We in the center that cannot hold can only watch as things fall apart.
In so many ways, the falcon can no longer hear the falconer. The phrase is drawn from William Butler 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.
The falcon can no longer hear the falconer describes our disintegrating era well.
The politicos can no longer hear the people they supposedly serve.
Concentrated wealth no longer heeds any falconer; it is free to exploit its power in the market and the halls of government.
Unconstrained by an inner falconer of integrity, many seek to game the system to maximize their private gain by any means available.
Market manipulators, equally unconstrained, ceaselessly rig markets for their private gain and the benefit of their cronies.
The circular gyres have been widening for years, and the commands of the public, of common sense, of personal integrity and of a transparent, open market grow fainter and fainter.
The notion that the falconer should be heeded has been lost. There are no limits on greed, power, exploitation, fraud, misrepresentation, manipulation of markets or the issuance of lies to further a con, pass legislation or boost the value of a security.
As Yeats observed, we live in an era of faked sincerity and threadbare melodramas played for public consumption: those apologizing for their lies lack all conviction, while those seeking to rouse a partisan mob are full of phony passion.
Disillusioned with the pillaging and predation of our supposed leaders who have circled away from all constraint, we in the center that cannot hold can only watch things fall apart as the orderly universe operated by the few at the expense of the many dissolves (in Aldous Huxley’s phrase) into a world of planless incoherence.
