The United States isn’t the only country suffering from anomie. Check out Fintan O’Toole’s column at the Irish Times on how all of the narratives that have guided the Republic of Ireland have collapsed:
Nations tell themselves stories. They are not fully true, they are often bitterly contested and they change over time. But they are powerful: they underlie the necessary fiction that is “usâ€. And at the moment it is not quite clear what the Irish story is. What is the state of “usâ€?
The majority story, the narrative of modern Catholic Ireland, has had six different elements – components that have sometimes complemented, sometimes competed with, each other. The striking thing is that none of them really works any more.
If they were novels, we could call these stories, Survival, MOPE, The Scattering, Thoroughly Modern, Top O’ the World, Ma! and Who’s Sorry Now?
And we’re not alone. All of the ethnic states of Europe other than, as I noted yesterday, the newly-recreated ethnic states in the Baltic and the Balkans are going through similar identity crises.
I don’t know what the consequences of all of this will be. Largely, other than in the United States I think it’s none of my business. I’ll just pass along an anecdote.
My best high school buddy is of 100% Irish ancestry. All four of his grandparents were born in Ireland. In her 80s his paternal grandmother, who had left Ireland when in her teens, returned to Ireland to visit relatives. She returned in some disgust declaiming that all of the Irishmen like those she remembered were in the United States.
What did she mean, Dave? What was the thrust of her comment? Or was the point memories of things that were never really there to begin with?
What she meant was that customs and manners in Ireland had changed to the point that it was no longer recognizeable to her.