Do you remember a time when kindness, respect for others and personal dignity was more the norm than the exception? When I was growing up mass killings, beheadings, gang rapes and acts of terrorism were rarities; certainly not routine as they appear to be nowadays in numerous parts of the world.
I’ll go a step further to ask whether the human race has crossed a line whereby instead of being shocked by bad news we are more surprised by news portraying people’s goodness. Is this because human nature is regressing rather than evolving?
For instance, my reaction to a woman caught on camera strolling along a street in Brooklyn munching on a pizza without pause even as an SUV plunged into a nearby pedestrian, was disgust but not surprise.
Boko Haram using little girls as walking bombs elicits my anger but again not my surprise. I wondered whether I had become used to uncaring societies where loss of life isn’t worth a glance and children are disposable as long as their death is for “a cause.”
Could it be that atrocities splashed over our TV or computer screens daily, in the form of news or “entertainment,” are undermining our ability to be shocked? Or is it quite simply that the bad guys get more coverage?
Don’t have the answers, but I’m convinced that the milk of human kindness is still flowing despite messages projected by the mass media giving the opposite impression. There are good people out there, it’s just a shame they are not being sufficiently recognized or rewarded.
My own heart was warmed by the news of mostly female Muslim passengers on a Kenyan bus, ambushed by Al-Shabaab militants close to the Ethiopian border, who courageously handed around spare hijabs and told the attackers that everyone on the bus was Muslim. Kill us all, or leave us alone they said. They put their own lives on the line to save those of their fellow, predominately Christian, passengers.
Likewise, the girls of Vernon Hills, a Chicago high school, deserve recognition for launching their “Walk a Mile in Her Hijab” initiative in answer to Donald Trump’s Islamophobic calls resulting in 17 non-Muslim women wearing the traditional headscarf for an entire day to promote understanding and respect toward the Muslim community that’s under attack by wielders of the politics of fear.
A truly rare individual is Alex Assali, a refugee from Syria who had to leave his family behind when his life was threatened. Now safe in Berlin, albeit unemployed, he uses almost half of his monthly welfare payment amounting to 350 Euros to feed the homeless each week — and he does this under the banner of giving back to help the German people.
Facebook often gets a bad rap for being the instrument through which marriages are often broken-up and the place where many nefarious plots have been cooked-up. But the other day, Facebook was vindicated in my eyes. A friend in Cairo put out a call on behalf of her friend’s young son who she said was in hospital dying because the hospital didn’t have his blood type available. Within hours, several people headed to the hospital willing to donate and the child lived. His parents who were being seeped of all hope were now “crying with happiness.”
We may not all be as brave as those Muslim ladies in Kenya, but if we want to there’s nothing stopping any of us from doing something nice to add one more brick to the bank of global goodness. Even small contributions, such as spending time with a grieving friend, taking a meal to a lonely elderly person, or helping out at an orphanage, can make a real difference.
Our world needs shaking-up. Kindness needs to be made cool; not only for its own account, but also as a repellant to ugly trends as well as to counter-balance the media onslaught of bad news, worse news and “warning: These images are disturbing”-type news in the minds of our children.
I grew up watching The Flowerpot Men, reading the Beano and listening to the Archers. Kids today see it all, both real and imaginary, in glorious Technicolor. If there is no reverse switch to pull, then allowing kids to taste the rewards of a simple act of kindness would be a small step on the ladder.
