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.
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.
Community is a sign that love is possible in a materialistic world where people so often either ignore or fight each other. It is a sign that we don't need a lot of money to be happy--in fact, the opposite.
Christian community is the place where we keep the flame of hope alive among us and take it seriously so that it can grow and become stronger in us.
As a community, we create a lot of space for fighting and pushing back, but not enough for connecting and healing.
Community means caring: caring for people. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says: "He who loves community destroys community; he who loves the brethren builds community." A community is not an abstract ideal.
Our true destiny...is a world built from the bottom up by competent citizens living in solid communities, engaged in and by their places.
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