Where there is no human connection, there is no compassion. Without compassion, then community, commitment, loving-kindness, human understanding, and peace all shrivel. Individuals become isolated, the isolated turn cruel, and the tragic hovers in the forms of domestic and civil violence. Art and literature are antidotes to that.
Interpretation
Human connection breeds compassion, which is essential for a healthy community.
This quote emphasizes the vital role of human connection in fostering compassion among individuals. Without compassion, essential elements of community such as commitment, understanding, and peace deteriorate, leading to isolation and potential cruelty. Vreeland suggests that art and literature serve as remedies to combat this isolation and promote empathetic connections within society.
In practice
During a speech about the importance of community service.
When I think how art education is eliminated whenever we get a budget crunch in the schools, I have to stand up and say that even when there was dire poverty ten blocks away from Tiffany Studios in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, there was art and creativity within.
There is no executive order; there is no law that can require the American people to form a national community. This we must do as individuals and if we do it as individuals, there is no President of the United States who can veto that decision.
We must delight in each other, make others conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body.
At a time when everything seems so out of control and the people you've elected are bogus and there's so much random violence and hatred, it fills you with such hope and admiration to even be part for a short time in a community where people have connected to strangers to try to put out a hand.
Neighborhoods and communities are complex organisms that will be resilient only if they are healthy along a number of interrelated dimensions, much as a human body cannot be healthy without adequate air, water, rest, and food.
As you discover what strength you can draw from your community in this world from which it stands apart, look outward as well as inward. Build bridges instead of walls.
Busy people tend to forgo the one activity - TV watching _ that is most lethal to community involvement
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