The chaos that concerned O’Casey was the Irish Civil War of 1922-23.

Alfred Hitchcock thought highly of the play and made it into a film in 1930 starring the legendary Irish actor, Barry Fitzgerald. The film is on YouTube if you want to watch it.

I mention O’Casey’s play to highlight the enduring belief that, no matter the time or era, people have always believed the world was teetering on the edge of chaos.

My 1969 Pocket Oxford Dictionary defines chaos as ‘utterly without order or arrangement’ but my 2013 edition has refined this to a more simple ‘utter confusion’.

Roget’s Thesaurus suggests correlations with bedlam, shambles, frenzy and turmoil, among other possibilities.

There is actually a scientific theory of chaos that recognises the nonlinear and unpredictable surprises that occur in nature and human behaviour, and that seeks ways to deal with them.

According to Chaos Theory, recognising the chaotic nature of our world can lead to new insights, power and wisdom. 

A word of caution though. Chaos is also one of those annoying clichéd words that is stock in trade of our unimaginative media.

Anything from a burst water main holding up traffic to a country raining missiles down on its neighbour can induce use of the word.

‘Chaos’ is so attractive to sensationalist media because it is anathema to the settled, predictable and routine existence that most people prefer.

For the media, Chicken Little running around screaming that the sky is falling, is their preferred view of the world.

So, do we think the world is in chaos because the media keeps telling us so or because this is the reality?

If the world has always been in a state of chaos, what’s different now? Has chaos actually increased or is that just media hype?

There is no doubt that nowadays we have the tools to create chaos on a scale unimagined by O’Casey.

There are three modern developments that render plausible claims that the world is experiencing greater chaos: the explosion of population; global warming and climate change; and the rise of neo-liberalism.

If you add to these some of the age-old propensities of humans - like our love of conflict and war - it becomes a potent mix.  

The common theme running through these chaos-creating phenomena is the absence of an adequate political response.

At best what we observe is a pathetic tinkering at the edges of these existential problems. A tinkering to create the impression that corrective action is being taken when clearly it is not.

This makes the more cynical amongst us to assume that chaos is the preferred option of many politicians and that they engage in creating it.

Thankfully among our younger generations there are signs of the emergence of a new kind of seriousness about these interlinked threats.

This is heartening news for the few baby boomers who have not surrendered their souls to mammon and indifference.

Not that the advent of a more thoughtful, action-orientated era will see an end to chaos.

At the very best it might promote a more realistic approach to dealing with it.

An approach that may even force the media to seek out another effusive word for their doomsaying.