‘The Second Coming’, written by William Butler Yeats in 1919, captures the mood gripping much of the world in 2026. The world is tipping into a maelstrom of mutually destructive zero-sum behaviour: things are falling apart and mere anarchy is being loosed upon the world. The mission of CEFA is premised on agreement with the first stanza of the poem and on the recognition that we cannot afford to wait in hope or dread for the deus ex machina envisaged in the second.
To pull back from the precipice will require a critical mass of humanity – especially in the most powerful states – to agree, at least grudgingly, on a new and more stable world order. Such agreement will only come about through acceptance of a new grand narrative about the relationship between might and right.
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 the 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?
‘The Second Coming’
William Butler Yeats
The Enigma of Reason (Mercier and Sperber, 2021) argues persuasively that human beings are endowed with the faculty of reason not to enable us to make good choices but to craft stories that others will perceive as sufficiently coherent and credible to inspire the confidence required for cooperative relationships. A sense of justice is central to this perception. As Pascal famously pointed out, “Justice without might is helpless; might without justice is tyrannical.”
To construct a new world order that constrains the worst and enables the best in human nature will require a new, or at least renovated and re-energised, ethical framework that resonates with a critical mass of humanity. CEFA has been founded to contribute to the creation of this essential ethical framework.
In the contemporary world, there is no shortage of states, groups and individuals who assert normative positions. Those who are full of passionate intensity either advocate amorality in world affairs or defend moral positions rooted in religious traditions that do not resonate with secular people (or indeed with many religious people.) To many, secular defenders of human rights appear to lack all conviction and sound archaic and utopian.
CEFA, by contrast, offers a platform grounded neither in any particular religious tradition nor in a belief in amoral realpolitik, but in the robust conviction that we human beings can choose to listen to the better angels of our nature and create a world more conducive to the flourishing of life in all its variety.
Support us
We are committed to shaping a world where principles and pragmatism go hand in hand.
Your support keeps our research independent and our advocacy free from outside influence — ensuring ethical considerations stay at the heart of global decision-making.