In his most famous speech, #WilliamFaulkner spoke in 1950 of writers laboring under a cloud of gnawing fear during the Cold War. But his words also apply perfectly to the gratuitous fear and outrage constantly being sown today in #PartisanPolitics.
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Faulkner: "Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up?
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"Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
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"He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but...
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"...the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed – love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse.
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"He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion.
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"His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands."
- William Faulkner, Nobel Prize acceptance speech, December 10, 1950.
Audio: https://buff.ly/3ldnftS
Transcript: https://buff.ly/2IsrXOy
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Let's all think twice about how much constant, cheaply sown outrage is costing us.
Turn off the popular media pundits who are specifically being paid to make you upset. They are not worth your time.
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One thing you might consider doing instead is forging connections with people from other walks of life outside your usual circle or tribe.
We're all human. Our differences are smaller than we think.
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