Friday, August 31, 2007

[culture and heritage] a fading memory

One of Banksy's

I swear I'm not a killjoy. In former days, if you liked breasts, you used to buy the Sun; if you wanted something harder, there was a little shop down the road or there was Soho. There was a place for tat and good luck to those who lapped it up.

There were others who preferred broadsheets - papers like The Times [former], The FT, Globe and Mail, NYT and so on and though a pain in the butt to read on the train, still, it was a good read once you had it folded into position and the crackling stopped. Plus it was great for a Millwall Brick.

Into this category fell the Melbourne Age. Staid old Melbourne was represented in this paper whilst for the print-challenged, there was always the Sun. The Age carried weight and conveyed authority. Now part of the Fairfax "stable", here are the sorts of headlines today:

1. Beach orgy shocks conservative Taiwan

2. Pastor had sex with daughters

3. Heroin addicted elephant to rejoin herd

Now I'm wondering if the April decision to turn all these into tabloids is connected with the distressing drop in taste over the past few years, rivalling Murdoch who's got most of the world press anyway.

However, that's not the most distressing thing. The most distressing thing is this:

Good Friday seems certain to become a part of next year's AFL draw, with the once-sacrosanct space on the football calendar likely to be filled by Carlton and Hawthorn.

Now I don't give a toss about the football these days [rugby and cricket are different] but I'm sure you see the point I'm getting at. Good Friday was always the last bastion and even when Easter Sunday fell to commercial pressures, GF remained respected in some sort of misunderstanding of the relative importance of the days.

Now we have yet another example of the relentless dismantling and rooting out of the last vestiges of Christendom and the west's cultural heritage, then they'll turn on the remaining believers and out of pure spite try to round them up and disappear them.

Oh how the west howled with anger when the Palestinians cheered and cavorted as the World Trade Centre collapsed and will the west do the same now that the new paganism in society and the g-dless blogosphere will gleefully chortle at this latest "victory for reason"?

Can you imagine Iran scheduling a match for the feast of Ashoura or Israel scheduling one for Yom Kippur? Or a Walpurgis Night Derby?

The jackboot is stomping out the flickering candle of Christian hope and joy wherever it can seek and destroy and one has to ask what more do they want? Why will they allow freedom of worship to all bar the Christian?

A whole generation has now grown up uneducated [and I charge that one must be of a former generation to be able to judge that], with a society now disintegrating around them [witness the subject matter on blogs and the divorce and crime stats], pressing on blindly, obliviously rudderless, down, down, down to the new feudal darkness of cold rationalism [as distinct from reason], the new 1984 and Brazil.

Surely that's enough for the forces arrayed against reason?

Not in the least. They have to spit on Good Friday and stomp out every last vestige of the ethical underpinning of our society, fearing something might go wrong and someone, somewhere, might stop and shout: "Hey, where are we all headed? What are we doing? Hey people, we're being lied to. Wake up!"

Pity suicide is not allowed because I now find myself completely at odds with the tat and mediocracy I see all about. I don't mind saying I'm feeling old, irrelevant and marginalized and I'm wondering how much is me and how much is what's happening out there.

I'm going to bed early.

By the way, I apologize in advance to all my friends for the crack at the g-dless blogosphere and the new paganism. I'm just a little distracted, that's all.

4 comments:

  1. No offence but, not being a Christian nor a football fan myself I couldn't really give a flying you-know-what about what day a match is held. I do think that cultural holidays are a good thing though, and that the more there are the more festive society can be, judging from my experiences in Spain.

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  2. Good Friday is not a holiday in this Catholic country. I understand your despair over what is happening but how can you even mention suicide when you're supposed to be a good Christian and therefore, I would have thought, grateful for life? For once you have made me angry, James.

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  3. Welcome, Ordo and thanks.

    For once, Welsh? Actually, I said it was not possible for precisely the reason you mention. That doesn't mean it can't cross the mind when surrounded by the swirling tide.

    They haven't yet legislated to outlaw what crosses our minds yet but I'm sure they're working on it.

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  4. James, there is no one who hasn't thought about it at some time in their lives. I have the greatest sympathy for those in such despair that they consider it for longer than a moment because I have certainly been there. But unless you live in a very repressive society where you cannot do anything [such as women living under the Taliban] then to consider it for societal reasons seems, at the least, self-indulgent. I'm sorry you were feeling low.

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