As The Blood Dimmed Tide Is Loosed...

by Stephen Warrilow
(Singapore/Vietnam)

Many years ago when I was at school, and studying for my literature exams, I was mesmerised by the power and the sense of impending doom and darkness in the opening lines of the Irish poet W.B Yeats' chilling 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."

I was reminded of this when I read a recent article by New York Times column Thomas L.Friedman who makes the point that:

"Since the end of the cold war, the global system has been held together to a large degree by four critical ruling bargains. Today all four are coming unstuck at once and will need to be rebuilt."

In All Together Now Friedman makes the point that there are 4 major change factors impacting all of us, namely:

# The likely demise of the European monetary system
# Political turmoil and change in the Arab world
# The prospect of China's economic growth stalling
# The near death of the American dream of endless easy public and personal credit.

I really do recommend that you read All Together Now - this will affect every single one of us - regardless of which corner of the globe we inhabit.

Friedman is certainly not the first to say all this, many people - including myself - have recognised that we are living through challenging times, and it is going to get much worse in the months and years ahead before it gets better.

My personal view is that as the unprecedented and almost unimaginable levels of debt incurred by previous US, UK and most European administrations (in the pursuit of the "war on terror", high public spending and bank bail outs) eventually works it way through the world's economic and financial systems, many of us face the very real and painful possibility of downsizing, organisational restructuring, unemployment, and major change in corporate and personal struggles for financial survival.

Friedman wraps up his piece with a challenge to the American people:

"If we don’t get our act together — which will require collective action normally reserved for wartime — we are not going to just be prolonging an American crisis, but feeding a global one."

My own practical response to these challenges has been to launch a new site:

Zen Tools - For Tough Times

This site provides practical resources to show you how to change your life and how to cope in tough times.

I commend it to you.

Zen Tools - For Tough Times