Dalarna University Centre for Irish Studies

'The Ravages of second-hand experience': Hubert Butler's Perception of Universalism andDistanceAuthor(s): Billy GraySource: Nordic Irish Studies, Vol. 4 (2005), pp. 29-36Published by: Dalarna University Centre for Irish StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30001518 .

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'The Ravages of second-hand experience': Hubert Butler's Perception of Universalism and Distance

Billy Gray

It is widely accepted that the work of Hubert Butler has not received the critical attention it undoubtedly deserves. A small but growing number of admirers - including eminent scholars such as Edna Longley and Roy Foster - have published an occasional laudatory review, and indeed one member of this increasingly numerous group has referred to Butler as 'one of the greatest essayists in English, of the 20th Century". Nevertheless, it remains true that the common perception of Butler is that of a man whose general sensibility is profoundly at odds with the representative trends of Modernism; a man whose somewhat idealised vision of Anglo-Irish values as they existed prior to the Act of Union, appear to many observers to be both reactionary and ideologically outmoded.

The aim of this paper is to examine whether Hubert Butler's philosophical, political and cultural beliefs can be viewed as relevant to Ireland in a period of national Re-Orientation and Re-Imagining. Attention will be drawn to Butler's belief in a territorially based, and federatively constructed, organic form of social organisation which, he argues, could serve to undermine the mechanical officialdom and impersonal control of modern nation states. This examination will be linked to Butler's espousal of personal and community relations as representing an efficient defence mechanism against what he refers to as 'the ravages of second-hand experience'2 created and perpetuated by the mass media. It will be argued that this belief is profoundly relevant in the modem era of increasing globalisation and the all-pervasive influence of the information society. Equally, Butler's constant emphasis on the pivotal role of private judgement and its indissoluble link to the Protestant ethos will be analysed in the light of the perennial question concerning the relationship between the individual and the collective.

Butler has stated on numerous occasions that the modern nation state as it is presently constituted is an artificial construct and thereby removed from the realities of human nature. He argues that modem society is more

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Nordic Irish Studies

lacking in the spirit of civic engagement and public obligation than at any time in recent history, with the vast majority of the population increasingly alienated from a political system that is commonly viewed as corrupt, authoritarian and irrelevant. The institutional routines of conventional politics have become an arena of mounting futility and despair, with the current system favouring material gain over the more important question of ethical vision. The public sphere has been contaminated by the incursions of a coercive, homogenizing state system and the encroachments of hierarchical structures has led to the individual being treated as a malleable, atomized object. Governments have abandoned even the pretence of striving for a political system grounded in broad-based, civic participation. The character of contemporary society impedes democratic possibilities, as social fragmentation serves to undermine prospects for communal solidarity. As social and political forms of power become increasingly concentrated, the image of a strong, all-consuming political forum in fact conceals an opposite reality: that is, a public sphere more and more bereft of meaningful debate and popular input.3

Butler claims that what he terms 'the perversion of the nationalist ideal'4 is ultimately based on the country's profound failure to furnish visions for the future. He maintains that 'the birth of a terrible beauty has ended with the establishment of a grocer's republic'5 and believes that the country has failed to address people's needs and aspirations; a failure compounded by its inability to offer and develop the kind of political language and vision required to confront new situations and challenges. Butler proposes that as an antidote to these developments, and in order to provide the basis for sustained moral purpose and engagement, human energy and focus must be shifted back to the local and the regional. This is the predominant reason why, for Butler, local history has always been more important than national history. The survival of voluntary communities in a world that has become increasingly regimented and officialised is, according to Butler, the only possible alternative to depersonalisation and alienation. Empowerment is unthinkable without a psychology of being that unfolds in relation to the social activities of a community of interests. For politics to be truly participatory, it must be organically connected to social relationships and community life. The impersonal laws which regulate the intercourse of all small communities will dissipate as control passes from the political body to its members. It is through the traditions of the municipality that modern forms of political activity - currently indistinguishable from exercises in manipulation - will cease to atrophy. It is essential therefore, that Ireland moves away from abstract political combinations towards more organic forms of

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Hubert Butler

associations, as the existence of a progressive society lies in the formation of small, co-operative communities.

Influenced by the philosophies of George Russell and Standish O'Grady,6 Butler believes that the co-operative can operate as the cell of the new society. He argues that there must exist a network of such cells, territorially based and federatively constructed, without dogmatic rigidity, allowing the most diverse social forms to exist side by side, but always aiming at a new organic whole. Butler writes that 'to me, a belief in a co- operative community is a substitute for religion' and claims that if such a social network were to exist and flourish 'we shall recognise again, that within a few square miles we should have everything which we can possibly need'7. He was convinced that ultimately, the nation state, which he believed was consolidated by fear and greed, will disintegrate. Indeed, he claimed that the perpetuation of the great metropolitan civilisation, which has depleted the provinces of all initiative and enterprise, is already seriously under threat:

Giant states are only suitable for dwarfs. Full-sized humans cannot be fed on abstractions and build a society whose existence can only be deduced from digests of opinions and mechanical projections of voices and profiles.8

Butler claims that there are strong philosophical and historical antecedents for a communal form of social organisation and links its propagation to both Christianity and the Ancient Greeks. He propounds that Christianity was itself born in a small community, and it was to small communities that St. Paul addressed his epistles. Equally, he draws attention to the fact that Aristotle and the Greeks upheld the supreme virtue of a uniquely 'civil life' in which it would be possible to build a community in a world of shared involvements. Politics upheld as a source of self-actualisation as the Greeks insisted, rather than the self-abnegation and loss of autonomy usually associated with authoritarian rule, would lead to a development of self and society that are no longer opposed but integrally connected. Butler insists that the existence of a history of neighbourly interdependence linked with what he terms 'Provincial Humanism' can act as a bulwark against the development of totalitarian tendencies. In the essay 'The Children of Drancy' he writes:

Fortunately, there are still communities where the Wicked Man is not yet woven so scientifically into the fabric of society that he cannot be extracted without stopping the trains and fusing the electric light. It is not a coincidence that two small countries, Denmark and Bulgaria, stemmed the flow to

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Nordic Irish Studies

Auschwitz better than any of their more powerful neighbours on the continent.9

It is noticeable that Butler's belief in an essentially communal form of social organisation is profoundly relevant in terms of current political developments. As globalisation gains momentum, conventional conceptions of national identity have become fundamentally transformed; an evolution that has resulted in traditional political ideologies diminishing in importance. This has often led to large scale global issues being increasingly met with local solutions. Increasingly, community- based groups have chosen to mobilise around specific issues within a localised framework and view such grass-roots activism as representing an essential 'new politics'. This development, they believe, helps to redefine our historical perception of citizenship, participation and community. 'Communalism' is viewed by its adherents as a vital process fundamentally directed against what they term 'the colonising power of globalisation' and argue that such community empowerment entails a new phase of democratization. It thereby serves to affirm the recovery of civic spirit while the intimate linkage between the community and the politics of local association leads to an enhanced moral purpose connected with authentic participatory democracy. This political development has assumed such importance that by the early 1990's, it is estimated that there were reportedly 500,000 local change orientated organisations scattered across the United States alone, with an estimated membership of more than 5 million.I0

Butler's definition of the modern individual as someone who prefers to be integrated into a small stable group, rather than existing as a unit in a herd, is intimately connected to his definition of the link that exists between the individual and the collective. He believes that as the significance of the individual diminishes within the social terrain, it is impossible to withstand the depersonalising influence of both modernism and globalisation. The individual is easily overwhelmed by an imposing social totality that is on the one hand so highly amorphous and fragmented, and yet at the same time dominated by remote and threatening global forces. We thus encounter a two-fold development; a world in which growing social power pre-empts concerns that were once largely the responsibility of both the individual and the community, and the steady erosion of personal power and the individual's capacity for action. In this paralysing arena, the individual's self-identity begins to suffer an inevitable disintegration. The intricate link between the small community and its members is subverted by an array of overpowering forces such as corporatism, the mass media, and the overwhelming impact of economic globalisation. Butler maintains therefore, that we

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Hubert Butler

have entered a phase of history in which personal relations will be complicated rather than eased, by both globalisation and the information society. He constantly warns us that our receptivity to human obligations becomes diluted by distance, and that our modern-day concern for the universal at the expense of the particular, is fatuous. He argues that the idea of neighbourly love has been diluted until it comprises all of humanity, and claims that the intimate relationship between a creative mind and its milieu has been distended to such an extent that it is now primarily exposed to what he terms 'titillations from afar' . We are constantly simulating a solidarity that we do not authentically feel. Butler describes this phenomenon as 'a disease so widespread as to seem incurable'2. Our moral judgement is overwhelmed with the type of information that ultimately reveals nothing of any real consequence. The commodified media culture of contemporary society leads to a political and social sphere littered with informational debris. In 'Return to Hellas' we are told that: 'Impressions from far away, as soft as snowflakes are choking up the channels of perception, making sharp corners into curves, generalising what is particular, reducing everything to a boundless, colourless uniformity. There is now no escape.'

Equally, in his introduction to the collection of essays entitled 'Escape from the Anthill' he asks:

But nowadays can we exclude ourselves from anything? Can the ant ever escape the anthill? Even the most sedentary and homebound person is obliged to roam the world in spirit, ten or twenty times a day. The newspaper and the radio and television release a million images of remote places and people. They settle like butterflies on the brain till every cell is clogged with the larvae from their unwanted eggs.

The modem media serves to connect people instantaneously to the fast moving world of events, spectacles and cultural phenomena in a way that appears to satisfy people's need for information and worldly contact. In truth however, media culture provides only a false sense of public engagement. In its effects, such a culture serves to reinforce passivity, privatisation and escape. To Butler, the seductive power of the mass media in shaping perceptions of self and social reality points to a precipitous decline in the most important sources of identity: that is, neighbourhood and community. Citizen and communal empowerment and the vision of local, self-directed activity are lost in both the fragmentation of our media directed common culture, and the suffocating ascendancy of international commerce. In his wonderfully evocative essay entitled Peter's Window, - which is ostensibly a meditation on his

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time spent in St Petersburg - Butler writes that the distortion of distance leads to moral desensitisation and lack of emotional equilibrium:

Is it not obvious that when through the modem media far things are brought near, the near things must be pushed far to make room for them? Imperceptibly we become Lilliputians persuading ourselves that through contact with greatness we ourselves become greater.15

Equally, in the essay The Sub-Prefect Should Have Held His Tongue, he argues that universalism has led to the dissemination of an illusory sense of solidarity and that our vicarious involvement in global events merely exacerbates our feeling of insignificance:

Parochially minded people neglect their parishes to pronounce ignorantly about the universe while the universalists are so conscious of the world-wide struggles of opposing philosophies that the rights and wrongs of any regional conflict dwindle to insignificance against a cosmic panorama.... like the needle of a compass at the north pole, their moral judgement spins round and round, overwhelming them with information and telling them nothing at all.'6

For Butler therefore, the seductive power of the mass media in shaping perceptions of self and social reality points to a precipitous decline in other, more legitimate, sources of identity; namely, that of neighbourhood and community.

Once again, Butler's perspective on this issue has proven to be remarkably contemporary. Neal Gabler for example, has argued that 'It is mistaken to believe that the form in which an idea is conveyed is irrelevant to its truth'7 and claims that while media culture is often touted as a realm of interaction, a more accurate description is one that portrays individuals as passive observers of media spectacles and events. This, Gabler claims, remains true even if such individuals may somehow feel 'integrated' into the public sphere. The pursuit of identity often moves within the world of media driven images, leading to diminished personal, social and political potency. The modern individual is essentially the recipient of a decontextualised informational deluge. Indeed, the famous remark - originally attributed to Coleridge - about 'water being everywhere without a drop to drink' has never seemed more pertinent than it does today.

Nevertheless, Butler does believe that it is possible to escape from what he refers to as 'the ravages of second-hand experience' 1. He argues

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Hubert Butler

that if we are able to channel all the curiosity and superficial interest that we dispense on worldly events into areas that affect the local community, it is possible that in a society of the future the functions of a man and a citizen will converge. For such an event to occur, a huge responsibility will be placed on the role of the solitary individual. Our insubstantial fascination with global events must be superseded by an acknowledgement that the experiences which nourish us are profoundly individual rather than collective. Butler pointedly refers to Owen Sheehy- Skeffington, who wrote 'what I must realise is how infinitesimal is the importance of anything I do and how important it is that I should do it' 19 According to Butler, our most trivial act or thought creates an infinite chain of repercussions, and it is for this reason that the burden of ethical action must be borne by solitary and often anonymous individuals:

We shall have to live through this period of remote and impersonal control, and in the meantime, for the sake of future freedom, a greater burden than ever before will fall upon the man who refuses to conform. Politically, socially, domestically, the individual may have to make great and tragic decisions and carry them through in the teeth of a hostile and mechanical officialdom.20

For Butler, the fragmentation of our common culture into discrete, mutually uncomprehending compartments, can only be alleviated by the efforts of the individual. The freedom of the inner-world has its best guarantee in pledges of mutual support and tolerance exchanged between individuals in the shadow of the state. If this occurs, it is possible to live in a psychological realm uncontaminated by the incursions of a homogenising social and political system.

Butler's belief in the spiritual efficacy of the individual is intimately linked with both his utopianism and his avowed acceptance of the Protestant ethos. Although not concerned with the theological and mystical intricacies of the Protestant dogma, he is ideologically sympathetic to the concept of 'the sacred right of private judgement' as Gratten defined the concept at the Convention of Dungannon in 1782. Butler, throughout his work, constantly castigates those who bring ridicule on the 'private ethic' by their constant abuse of it.

It is Butler's unshakeable belief in the potential of the individual that underpins his utopianism. He fervently argues that an increasingly influential number of citizens are rebelling against what he terms 'the civilisation of the anthill'21 and predicts that:

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Nordic Irish Studies

some generations or centuries from now groups of people, linked together maybe as kinsmen, maybe as neighbours, will feel a special responsibility for each other based on a closer knowledge and affection than is possible in our faceless and centralised society.22

Butler ultimately believes therefore that it is indeed possible to 'escape from the anthill which we have built round ourselves'23 and claims that Chekhov's vision of an 'unspeakably, amazingly lovely existence'24 is not only desirable but also attainable.

Notes

Chris Agee, 'Poteen in a Brandy Cask: The Ethical Imagination of Hubert Butler?', Yale Review (1998), 130.

2 Hubert Butler, Escape from the Anthill (Mullingar: The Lilliput Press, 1985) 3. 3

I am particularly indebted to The End of Politics: Corporate Power and the Decline of the Public Sphere (New York: The Guildford Press, 2000) by Carl Boggs, which contains a stimulating examination of current political and social trends.

4 Hubert Butler, 'The Minority Voice', contained in The Land of Nod (Mullingar: The Lilliput Press, 1996), 64. Hubert Butler, 'Divided Loyalties', contained in Escape from the Anthill, 96.

6 For Butler's views on Standish O'Grady see his essay 'Anglo-Irish Twilight', contained in Escape from the Anthill.

7 Hubert Butler, Escape from the Anthill, 3. 8 Hubert Butler, 'Return to Hellas?', contained in Escape from the Anthill, 231. 9 Hubert Butler, 'The Children of Drancy', contained in The Children of Drancy

(Mullingar: The Lilliput Press, 1988), 194. 10 See Boggs, 'Rise and Decline of the Public Sphere' in The End of Politics:

Corporate Power and the Decline of the Public Sphere, 134. " Hubert Butler, 'Return to Hellas', 231. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Hubert Butler, Escape from the Anthill, 2-3. 15 Hubert Butler, 'Peter's Window', contained in Escape from the Anthill, 338. 16 Hubert Butler, 'The Sub-Prefect Should Have Held His Tongue', contained in

Escape from the Anthill, 282. 17 Neal Gabler, Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality (New

York: Knopf, 1998), 41. 18 Hubert Butler, Escape from the Anthill, 12. 19 Hubert Butler, 'Home-Coming', contained in Grandmother and Wolfe Tone

(Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 1990), 29. 20 Hubert Butler, 'Little K', contained in The Children of Drancy, 271. 21 Hubert Butler, Escape from the Anthill, 12. 22 Hubert Butler, 'Three Friends', contained in Escape from the Anthill, 193. 23 Hubert Butler, Escape from the Anthill, 12. 24 Hubert Butler, Escape from the Anthill, 4.

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