to explain what is happening in the Arab world. The poet is Yeats. The poem is The Second Coming. Yeats wrote it in 1919, in the aftermath of the horror of the Great War. The key word for Cohen is "gyre" which is a vortex, a circular or spiral motion, especially in ocean currents. While Cohen says that Yeats has a theory of history that is confused and mystical, what matters is lines like these"“Turning and turning in the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer.” And thus in his op ed, titled THe Arab Gyre, he sets the stage for his remarks with these words about the idea of Yeast:
His vision involved the notion that at any moment forces were raveling and unraveling, forming and disintegrating in Yin-Yang polarity, an idea Yeats represented through two conic helixes — “gyres” superimposed on each other with the apex or narrowest point of one at the center of the other’s base. Moments of crisis occurred as history shifted from the outer to the inner gyre.
Cohen is not willing to predict the exact form of what while transpire, but in this remarkable column he notes how there has been what he calls a dramatic acceleration of history in the Arab world, as he also references images from the Yeats poem, such as the center not holding, and rough beasts, before telling us
But no foul volley of bullets from Syria’s Bashar al-Assad can stop the convulsive movement of the gyres. Technology and demography have ushered Arab societies into a new age as the once vast information gap between ruler and ruled has narrowed.
Many have commented about the inconsistency of US in particular, and Western in general, responses to the turmoil in various nations. Certainly we have been far more willing to be interventionist in Libya than in, say Bahrein (where our Gulf fleet is based) or Saudi Arabia (upon whose good will and oil the West remains very dependent).
Cohen notes that what is happening is not parallel to Iran during the time of Khomeini, that it is not Arabs asserting a Muslim identity against the West, but rather an increasing insistence upon freedom, representation, and the rule of law. Then comes two paragraphs which are the heart of his piece:
These are Western values. But the revolutions are also anti-Western. They constitute an Arab demand for escape from a Western trap. That trap consisted of saying to Arabs that the only option open to them if they were not to be controlled by radical Islamists was to be suppressed by Western-backed despots.
This binary definition of the Arab world, more than 30 years after the eruption of Islamism, had become a shameful artifice, a lie based on self-serving intellectual feebleness in Western capitals. Its cover is now blown.
Too many remain trapped in the artificial bifurcation of possibilities. Of course, in our own politics there is the further problem of how fear of Islamists is used for domestic political purposes, and no matter what position is taken by the current administration it will be used as a pretext by some political opponents for further attacks upon Obama in an attempt to undermine his legitimacy.
Cohen reminds us that the sparks for great change often have the impact they do because they are "historical gyres widened toward crisis." He cites as examples the Boston Tea Party for American independence, the shots fired by Gavrilo Princep in Sarajevo as the impetus for the Great War (which itself is, I remind readers, the occasion for the poem by Yeats), the executions of Connolly and MacBride for Irish independence, and Rosa Parks for the Civil Rights era in this country (and remember, it is not just Parks, but the elevation of a young minister named Martin Luther King Jr. to a role of prominent leadership in the movement).
You should read the Cohen. If you don't already know it, you should also read and ponder the poem by Yeats.
There are many moments when the possibility of what happens depends upon what some actors choose to do. I am not necessarily of the belief that it depends upon great men (or women) and their actions, because I believe that those we see as significant leaders at such moments are less the initiators than those who recognize the possibilities and step up to leadership. After all, King did not initiate what happened in Montgomery. Sometimes the leader becomes a focal point for the already spiraling hopes and desires and demands of a group of people.
What a leader can and probably should do is to recognize the possibilities inherent in action, albeit with the accompanying risks.
The problem is that change is rarely neat. Or as Yeats puts it so bluntly Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; The next line addresses anarchy, and those in positions of power and authority who foresee the possibility of "anarchy" too often remain frozen in models that no longer function in a new environment.
There is a beast - or is it a set of passions - A shape with lion body and the head of a man about which one can wonder whether it is the power of the feline or the thought process of the human that will prevail. In which direction will it turn?
Poetry offers insight beyond the mere meanings of the words themselves. Perhaps that is why so much, at least in Western religion, of the most expressive and powerful religious expression is formulated through poetry, often sung in hymns, other times recited.
The Arab world has often been shaped by poetry. I wonder what poems those impassioned at the possibility of reshaping their worlds, independent of the false dichotomy posed and supported by Western powers, are now being written? What impact will they have upon the minds, hearts, and souls of those living through the turmoil, refusing to be crushed by bullets of tyrants?
Roger Cohen offered a poet's paradigm, a set of words, perhaps, or perhaps an understanding, through which to view what is happening almost halfway around the world.
It is not the only lens one can use. There are other interpretations.
I found it powerful, I found that it challenged my own thinking, or rather, forced me to reconsider possibilities that did not immediately come to mind.
I wonder whether any Western political and governmental leaders are willing to have their own ways of thinking and acting similarly challenged?