Gould: Kindness
“Good and kind people outnumber all others by thousands to one. The tragedy of human history lies in the enormous potential for destruction in rare acts of evil, not in the high frequency of evil people. Complex systems can only be built step by step, whereas destruction requires but an instant. Thus, in what I like to call the Great Asymmetry, every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of kindness, too often unnoticed and invisible as the “ordinary” efforts of a vast majority.
We have a duty, almost a holy responsibility, to record and honor the victorious weight of these innumerable little kindnesses, when an unprecedented act of evil so threatens to distort our perception of ordinary human behavior.” Stephen Jay Gould, New York Times, Sept 26, 2001.
Learned many small acts of kindness from Reed.
A longtime friend, Dr. Steve Thomason, dean of St. Mark’s Cathedral, in Seattle sent out this quote several months ago from Stephen Jay Gould from almost twenty years ago for all of us to consider. The human condition seems most often not even able to be dualistic, seeing a constant more equal struggle between good and evil, but usually seeing evil as an overwhelming greater force. We receive all A’s but one B on our report card. We agonize and only remember the B. We only remember the one line we missed in our class play or our presentation. We obsess over our rejection letters rather than celebrating the acceptances for college or a new job. We think daily about the diagnosis we missed and forget about the thousands we correctly made. We forgot to visit our friend the week or day before she dies, but we forget about all the hundreds of other visits we made during her illness.
The morning, noon, evening and late news is overwhelming about the human tragedy, deaths, violence. On a good day, perhaps there is that last thirty second segment about someone’s kindness.
Gould, evolutionary biologist and historian of science, reminds us that the world is not dualistic but overwhelmingly made up of kindness rather than evil. Gould believes the problem is that these acts of kindness are so small they go unnoticed. Evil stops us in our tracks, immediately gets our attention, and blinds us with its bright orange halo.
How do we put on a new pair of glasses and see the world differently? That is the pathway to even more obvious acts of kindness. This begins with a small, simple step called gratitude. I have so many friends who survive unbelievable tragedy by making and remembering a gratitude list each day, most often at night before they go to sleep. I have spiritual friends who even send me their daily gratitude list. By their act, they are encouraging me to do the same.
Joanna joannaseibert.com