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あらすじ・解説
“There are three things which are real: God, human folly and laughter. The first two are beyond our comprehension, so we must do what we can with the third.”—John F. KennedyI don’t recall precisely when I read these lines for the first time, but since that day, long ago, the words have never left me. From time to time I’ve wondered about the context in which Jack Kennedy spoke them, and was surprised to learn recently of their origin. They were written, not spoken, and were inscribed on a silver mug presented as a birthday present to a friend, Dave Powers, Special Assistant to President during the Kennedy administration, on his birthday in 1962.As a Massachusetts boy raised in the Catholic tradition, with an Irish mother, I was keenly aware of Kennedy and the challenges he faced in winning the presidency. Family members provided us children with campaign buttons; one of them read “If I Were 21, I’d Vote for Kennedy.” I don’t recall actually wearing them, particular not to school in our overwhelmingly Protestant town on the South Shore of Massachusetts. At school our young classmates echoed the prejudiced words they no doubt had heard at home about “the Pope running the country.” They even asserted that a tunnel would be built between Washington D.C. and the Vatican to facilitate the Pope’s takeover of the U.S. At a time when named telephone exchanges still existed, a frequently voiced joke was that the White House phone number would be changed to “Et cum Spirit - 220.”In retrospect, Kennedy’s election and the reality of his incomplete term in office did not eradicate such prejudices. I was at home, sick, the day of Kennedy’s assassination, but when my siblings returned home they reported that the reaction to the announcement at school of the President’s death included cheers from some of their classmates. Still, the issue of Catholicism as a barrier to national elected office does appear to have been eliminated in the aftermath of Kennedy’s demise, the remnant of these days being the moral/political question of abortion.Kennedy was from a wealthy family, and it was common knowledge in Massachusetts that not all that wealth had been earned simply through hard and honest work. However Jack Kennedy and his family claimed the high ground culturally, and his time in office came to be characterised as “Camelot”—a time of glamour, of progressive thinking and bold new endeavours, and a celebration of the arts.I think of the words Kennedy had inscribed on the gift to his friend frequently.When I think of human folly now, the connection with politics is paramount. What folly to deny what Mother Nature tells us, in ever more desperate tones, that we are destroying out planetary home? What folly to promote hatred over love, anger over reason, greed over human equality and need?I also question myself: is it folly to allow oneself to become attached, as observer or contributor, to the daily onslaught of assertions, ripostes, and indignation? Is it folly, to succumb, fret or respond as one can? Or is there perverse succour in such engagement?I worry actively about the state of our world and the state of the country where I was born. Yes, it might be foolish to suppose it makes a difference, but I share my views from time to time on the issues that concern me most—above all the tragedy of healthcare in the United States and the culture that has incubated and cultivated it. It need not be that way, if only we could, as a society, contemplate our human condition and value empathy over wealth, and place the common good above selfishness.I worry, too, about education in the United States, at all levels. Adult reading levels are of deep concern, of course; the disappearance of civics in school curricula and a lack of understanding of the functions of government has visible consequences. But should we not worry equally about the decline of the humanities? Many areas of the humanities have fallen victim to fiscal belt-tightening, and indeed to the notion that they do not contribute tangibly to workforce development. I say that is true folly.Engagement with the humanities—including the arts—teaches us to pause, reflect, contemplate and evaluate, fostering critical faculties that provide moral clarity, enable critical thinking, and the capacity to contemplate the best that human creativity has given us. They bind us to our human past, to its glories and to the depths it too often sinks. They give us the ability to focus, to sustain attention, to appreciate. Does not the ability to reflect and perceive beauty and meaning have some relationship to the capacity for empathy, for caring, and to want some sense of community and shared common values? To enable us to interpret and better understand political speech and screed? To enable us to recognise our common humanity and to behave accordingly as individuals and as a society?Laughter. I grew up with laughter. My father was a ...