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THE GYRE
"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.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight; somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
-William Butler Yeats
THE GYRE
The dictionary would have you pronounce gyre with a soft g (/ˈjī(ə)r/ ). However, William Butler Yeats is a large part of our inspiration, and he used the hard g. So, here at The Culture Gyre, we say it correctly, with the hard g.
Yeats' Gyre is a pair of vortexes facing into one another. It is a model that is naturally applicable to human nature, and therefore it perfectly fits many patterns through human history, and more specifically, culture.
It could be an entire species, a society, an empire, a culture, or simply an idea; but if it runs its course and naturally cycles into its successor (ie. Romanticism, Modernism, Post-Modernism), it likely fits the model.
It all starts at a point. An artistic era for instance, starts with one key ideological or stylistic difference that sets it apart. As it gains popularity and success, it grows and evolves (the vortex widens). The inevitable result is a point in which it no longer reflects the original intention or concept. At this point the vortex hits the open end, but, out of the death of an era, a new starting point is born. A new idea or group of people that begins the cycle over again.
Yeats saw it in his day. He could feel the end of an era coming in "The Second Coming". We have a responsibility, not only prepare, accept, and participate in culture shifts, but to appreciate their current state while we're in them.
As a culture appreciation page, we aim to appreciate, participate in, and comment on the culture we live in.
We hope you join us.