Listening to Free, Florence + The Machine

I was thinking about the first verse of a Yeats poem, The Second Coming.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre,

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre 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.

Are our writers really the prophets of our age, like ancient sages, bringing visions of the future disguised as art? Or do they possess the gift of seeing into the nature of men, an insight that allows them to deduce the logical outcome of recurring behaviors with great accuracy?  The Anthropocene, the age of psychopaths and madness, will end. But what will be rebuilt from the vestiges of these damaged genes? Will the cycle simply repeat, imprinted on the holographic film of our world, or can it be better? Can we escape our selfishness? Can we escape the ego of man? The optimist in me would like to believe that we can rebuild a civilization, not through the enslavement of others that we deem less than equal, but by drawing from the best parts of ourselves and using the ingenuity and brilliance we all possess but have forgotten. 

Happy Wednesday!