Fragments: Heterodox Aphorisms and Musings - Part 1

What follows is the first part of our new series: ‘Fragments’.

Each week, or twice a month (depending on our laziness), we will release a motley collection of musings, aphorisms, essays-in-miniature, et cetera.

If you wish to contribute to ‘Fragments’, please provide your submission to our email: meonjournal@mailfence.com

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1

A culchie with eyes drunk on violence descends the escalator…

2

Ethnicity, traditionally a misunderstood phenomenon, has heretofore been explicated biologically, linguistically, and culturally.

Until it is understood phenomenologically its meaning and significance will continue to elude us.

Constructivism and essentialism both miss the mark: ethnicity is the interplay of consciousness and externality in the tumult of history.

3

An Irish Republican in the tradition of: John Mitchell, Phil Lynott, W.T. Cosgrave, Bernie Madoff, Jim Larkin, William Martin Murphy, Jean Jaurès, Dee Wall, Dr. Fauci, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Dan Breen, James Stephens, Thomas Davis, William of Orange, Edward Carson, Idi Amin, Muhammad Amin al-Husayni, Golda Meir, and the Shankill’s finest, Nicolae Ceaușescu.

4

The issue with Charles Haughey is not that he was corrupt, it’s that he was insufficiently corrupt.

5

For the sociologist, erstwhile lover of Susan Sontag, literary critic, and Freud biographer, Philip Rieff, culture equates to ordinances sanctioned and conferred coherence via a religious foundation; a foundation which undergirds the thoughts and actions of its participants.

Given its a-religious (and often anti-religious) character, modern thought has failed to supplant that which it set itself against. The critic may be caustic in his reproach, but no civilisation has ever been erected atop a riposte, irrespective of the wit of its delivery.

Rieff denominates our age (modernity) as an anti-culture, whose fruits are characteristically dour, despondent, decadent, uncertain, and anxious; existentialism is emblematic of an epoch in desperate need of an axiom, any axiom, worth believing in.

Contra conventional wisdom, the theologically grounded societies of yore did not signify our entrapment by illusion and myth. Rather, they liberated us from the curse of being liberated; their circumscriptions satiated the psychological and spiritual needs of beings otherwise stranded in a state of invidious individuality.

6

Per the latest stats, it is estimated that 26% of the Irish male population will be citizen journalists by the year 2030.

7

In Celine's Journey to the End of the Night, Baryton obsessively learns English and imbibes English History, and thereby becomes a mental invalid.

The moral of the story, I suppose, is that learning English is worse than doing meth.

8

Why has the Irish reaction to the neo-plantation been so vocal?’, asks the Journal.ie intern.

Well, imagine Liveleak circa 2014, but the assailants are of red hue, donning county crests, and induced to bravery by the prospect of renown via ‘TheLiberal.ie’

Homer made stories out of such material.

What will you, Journal.ie intern with no future (and thus nothing to lose), make of this?