via the internet and media under the guise of entertainment, they are the ambient background of consumerism which is so pervasive that it isn’t questioned and that’s what makes it so dangerous.
I have very mixed feelings, I grew up in an arch conservative country which could be very cruel. On the other hand what I can see in modern Ireland is bureaucratic cruelty and a lack of depth that is truly depressing.
We were occupied for seven hundred years, imo in the last twenty we have just exchanged one Empire for another.
I’m a huge fan of the late great Sinead O Connor a woman who never stopped her quest for spiritual answers. I hope she found them….
Thank you for your observation. In post-Catholic countries, people still bathe in Catholic cultural traditions and get ambivalent about some value systems. Not so much in post-Protestant countries where people will just join its substitutes, namely radical social justice movements.
there's a cure lyric "the fire's almost out and there's nothing left to burn" which I thought about quoting but i wasn't sure how that would go down lol
Great line about Irish life being reliant on a fire that has now gone out.
Are we are now living in a country littered with the religious iconography that is completely inexplicable without its context? (. -
I can tell you trying to explain an Our Lady of Lourdes statute to a 5 year who has never been to church is very difficult.)
It reminds me of the aftermath of independence and the effort to paint postboxes green and rename streets.
The question is what do we replace the scaffolding of Irish life with? Humanist ceremonies? Pagan goddesses? There seems to be a grab bag of differing options, none of which are thought through….
When one ideology dies we’re tempted to believe people discover something new but actually whatever existing, moribund status quo is already lingering in the background rushes in to fill the void, and I think that’s what happened in Irelands case (though to be crystal clear I’m not a religious person, and am a bit more ambivalent about the change than it sound like you are)
‘It’s important to realise that for the people of Shakespeare’s time religion was not so much a set of beliefs as a set of rituals and the loss of those rituals with the rise of Protestanstism left a large gap to be filled….the..rituals were abandoned … but the anxieties which had created the need for them had not disappeared.’Fintan O Toole. p 49. Shakespeare Is Hard But So Is Life.
Interesting parallels with our own time. I Toole makes the point that Elizabethan theatre filled a lot of the needs previously filled by religion and much of the plays explicitly address this sense of being in a liminal time.
Maybe as formal religion is abandoned we need to find ways of retooling those rituals so that they can address the needs they were designed for?
Btw have started on some of the same themes myself recently in a couple of essays called the Children of Lir… got sidetracked but am tempted to return to this theme…
I agree, but at least the Catholic Church was upfront with what it believed. ( Istill remember being asked aged seven to ‘reject Satan’. )
Our new ideologies imo are smuggled in via the internet and media under the guise of entertainment, they are the ambient background of consumerism which is so pervasive that it isn’t questioned and that’s what makes it so dangerous.
I have very mixed feelings, I grew up in an arch conservative country which could be very cruel. On the other hand what I can see in modern Ireland is bureaucratic cruelty and a lack of depth that is truly depressing.
We were occupied for seven hundred years, imo in the last twenty we have just exchanged one Empire for another.
I’m a huge fan of the late great Sinead O Connor a woman who never stopped her quest for spiritual answers. I hope she found them….
Thank you for your observation. In post-Catholic countries, people still bathe in Catholic cultural traditions and get ambivalent about some value systems. Not so much in post-Protestant countries where people will just join its substitutes, namely radical social justice movements.
Ireland is a nation of Zeligs.
How do you figure? Blend in with whatever’s going on at the moment?
Yes. It seems to be our main trait. And culture being downstream of language accelerating it.
"the heat from a fire that may have already gone out"
applause emoji.
there's a cure lyric "the fire's almost out and there's nothing left to burn" which I thought about quoting but i wasn't sure how that would go down lol
Well. There's nothing new under the sun. As the fella sez. I thought the line read very well, and the notion of a comforting but now dead fire apt.