The centre will not hold

William Butler Yeats, in 1932

This might be a long walk but please, walk with me.

Lately, everything’s been a bit much, hasn't it? Just everything. The growing environmental crisis leading to devastating wildfires, floods, landslides and droughts which the oil and gas sector and their minions in government who depend on their economic clout, choose to ignore. The ongoing attacks on Ukraine by Russia. The devastating, disproportionate and disgusting onslaught of Gaza by a west-backed non-democratic Israeli government which we accept because doing something might lead to something worse (though how that could be is beyond me). Continual economic strife caused by an American administration too daft to know what it is doing. That same administration’s quick step into trying to rid the US of all migrants and refugees through autocratic means using questionable arrests and deportations. The same administration is trying to rewrite several decades of advancement of women’s rights and LCBTQ+ acceptance. The same administration’s attempt to ban books and artistic expression which they deem anti-American. Lastly, I suppose, because to give any more examples would be overkill, is the bald-faced corruption of that same administration using their government platform to enrich themselves and their friends (either through cryptocurrency schemes or accepting large gifts from foreign governments). We don’t actually have to look that far. The Ford government in Ontario has made it their policy to dole out money to their friends and patrons who might benefit from any of their unnecessary schemes under the guise of infrastructure. I will also note that none of these governments causing such havoc are lefties. They are hard-right conservatives (from the MAGAites, to Putin, to Netanyahu). They are only growing in number from being elected in Italy, Hungary, and Poland to rising in the polls in Germany and France. Against their namesake, they aren’t conserving anything, especially not norms, which they are dismantling with glee.

It’s hard to put into words or even to know how to react. Then I heard this from Ezra Klein’s podcast:

“I don't know how to hold all the feelings, even all the thoughts I should have in a day right now. The emergency is here, and the kids need help with their homework. I have friends who have fallen terribly ill, and others who have just seen their test results come back clear.

I spend days covering efforts to rip healthcare from people and torch the global economy, and then I'm supposed to go to a birthday party. I look down at my phone at smoldering ruins in Ukraine and Gaza and Sudan, and then I look up into a spring day. I know on some level this is always true, that we are just more or less alive to it at different times.

But I guess I'm feeling more alive to it right now, more overwhelmed by it right now, more curious about how to keep myself open to it right now. Then I ran into this unusually beautiful book that's all about this experience. It's called Lost & Found.

It's by Kathryn Schulz, a writer at The New Yorker, and it's structured around a loss, that of her father, around a finding, that of finding and falling in love with her partner. And then it's this really moving meditation on the way it's all connected, the way that we, –“live with both at once, with many things at once, everything connected to its opposite, everything connected to everything.” It seemed worth the conversation.”
(From The Ezra Klein Show: Our Lives Are an Endless Series of 'And', May 30, 2025. This material may be protected by copyright.)

Listening to this I was reminded of the idea of Hypernormalisation which, oddly has been referenced in various social media posts and a Guardian article. Again, in the words of others, this time from Wikipedia:
“The word (hypernormalisation) was coined by Alexei Yurchak, a professor of anthropology who was born in Leningrad and later went to teach at the University of California, Berkeley.” In his book …” which describes paradoxes of Soviet life during the 1970s and 1980s. He says everyone in the Soviet Union knew the system was failing, but no one could imagine any alternative to the status quo, and politicians and citizens alike were resigned to maintaining the pretense of a functioning society.” In the 2016 BBC Adam Curtis documentary, HyperNormalisation, he argues a similar thing happened in the west - in it he “argues that following the global economic crises of the 1970s, governments, financiers and technological utopians gave up on trying to shape the complex "real world" and instead established a simpler "fake world" for the benefit of multi-national corporations that is kept stable by neoliberal governments.”

Simply put, as financial, political and social systems fall apart someone thought it was better if no one thought about it too much.

All of this reminded me of a quote:
“Things fall apart;
The centre cannot hold,”

I didn’t know it, but this quote, which felt so appropriate, is very apt. It’s from a 1919 W.B. Yeats poem called The Second Coming which was about a turbulent and chaotic time in post-war Europe when Ireland was struggling for theirindependence. The line refers to an ever-widening whirl of chaos in which we imagine everything falling apart without a focal point (this from Dr Oliver Tearle, Loughborough University). While this may have seemed an exceptional time in Europe it has apparently become our everyday.

Ironically, while I find this line speaks to our time against authoritarianism, Yeats, as a young man, was fascinated by authoritarianism and saw democracy as a threat to "order". Knowing that these complex and sometimes contradictory ideas were more eloquently captured in a poem reinforced something I’ve been feeling. That is art has no purpose. It does not feed us. It does not shelter us. It does not protect us. Though in other ways it does all of those things. In the end, we need it. It doesn’t matter whether art serves some purpose. We just keep making it. From the time we discovered fire until the time we’ll be dust, we’ll keep making art. The Neanderthals didn't make art, but we do. Neanderthals didn't survive, but we did. That’s why it matters. It matters because we can’t help ourselves. When everything is fine, art and its creation seem a whimsy or an extravagance but when everything falls apart, it’s necessary and it's the only thing we’ve got to defend ourselves. We can’t stop doing it and right now that matters more than ever.