Born to an age where horror has become commonplace, where tragedy has, by its monotonous repetition, become a parody of sorrow, we need to fence off a few parks where humans try to be fair, where skill has some hope of reward, where absurdity has a harder time than usual getting a ticket.
Interpretation
In a world overwhelmed by tragedy and horror, we must create spaces for kindness and fairness.
This quote reflects on the pervasive nature of suffering and absurdity in modern life, suggesting that as these experiences become normal, they can overshadow humanity's capacity for goodness. Boswell emphasizes the importance of intentionally creating environments where fairness and skill are valued, encouraging a collective effort to counteract the negativity that surrounds us.
In practice
In a discussion about the negative impact of the news, one might quote Boswell to emphasize the need for positive spaces.
Baseball has traditionally possessed a wonderful lack of seriousness. The game's best player, Babe Ruth, was a Rabelaisian fat man, and its most loved manager, Casey Stengel, spoke gibberish. In this lazy sport, only the pitcher pours sweat. Then he takes three days off.
Baseball is to our everyday experience what poetry often is to common speech — a slightly elevated and concentrated form.
Conversation is the blood of baseball. It flows through the game, an invigorating system of anecdotes. Ballplayers are tale tellers who have polished their malarkey and winnowed their wisdom for years.
Perhaps this war will pass like the others which divided us leaving us dead, killing us along with the killers but the shame of this time puts its burning fingers to our faces. Who will erase the ruthlessness hidden in innocent blood?
Politics separate men by bringing them together only superficially. Art and culture unite us in a common anguish that is our only possible fraternity, that of our existential and metaphysical community.
Never to wrong others takes one a long way towards peace of mind.
They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth.
Some calamities - the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, 9/11 - have come like summer lightning, as bolts from the blue. The looming crisis of America's Ponzi entitlement structure is different. Driven by the demographics of an aging population, its causes, timing and scope are known.
Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult - at least I have found it so - than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind...We behold the face of nature bright with gladness...We do not see, or we forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on insects and seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life.
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