KW- Thanks for sharing this. Free speech is, strangely, a concept I didn't grow up with. So when I moved to America, there was expectations and dreams attached to the term--and perhaps to the reality. The concept has definitely made strides in history, but you're right in that there's much work to be done. And we are it! Hope the week has been kind to you, KW. Cheers, -Thalia
What a super comment and we as Americans are still far away from achieving true free speech. Many of our fellow Americans do not believe in it. It is the only way to the kind of polity we imagine we could achieve. Apparently we have all been chosen or we will go the way of other failed species. It has been a great week - and I hope for you as well!
Appreciate the restack!
After the first death, there is no other...
--Dylan Thomas
Refusal to Mourn the Death by Fire of a Child in London
Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness
And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn
The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.
Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
Thanks once again!
by John Donne
Appreciated!
Appreciated!
KW- Thanks for sharing this. Free speech is, strangely, a concept I didn't grow up with. So when I moved to America, there was expectations and dreams attached to the term--and perhaps to the reality. The concept has definitely made strides in history, but you're right in that there's much work to be done. And we are it! Hope the week has been kind to you, KW. Cheers, -Thalia
What a super comment and we as Americans are still far away from achieving true free speech. Many of our fellow Americans do not believe in it. It is the only way to the kind of polity we imagine we could achieve. Apparently we have all been chosen or we will go the way of other failed species. It has been a great week - and I hope for you as well!
When we mentally degrade the actions of others that do no harm says we have along way to go.