Ideological Desolation: The Darkening of the Irish Mind

From a third floor window, I leaned out slightly into the dull, rusty light of the evening. I did not expect to see or hear others. The shaking sides of the wooden building made me wonder, “Who could venture out?” I could barely make out a shape in the suffocated sky. Desolation abound. The sand swelled in leaps and swirls, consuming the trees. The pale light of street lamps barely protruded the darkened smother. The wind cursed the sun. Sharp, piercing particles bristled my beard and floated aimlessly upward, and down to the gloom below. How long had it been blowing? I was not sure now the time I had even been sitting there watching for life and movement. Nothing emerged. The dreary evening sobbed and croaked to it’s end, then from nowhere, a shuddering wail of a foghorn ululating, through the void. A great grey hulk, a ghostly ship proceeding forth from emptiness, unstoppable, unbreakable, bold and brawn. I watched it pass, and then back to emptiness it was gone.

We live in an ideological wasteland. We are wandering workers in a world of weeping. Wide-eyed wimps wield weapons of immense weight and we are mere spectators as the wild wind creeps forward toward us like a tide. Sometimes we have nothing to contribute. Our shallow efforts are miniscule sideshows to a giant impending theatre. Immovable and unchangeable, no dent is made upon the seemingly endless penetration of harsh indifference. What can we do but wait and wane?

I sat thinking about the world we live in today. I thought about my children and the choices I must make to ensure they grow to be strong, confident and virtuous adults in a world that often eschews virtuous life. I reflected upon the influences that will besiege them as they grow. In my experience, parental influence is surely important. However, as my children get older they will be increasingly affected by the ideas of their peers and, to a lesser extent but still significant, by the teachers who directly or indirectly present them with information. I am faced with the prospect that most people today no longer embrace a life fully directed toward becoming an ideal, virtuous person.

Let me be clear. My concern today is not that people turn away from virtue necessarily. What troubles me most is that, in today’s world, virtue is condemned and vice is celebrated. I sometimes have an overwhelming sense of helplessness when faced with the prospect of directing my children to effectively contend with ideas that encourage them to abandon the virtuous human ideal for lesser ideals, which direct them more toward visceral pleasure than virtuous joy.

As any parent should, I love my children with absolute giving to the point that I would bequeath every effort for their good. However, I am faced with the decision of sending them to be immersed in a culture that promotes ideology contrary to perfection. It is not only that they will be exposed to arguments in favor of vice but also, it is almost worse, that they might be exposed to mediocrity or indifference to virtue. It is likely that they will rarely have enthusiasm for virtue expressed to them through the words and especially the actions of adults and peers outside their family. They will be presented with people living lives that contradict virtue, making it seem like vice is the proper way to live. Culture today regularly celebrates promiscuity along with overindulgence on alcohol and drugs. It praises abortion, multiple forms of sexual deviance including homosexual actions, cohabitation without marriage, sex without commitment and pornography. Culture promotes independence despite responsibility. It scorns holiness, as religion and virtue become mere sideshows to their depravity, something to make them feel good now and again.

At Mass my children rarely witness the wonder and awe that should be etched in the faces of adults who present themselves in a Church before the Blessed Sacrament, their God and King. As a parent, I can bend my knee and bow reverently before Jesus. However, if most other adults scoff at that reverence and my child’s peers laugh at such actions then how can my children harmonize with the beauty before them?

Every day we are besieged by ideology. It is communicated through multiple mediums: the news, politicians, academics, television, movies, social media. The ideology presented by these sources is overwhelmingly in favor of vice and in opposition to virtue. They declare vice as attractive and harmless. Rarely is their ideology challenged because those who wish to form the minds of others keep the voice of virtue as far from the public platform as possible. What is left is a massive collective mindset convinced by a popular thought and unmoved by anything contrary.

In Truth, the ideal we should be striving for is Jesus. If we are not continuously and constantly asking ourselves throughout every day how we can be more like Him then our lives are not good enough. Every waking thought should be focused upon how we can be more virtuous, more like Christ. If that goal becomes a sideshow for our life of pleasure then we have lost and if we allow out children to be immersed in that culture we have lost them.

What is the answer? I believe in the influence of holy parenting absolutely. Parents must equally be immersed in living lives of striving for ideal holiness. It is also vital that the father be completely committed to the holiness of his family. However, after that, I am convinced we need to introduce a more flexible education system in our country. Ireland, including the North of Ireland, needs to make independent schooling more available so that parents can form co-op communities as alternatives to the current entities that have lost their ability to direct the formation of children in virtue. We need schools that teach our children to question the current ideological climate and to think independently. We need our children to be equipped with the ability to hear an idea, question it logically, and either accept or reject it based on whether it is good for mankind or bad. It would be delightful if Catholic schools returned to the classical curriculum, the Trivium of grammar, logic and rhetoric, allowing children to examine and critique all ideas in light of Truth so that they can be sent into the world prepared to challenge and overcome all cultural trends with sound thought.

Think of your children, think of your land. Think of the fabricated gods who raise up the sand. Then play your hand. Our little ones are out there in the storm at the mercy of the elements as though part of them, one with them. Their faces are carried away with the sand piece-by-piece eroding into the sea. The attraction is compelling, to dissolve into the world. From dust we came, to dust we will go. We must not yield.

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