The best lack all conviction, while the worse are full of passionate intensity.
William Butler Yeats (The Second Coming)
Reminded of a poem today by hearing one line.
I studied Yeat's poem, The Second Coming, in more than one of my university English Lit classes many, many moons ago. I hated it. It gave me the weeby geebies. The second coming of what? What was this monstrous thing the sphinx represented? What major transformation did it symbolize? It certainly wasn't sweet and innocent! And why did every Lit class seem to bring this poem up when it was so far from a perfect poem?
This one line, I heard misquoted today, reminded me of this poem. It says so much without getting into the major theme of the poem. Yeats in his seemingly blasphemous and apocolyptic poem is describing how the world he witnessed in 1919 was changing, how all false notions were falling apart at the center, and how we as the human race would be destroyed and than reborn (Of course he doesn't make that sound very pretty but I believe he was pulling the ancient, spiritual mysticism from the past and putting it back into the aftermath of what religion, science, technology, war (WWI), human history and adherence to "conviction: will leave behind???)
Is it not about getting beyond conceptual knowledge and our need for right or wrong?
The best do not cling to their beliefs and ideologies. They are okay with not knowing. And the worse...those who will do the most damage, create the most destruction, go to war...are full of passionate intensity...They cling to their opinions of what is right or wrong, good or bad. They assume they know that which they don't.
Hmmm!
All is well.
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