Your life is a stream, and its story is what happens on its banks, analogously to Will Durant’s idea about the story of civilization:
Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting, and doing the things historians usually record; while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry, and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happens on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river.
(Quoted from page 142 of Storycraft, by Jack Hart. The University of Chicago Press, 2011.)
For a brief biography of Will Durant, click here. For images of or relating to Will Durant, click here.
For a printed interview with author Jack Hart, click here. For images of or relating to Jack Hart, click here.
Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting, and doing the things historians usually record; while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry, and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happens on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river.
(Quoted from page 142 of Storycraft, by Jack Hart. The University of Chicago Press, 2011.)
For a brief biography of Will Durant, click here. For images of or relating to Will Durant, click here.
For a printed interview with author Jack Hart, click here. For images of or relating to Jack Hart, click here.
Speaking of people killing, I posted the following comment to the San Luis Obispo Tribune 4 months ago (They printed it with minor changes):
--Why?--
“At 9:40 A.M. on All Saints’ Day, November 1, 1755, the earth shrugged its shoulders (Lisbon earthquake) in Portugal and Northern Africa; in six minutes thirty churches and a thousand houses were demolished. 15,000 people were killed…Why had the Great Inscrutable chosen so Catholic a city, so holy a festival, and such an hour when nearly all pious citizens were attending Mass? (Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Voltaire). On December 14, 2012, a gunman shot 20 school children. If a god exists, why does it let these events happen?
James Radford
Templeton
Posted by: James Radford | April 28, 2013 at 08:59 PM