Quote of the Day (Alexander Pope, on the Reign of Chaos and Division)

“Joy to great Chaos! Let Division reign:

Chromatic tortures soon shall drive them hence,

Break all their nerves, and fritter all their sense:

One Trill shall harmonize joy, grief, and rage,

Wake the dull church, and lull the ranting stage;

To the same notes thy sons shall hum, or snore,

And all thy yawning daughters cry, encore.” —English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744), The Dunciad (1728)

Pope wrote his mock epic (one of my favorite long poems) about the baleful consequences of incompetence in the arts. 

But today, “chaos” and “division” describe a wider landscape—beginning in the "ranting stage" of the electronic culture, a vast black hole of inventive, hatred, and untruths, with its now-dimmed light bouncing toward the world of politics, which in turn reflects it back toward that hole, with the light growing ever fainter as it ricochets. 

Pope’s apocalyptic finale is of Creation reversed, and so it feels at times today, as the wider understanding heralded by God-given reason is gradually obscured by opportunists through polarizing propaganda.