All of us are made up of the stories that we listen to, the ones we disagree with and the ones that we agree with.
Stanley CrouchRead
Our job as writers and thinkers in the time is how to bring about the occasions that let people have that first-person experience - or the metaphoric experience that allows them to see human continuity as opposed to total threat, total willingness to do violence.
Interpretation
Writers and thinkers should create opportunities for people to connect with their shared humanity rather than focus on conflict.
In this quote, Stanley Crouch emphasizes the responsibility of writers and thinkers to cultivate moments that foster deep, personal understanding among people. Instead of highlighting division and violence, it is crucial to frame experiences in a way that underscores our common humanity, allowing individuals to appreciate the continuity and connection that exists within the human experience.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the role of art in promoting peace.
All of us are made up of the stories that we listen to, the ones we disagree with and the ones that we agree with.
The high point of civilization is that you can hate me and I can hate you but we develop an etiquette that allows us to deal with each other because if we acted solely upon our impulse we'd probably go to war.
When a violent minority that crosses color lines comes to believe that killing those you know or do not know is a reasonable solution to problems, we are in need of another vision.
After the war people said, 'If you can plan for war, why can't you plan for peace?' When I was 17, I had a letter from the government saying, 'Dear Mr. Benn, will you turn up when you're 17 1/2? We'll give you free food, free clothes, free training, free accommodation, and two shillings, ten pence a day to just kill Germans.' People said, well, if you can have full employment to kill people, why in God's name couldn't you have full employment and good schools, good hospitals, good houses?
It is much easier for me to imagine a praying murderer, a praying prostitute, than a vain person praying. Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity.
We are served by organic ghosts, he thought, who, speaking and writing, pass through this our new environment. Watching, wise, physical ghosts from the full-life world, elements of which have become for us invading but agreeable splinters of a substance that pulsates like a former heart.
Oh I've plenty of time, my time is entirely my own.
Synchronistic events constitute moments in which a 'cosmic' or 'greater' meaning becomes gradually conscious in an individual; generally it is a shaking experience.
Our waking life's desire to shape the world to our convenience invites all manner of paradox and difficulty.
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