Things fall apart

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity…”

The above lines are from William Butler Yeats’ oft-quoted poem “The Second Coming.” It was written during the Irish conflicts of the 1920s and reflected not only the conditions in Ireland but also anxieties following World War I and political unrest throughout the world.

In a book on St. Francis, Nikos Kazantzakis wrote from the perspective of one monk who was determined to go forward into a brave new world of combat with evil, saying the “duty of the man who is truly alive is to conform to the times in which he lives.” In response St. Francis says “to oppose the times in which you live is the duty of the free man.” Later he said that “sometimes God expands inside you and you open your arms and embrace all of mankind; sometimes [God expands inside you and] you fly into a rage, draw your knife, and kill.”

This dual response saturates the religious history of mankind. Some rage at injustice and call for retribution. Others rage at injustice and “embrace mankind” and do their best to heal wounds. These are our choices and we can quote the Bible or the Koran or Hindu texts to justify either response.

At the homeless shelter where I work we had a vigil for those who died at the World Trade Center and I asked several residents how America should respond to the attacks on the World Trade Center. A couple of residents’ took the commonly held view that America should bomb Afghanistan and get bin Laden as well as those who harbor him. A couple of other residents fatalistically observed that we were in the “end times” and that and it didn’t matter what we did. But others suggested that America should search for a peaceful solution not involving retaliation and escalation. They said that they were “stressed out” about what might happen. One suggested that America should have a Marshall Plan for the Middle East. She said, “the cost of one bomber or one aircraft carrier [$1 billion] could be used to send food and help for the rebuilding of Afghanistan.”

She had heard that after 20 years of bombing by the Soviet Union there were two million dead, two million in refugee camps and hundreds of thousands of children disabled by land mines. She said, “why should we destroy poor and homeless people ruled by religious fanatics? Help them re-build and they’ll become our allies. Can’t we raise the standards of the needy and not be always helping the greedy?”

My students in a Peace Studies course on Northern Ireland were opposed to bombing but were cynical. “Who are we attacking?” they asked, “we don’t even know who they are or where they live.” “We need visionary leaders” they said. “Conflict resolution helped in Ireland, why not start something with Arabs and find out why they hate us so much that they would do this”. One student said that supporting undemocratic governments in the Middle East because they supply oil should not be a guiding principle. “Since this country sells billions of dollars worth of weapons to those in power over there why should we be surprised when the ones who suffer from the weapons become full of rage.” Another said, “Why can’t leaders look at the consequences of their actions. That should be the guiding principle”. She quoted Gandhi, “an eye for an eye makes us all blind”. Another student said that if “these guys were smart enough to do this then they want to cause war because chaos serves their cause. By setting America against the Arabs they are trying to unite the Arabs against America.”

After taking notes on the two conversations above I reflected on the Irish poet who commented that we must “turn psychic defeats into victories…in this storm-driven demon-crossed [time]”. Another Irish poet once asked “Is it worth while – the crime itself apart – /to pull this settled civil state of life/ to pieces…” Those who benefit from chaos wish it to be so. It was once believed that the back of the mind is like the back of the north wind, full of mystery and wonder. Let’s allow mystery and wonder “to expand inside [us and] open our arms and embrace all of mankind” and thereby avoid hardening ourselves to conditions that have precipitated such anguish and anger in this “storm-driven” time.

Hugh Curran of Surry is a lecturer in the Peace Studies Program at the University of Maine. He also is the co-director of a homeless shelter in Down East Maine.