Agree.

Only when we build up our trust by setting our final goal toward peace, and really looking into our intention and final action and compromise (give and take) to reach our peace. And that would be a stronger and kinder world.

Applying this to the kindness topic, “kindness” doesn’t have to be seen exclusively as a softening, as a suppression of hardness and selfish desires to free up a desire to perform a kind act. Kindness can also emanate from an unsuppressed and subliminated spirit, one overflowing with strength and the ability to extend outside oneself. The overabundant soul. This approach wides the scope when trying to account for and understand kindness. It avoids the error of simply diagnosing the modern world as in need of weakening and softening. In fact, a stronger world would also be a kinder world.

Who woulda thunk it?

Can you share the name of the program you watched, if not, it’s perfectly fine.

Thank you

“Is the capitalist system shunting our better human qualities into the realm of the “random”?” — very well put, can’t be more true than that.

I feel the same way about the random act of kindness really is not enough, it gives us the illusion of self satisfaction of being a good being.

It is so interesting to see things and truth observation being revealed layer by layer over the years. I came from another culture, certain American or extreme capitalism behaviors are so obviously different than other parts of the world, and it does take an outsider to recognize those behaviors right away. I can understand why those observations are not welcomed within this culture. So I started to adapt the culture behavior here just to fit in and that makes my days go easier. The greatest thing coming out of this economic meltdown is bringing back the awareness of how much we have been manipulated and sold by “super greed” that some people started to believe it is ok to be super greedy.

I think the direction of our emphasis on “education” is totally wrong in lots of societies. Most of us think the ultimate goal to education is to get a good paid, socially respected job, and be successful. Education should be emphasized toward the goal of having independent, provocative, informative thinking, toward peace and balance.

Only when educations are accessible to most of the populations in the world, when most people are educated enough to have independent informative thinking, then labor intense jobs would be more respected and paid decently without being abused into slavery.

Thank you, Tom and all your teammates for your unique approach.

This story reminds me of a recent commercial, when someone sees others landing helping hands, it is contagious, then it becomes a circle of goodness.

Someone pointed out earlier, kindness has 2 motives, strength & weakness. But to me, kindness is our transcended strength from our awareness of our vulnerability and weakness.

One day a man saw an old lady, stranded on the side of the road, but even in the dim light of day, he could see she needed help. So he pulled up in front of her Mercedes and got out. His Pontiac was still sputtering when he approached her.

Even with the smile on his face, she was worried. No one had stopped to help for the last hour or so. Was he going to hurt her? He didn’t look safe; he looked poor and hungry.

He could see that she was frightened, standing out there in the cold. He knew how she felt. It was that chill which only fear can put in you.

He said, ‘I’m here to help you, ma’am. Why don’t you wait in the car where it’s warm? By the way, my name is Bryan Anderson .’

Well, all she had was a flat tire, but for an old lady, that was bad enough. Bryan crawled under the car looking for a place to put the jack, skinning his knuckles a time or two. Soon he was able to change the tire. But he had to get dirty and his hands hurt.

As he was tightening up the lug nuts, she rolled down the window and began to talk to him. She told him that she was from St. Louis and was only just passing through.. She couldn’t thank him enough for coming to her aid.

Bryan just smiled as he closed her trunk. The lady asked how much she owed him. Any amount would have been all right with her. She already imagined all the awful things that could have happened had he not stopped. Bryan never thought twice about being paid. This was not a job to him. This was helping someone in need, and God knows there were plenty, who had given him a hand in the past. He had lived his whole life that way, and it never occurred to him to act any other way.

He told her that if she really wanted to pay him back, the next time she saw someone who needed help, she could give that person the assistance they needed, and Bryan added, ‘And think of me.’

He waited until she started her car and drove off. It had been a cold and depressing day, but he felt good as he headed for home, disappearing into the twilight.

A few miles down the road the lady saw a small cafe. She went in to grab a bite to eat, and take the chill off before she made the last leg of her trip home.. It was a dingy looking restaurant. Outside were two old gas pumps The whole scene was unfamiliar to her. The waitress came over and brought a clean towel to wipe her wet hair. She had a sweet smile, one that even being on her feet for the whole day couldn’t erase. The lady noticed the waitress was nearly eight months pregnant, but she never let the strain and aches change her attitude. The old lady wondered how someone who had so little could be so giving to a stranger. Then she remembered Bryan …

After the lady finished her meal, she paid with a hundred dollar bill. The waitress quickly went to get change for her hundred dollar bill, but the old lady had slipped right out the door. She was gone by the time the waitress came back. The waitress wondered where the lady could be.Then she noticed something written on the napkin

There were tears in her eyes when she read what the lady wrote: ‘You don’t owe me anything. I have been there too. Somebody once helped me out, the way I’m helping you. If you really want to pay me back, here is what you do: Do not let this chain of love end with you..’

Under the napkin were four more $100 bills.

Well, there were tables to clear, sugar bowls to fill, and people to serve, but the waitress made it through another day. That night when she got home from work and climbed into bed, she was thinking about the money and what the lady had written. How could the lady have known how much she and her husband needed it? With the baby due next month, it was going to be hard…..

She knew how worried her husband was, and as he lay sleeping next to her, she gave him a soft kiss and whispered soft and low, ‘Every thing’s going to be all right. I love you, Bryan Anderson .’

There is an old saying ‘What goes around comes around.’

Good friends are like stars….You don’t always see them, but you know they are always there.

Started from childhood, most people want to fit in, therefore we end up speaking, acting, and thinking (debatable) like people around us, even if at the end of a day, your conscience signals you that something is just not right. Next day, we wake up, start our day just like yesterday, this way we get around easier. When you hear yourself and others’ conversations, most of them are wasteful and junky. Every person on this planet earth should practice silence every so often, by doing so will clear our thought, conscience, and soon you will find yourself not being so reactive anymore, which is very beneficial.
Don’t we find ourselves being overly reactive always end up losing our internal and external battle.

We clean our body everyday for refreshment, we should do that for our soul, experiencing silence can put things in perspective. Energy is good, but too much energy can be destructive.

Unfortunately plenty of people grew up with air filled with noises and constant moving energy, our mind become so pumped up on steroid. We don’t know what to do with silence, which makes a lot of people feel uncomfortable, they associate silence as warning or alarming.

Silence is the water that cleanse our mind.

Reaching out to others with emptiness inside only leads to hollow promises of kindness, a shell of a smile.

Do or say something kind to yourself today and everyday.

Some of these cases are indeed puzzling. In Ibsen’s A DOLL’S HOUSE, Nora tells her husband that he had done her “a great wrong,” although he had been very kind to her. In Frederick Douglass’ great autobiography (LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS) includes the following passage: “[T]he kindness of the slave-master only gilded the chain. It detracted nothing from its weight or strength. The thought that men are made for other and better uses than slavery throve best under the gentle treatment of a kind master.” And in THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, after Jim, the runaway slave, has been recaptured, the local doctor describes Jim to his friends as follows: “I see plain enough he’d be working main hard lately. I liked the nigger for that; I tell you, gentlemen, a nigger like that is worth a thousand dollars–and kind treatment, too.”

These and other cases raise knotty problems. For example, if some cases of kindness are morally good while others are evil, how do we tell the difference? Is it always the case that, as Beverly states, “We know when it [kindness] is demonstrated to us?” How do we know? What is it, exactly, that makes an action or refusal to act really kind as opposed to clever deception? What makes a person as opposed to a particular act kind, and how is it that kind people can do very unkind things? How is it possible that we can deceive ourselves when we think, mistakenly, that we have done someone a kindness?

Since “Expanded Consciousness” has so ably quoted Nietzsche, I will close with another quotation from that “master of suspicion,” as Paul Ricoeur referred to him. “The proficiency of our finest scholars, their heedless industry, their heads smoking day and night, their very craftsmanship–how often the real meaning of all this lies in the desire to keep something hidden from oneself!” –ON THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS

Usually I can imagine truth – that someone, somewhere, worked to help my gain be possible – and did so from an environment of impoverishment. Similarly, if I pay ‘what the market will bear’ for labor, what are the conditions in which the laborer finds him/herself? Can I pay more than market value for labor even if my own gain is reduced?

I do not mean tossing $$ about willy-nilly – I mean what can I afford for this labor? How much does the outcome of the labor benefit me? How does it benefit (or tend to crush) the life of the laborer? It also means I am inclined to ask How important is the gain to me in the face of what it may cost another?

To some extent this line of inquiry also plays into issues of ’safety net’ social policy like universal health care. We do not live in a time when everyone in town happens to know the family across town is suffering and can rally around to meet the need.

It’s a big world with billions of folks in it. On the assumption that there is need, we can attempt to devise ways to pool our resources and ask a public body to distribute uplifting and/or life-saving support. The public body does this on my behalf because I cannot know of every individual’s need.

I have worked in a high-needs school community and have witnessed both children and parents ‘perk up’ and begin to thrive over time as a result of committed and intelligent support effort on the part of service deliverers (including teachers, including both academic and social/economic gain). When I remarked on the shift of children’s faces when they anticipate justice/compassion and it does not develop, I meant children hoping/anticipating adults will deliver. Following a path of blaming folks as ‘lazy’ is at best ignorant (unaware).

Whomever has greater “power” is in stronger position to guide toward justice/compassion in matters of social policy – whether it be ’social’ as in a community, a state, a nation, or global. Power can be seen as simply as ‘life experience’ and need not be associated with a specific role.

We may not need “government” (democratically elected bodies) to organize social benefit on our behalf, but it is theoretically much more practical/sensible to use government this way – much as a governing body of any organization, such as that of a minor league team, a sportsman’s group, or an economic cooperative venture may be organized. The idea is that we vote individuals – assign them by our vote – to look after a task on behalf of the group. This is neither capitalist nor communist except as the governing body makes it. Social democracy makes a lot of sense in theory as it implies human beings organizing elected bodies for themselves to look after what needs to be done – including policy that reflects our level of interest in compassion/justice.

The US Constitution is indeed a wonder, but it is not necessarily 100% sacred. Jefferson himself suggested it should be re-written by a special congress to do so every generation or so.

Jefferson also held a belief that every individual is essentially “aiming for the best that can be.” I have found this to be true and have known a number of sometimes maligned individuals who are viewed as lazy or worse. A recent study discovered the poor in America are far more likely than the more wealthy to act generously, and to share even scarce resources. I have often wondered how Jefferson would view where we have taken ourselves.

Jefferson’s take on the inherent dangers of banking institutions holds up, I believe – as does Eisenhower’s “beware the military/industrial complex”. “Industrial” has become “mega-corporation”, and compassion/justice is not a primary motivator of these any more than it may/may not be found in our elected governing bodies.

We are “one family” whether we like it or not. Kindness when it is comfortable or present in our immediate moment is one thing. Kindness (compassion/justice) by extrapolation extended to unknown, unseen, but easily imagined need is another, and is the one area I believe we do not often consider.

If we are to practice awareness of the latter (unknown but imaginable need) we – I believe – cannot help but temper our efforts toward personal gain with strong questions of “want vs need”.

In may respects, we remain in a condition of “it’s all about me” (and those I am pleased to know among my social/career/economic set.)

For me the call to kindness is deep, often un-heard, and I do hope we humans are “evolving” toward greater response to this call. As stated earlier, I have witnessed it in children – and I have come to the belief this call to justice/compassion is as innate as any contrary innate call – including selfishness, etc. We can nurture, bring forth, make room for, … etc… this more noble call in ourselves once we are awake to its existence.

Best Regards! Maggie