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Some Faith in Humanity Restored! (stories of humanity remembering to not be dicks)
Oniros25
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
As a little background, I'm a Secular Humanist. I firmly believe that if we aren't there for other people, no one will be. I believe that everything we do in life, to ourselves and to others, matters and that one person can make a difference for humanity as a whole. I don't think most people are genuinely good, but that most are decent and would like to be better. Still, it's hard to maintain any sort of optimism in such a cyncial culture. For this reason, I thought I'd start a thread where we (or if this ends up just falling off the fourms without a reply, maybe just me) tell stories of those rare times where people surprise you and you remember just how magnificent people can be at their most noble.
I had a public speaking thing at work where I was supposed to talk about three things I'd like my co-workers to work on. Not an envious assignment, telling your peers that they're doing it wrong, but I decided I'd make the best of it and include as my final point something a little more high-minded.
"Don't do what's easy, do what's right." I said, with full conviction, "It's easy to forget that there are people on the other ends of our phones and that they care and are impacted by the things we say and do. People care. Going beyond what's easy is important because it's the difference between doing your job and doing a service. People notice that kind of thing."
The meeting hall went silent. I was already bracing myself for eye rolls and jeers. Instead, they applauded. People who've never spoken to me, who don't even know me came up to me afterwards to say that my saying that meant a lot to them. To this day there is a whiteboard standing at the entrace to the office that says simply, "Don't do what's easy. Do what's right."
I know it's corny as hell, but that made me feel so much less alone in the world.
I had a public speaking thing at work where I was supposed to talk about three things I'd like my co-workers to work on. Not an envious assignment, telling your peers that they're doing it wrong, but I decided I'd make the best of it and include as my final point something a little more high-minded.
"Don't do what's easy, do what's right." I said, with full conviction, "It's easy to forget that there are people on the other ends of our phones and that they care and are impacted by the things we say and do. People care. Going beyond what's easy is important because it's the difference between doing your job and doing a service. People notice that kind of thing."
The meeting hall went silent. I was already bracing myself for eye rolls and jeers. Instead, they applauded. People who've never spoken to me, who don't even know me came up to me afterwards to say that my saying that meant a lot to them. To this day there is a whiteboard standing at the entrace to the office that says simply, "Don't do what's easy. Do what's right."
I know it's corny as hell, but that made me feel so much less alone in the world.
Nintendo Network ID: Oniros
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
+15
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here's something I saw in the news today: http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/Spanish+runner+Iván+Fernández+Anaya+becomes+cult+hero+after/7839439/story.html
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Welp. Any thread that starts with a sentence I could see Thomas Jefferson using if he were alive and belonged to an internet-based community centered around playing video games is a thread that I want to subscribe to.
Let me think of a story I want to share.
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
He gave almost all of it away to cancer research charities, Make-A-Wish foundation, and scholarship funds.
That was a magnanimous gesture. He could have just kept it and I don't think any of us would have been at all surprised. Instead, that money will help enrich the education of future generations. Hat's off to ya, George!
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
xbl - HowYouGetAnts
steam - WeAreAllGeth
Can I also say that any comment that even vaguely compares me to Thomas Jefferson is probably a deeper honor than I deserve. :-)
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
I love that commercial.
*sips diet coke*
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
We called for support and a K-9 unit showed up. We threw flash bangs, did a show of force and cleared out the entire area. But the dogs and the flashbangs caused wide scale panic, so now they are frantically running into one another pushing each other aside as they try to get away.
After all is said and done, we resume operations and start re-searching people to let them in. A group of 4 women approach me, and from our training we received, males aren't supposed to talk directly with Iraqi females, or touch them, or look them in the eyes, or whatever. But these 4 women approach me, sheltering one of them. I speak very, very simple Iraqi Arabic, mostly commands, so I have my 'terp come up and he starts to tell me what they want.
"They want a doctor. One of them is hurt."
"Let them know I can't even get a doctor or a medic up here [terps name]"
"They want a doctor."
"Tell them to let me see the injury."
So the lady they're sheltering shows me her arm and hand and it's been mangled by the C-wire. She was one of the victims of the earlier riot and stampede by the males. I pull out my radio, radio to the tower to send a runner and bring me my Combat Life Saver (CLS) bag and some water. The runner shows up and I put out my hand, palm down fingers up, so that the women can see I'm not threatening them, and I hold it there.
"[terps name], tell her I'm not going to hurt her, I'm going to clean it and bandage it so it stops bleeding, but I won't touch her unless she gives me her hand."
So she gives me her hand and I start administering first aid to it. I clean it and wrap it up, then give her the rest of the unused water. All the women start looking at me with this look of disbelief. I have my terp tell her that I stopped the bleeding, but she still needs to see a doctor for stitches and more advanced care. They thank me over and over again before leaving.
That memory will forever exist with me as one of the nicest acts I've done in war.
The Iraqi guys? They did this clicking sound with their tongues and where shaking their head the entire time. When I finished, I shot them all a glare and had them watch as I loaded my pistol, knowing to "do not fuck with me or anyone here again. I will have order and discipline."
I used to also give the kids huge bottles of water and developed stalkers. The adults would come and beat up the children and steal what I gave them, so I started having to brandish my weapon when I gave the kids anything. I developed quite a few admirers:
http://evi.kuiki.net/Pictures/Army/CIMG0770.jpg
I gave these kids part of my MRE, which they gave to the baby.
http://evi.kuiki.net/Pictures/Army/CIMG0800.jpg
On the hottest day there, it was 140+. I gave this family 3 bottles of water, and they let me take a few pictures of them.
http://evi.kuiki.net/Pictures/Army/CIMG0801.jpg
They where very photogenic. They wanted me to take more and more pictures.
http://evi.kuiki.net/Pictures/Army/CIMG0803.jpg
I happen to know two people who live at the edge of my neighborhood independently. They both live in one of the wealthiest parts of town: giant historic mansions with ceilings 25 feet high, marbled foyers with winding staircases that look like something out of Gone With The Wind, etc. One of the two individuals is a very well known prestigious attorney who has been the managing partner of a legal practice for the last 30 some odd years. He's a very gregarious person, but he can also be kind of intimidating because he's super smart and a flashy person. His wife is...I believe the French would call her formidable. Very smart but kind of prickly. She comes off as judgmental. I met this couple while working as a political consultant, and I guess the best and most concise way to illustrate how I feel about them is to say that they're totally the sort of people with whom you'd want to have a mint julep on the back patio on a Sunday afternoon...but you'd spend 30 minutes thinking long and hard about what to wear before you drive over, and you'd probably swing by a car wash en route.
The other person is a crazy cat lady. She lives only one block down from the attorney, so she's in another gigantic mansion, but every room is dedicated to the 83 cats who live there. The kitchen smells like a factory floor on Cannery Row. The living room smells like an alley in Tiajuana. The backyard smells like a litter box, and patches of grass are dead. She's an acquaintance of my wife, who is both a cat lover and a mental health professional. I am not sure which of those two factors are what led my wife to meet this lady. While more than a little eccentric, however, this woman is also just about the sweetest and most considerate person you'd ever meet. And she doesn't juts care for stray cats. Several years ago, a homeless man brought a litter of kittens to her after a local pet store referred him to her. They'd lost their mom, and he couldn't take care of them, so he wanted to make sure they had someplace warm to sleep and someplace to eat. After she squared away the kittens, she asked the man, "and where are you going now?" The man said he was going to walk back to the park where he'd been sleeping; he ended up living with her and her cats for six months until he got his feet back under him.
If you only know her from across the street, though, she just looks like a crazy person who bought a mansion 40 years ago but now lives in squalor. Her neighbors hate her. Several of her neighbors have asked the city to take her cats away on various occasions. Once a neighbor even complained to city council and asked that her house be taken away under eminent domain. And it's undeniably true that the state of her property is suppressing real estate prices on one of the most expensive blocks in the city.
So anyway, I happen to be walking by one day, and she stops me and asks if I can refer her to an attorney. She wants to establish a trust so that when she dies, her estate (physical and financial) can be dedicated to the continued care of all of these animals. Without thinking, I start referring her to the guy I mentioned in the first paragraph, but I break off mid sentence when I realize, oh shit he's probably one of your neighbors that's tried to take away your cats or have you evicted in the past. So I mention a couple of other lawyers instead, and we get to talking about her plans for the house and whatever.
Eventually, she circles back around to ask who I'd started talking about. So I explained, "Well, the very first name to pop into my head for this sort of project was Jonathan M____, but I suddenly remembered that he lives just a few doors down, and he might see it as a conflict of interest." I left out my suspicion that Jonathan would probably be happy to see her house burnt to the ground.
"I know Jonathan!" the cat lady exclaims. "I don't know him well, but I know him! When my second husband died -- this was fourteen years ago -- my husband had a heart attack while working in the back yard. I was at the store at the time. Jonathan happened to be taking a walk when the paramedics and fire department came up and broke the door in. So I'm walking through the dairy aisle when I get paged over the intercom: 'Helen K____, please come to customer service, we have a phone call for you.' They hand me the phone, and a man's voice says, 'Helen, this is Jonathan. You don't know me, but I live a few doors down. I don't want you to panic, but the paramedics are taking your husband to the hospital. I think he's going to be okay; he was talking when they put him in the ambulance. You should stop what you're doing and meet him at the emergency room. Don't worry: I'm going to sit here and guard your front door so none of your cats get out until someone can come and fix it.'"
Totally redefined what I thought I knew about one of my friends.
2010:
2011:
I can't find a figure for 2012, but I'm confident it was yet another decline.
EDIT:
Lowest crime rate since the 70s in Canada.
Though we're still toking and telling The Man to shove it when we need to.
It involves a hill, a lockbox, and a grass fire.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I awesome'd this, and then went back to the original post and awesome'd that too. Because that story? It deserves 2 awesomes.
The most badass way to arrange eight words.
xbl - HowYouGetAnts
steam - WeAreAllGeth
And at Target a few weeks ago, a young lady let me cut in front of her in line because she had a basket full of dog food and dog toys and I had a Coke Zero, when there was only one lane open. I was reluctant at first, because she had, by rights, gotten in line ahead of me, but I accepted, and thanked her.
She said, "I don't think there are very many nice people out there anymore, so I try to make up for it."
Which struck me on a weirdly personal level. So I paid for her dog food.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
"We'll find something else."
On the wall I was standing in front of, buried between new releases, was a sale copy of 'What Happens in Vegas.' I bought it and left it at the counter, instructing the cashier to give it to the family on their way out but not tell them where it came from.
I collected my friends and we left to play minigolf.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
A few weeks back a let a teenager go ahead of me in Target because he (she? honestly, he/she was so androgynous that I couldn't quite tell) had a couple of dog toys and a pack of gum. Then when he got to the register, he was trying to cash out a Target gift card, but he didn't have enough stuff to bring the gift card under the cash-out threshold.
He was practically begging the cashier to let him cash it out and she said she couldn't because the register won't let her. So I just bought the gift card off of him with cash.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
At about 9 am, already pretty strung out from stress and just flat out tired, I get poked in the back by a ward clark saying "sorry, I don't know your name?"
So I say, and ask what's up?
She says "what did you want?"
I am confused.
She goes on "matron is getting us all coffee"
Hospital coffee sucks. But it's a nice gesture, so I say "get me a hot chocolate or something!"
A few hours pass, I figure it was forgotten about. I emerge from a room where serious shit had just occurred to find a steaming gourmet hot chocolate from some fancy ass corner coffee shop sitting there in the paper cup, my name in permanent marker on it.
Turns out it took so long because the matron was not, in fact, on duty today. She had come in to thank everyone else for coming in despite the shitty conditions, then left to get the drinks and came back to help out on her own time.
I didn't really know what to do, and that situation didn't seem right, so I offered $100 for her to not go through with it and to wait until she was with someone she cared about.
I paid her later that week, and I just found out yesterday that she's engaged to her first boyfriend, whom she met a few weeks after I gave her the money.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
It was an urban school without a ton of funding, but I eventually got the classes into some semblance of order. At the end of the year, the English departments had students write thank you notes to some of their teachers. I ended up with a pretty decent stack, but my favorite was from a student that had been suspended/in alternative education when I first got there, and returned to class sometime in the second semester.
It just said, "Thanks for not treating me differently even though I was at [Alternative Education Campus]."
It wasn't a conscious effort on my part, but getting that note really made my whole year. You never know who is going to notice a kindness.
(PS: Secular humanist high five)
Edit: by that, I mean I was worried that we had seen the last of the good stories posted.
It turns out, a VW Passat rear-ended the Beetle and sent it hurtling onto its roof down the highway. The Passat front end was gone right up to the engine. I thought two things when I arrived: someone is dead, and no one is going to help.
I was wrong about both.
People who had seen the accident in their rear view mirror, who didn't have to stop because they were past the accident, pulled over and helped me get the lady in the flipped Beetle out of her car. She had virtually no injuries and the lady in the sedan had minor cuts to her hand. I still called 911 and asked for paramedics because I didn't know if there was any internal bleeding. Some cars try to drive straight through the scene over the debris, but people with me stopped them before they could make it. Then an Air Force officer on the way to the base runs up to the scene and starts directing traffic around the accident. He also points out that the cars involved are not going to explode or anything because the one is just leaking transmission fluid and wiper fluid, and the flipped car engine was turned off. We all waited until the police arrive and then relieved us from the scene.
So yeah, random people help pull a lady out of her car that flipped on the highway and ensure everything is safe before police arrive.
Let 'em eat fucking pineapples!
Vasili Arkhipov was a Soviet naval officer on a submarine carrying a nuclear torpedo off the coast of Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis. Their submarine had lost communication with the Soviet fleet and the captain thought world war 3 had started. This next part I'll just c+p from wiki:
''Three officers on board the submarine – Savitsky, the political officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov, and the second-in-command Arkhipov – were authorized to launch the torpedo if agreeing unanimously in favor of doing so. An argument broke out among the three, in which only Arkhipov was against the launch...
Arkhipov eventually persuaded Savitsky to surface the submarine and await orders from Moscow. This presumably averted the nuclear warfare which could possibly have ensued had the torpedo been fired. ''
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov
I was sixteen or so. My mom and I were driving back toward the house after I'd cashed in the check I'd gotten from gradma for christmas. On the side of the road was a young mother and her three year daughter.
The mother was holding a sign that said, "Run out of gas. Just trying to get home. Please help."
As we pulled up to where they were standing, I rolled down the window and handed her all the money I'd just cashed out. The mother thanked me, but didn't realize I'd given them fifty bucks until we'd rolled away. In the side mirror I watched as, stunned, the mother showed the money to the little girl who did the cutest little happy dance.
I related this story to classmates the next day. Their responce was, "What if she was conning you. I would have kept my money."
To which I replied, "What if she wasn't? You really would just leave someone who might need help on the side of the road? It was just money."
(P.S. @Lord Palington : Return secular humanist high five. The highest of fives!)
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
It never really seemed like it was a big deal to me that I was doing it - I had a roof and space for someone - but as they said, little gestures like that for some people can mean the difference between life and death.
"She probably slept with the other guy anyway."
"I don't think she did."
"Why? You probably got conned."
"I don't think I did."
"Why?"
"Because I can't think like that. It's a trap, dude. And if my thoughts automatically default to that, I've lost entirely. It's thinking that the right choice for everyone will be the worst choice, and then I'd stop trying to make things better. It'd be admitting defeat."
"How?"
"How is it anything but that?"
He couldn't answer.
I also told another guy in our XBL party about the 'What Happens in Vegas' thing, and his response was, "That was like, $20 you could have spent on yourself."
"Yeah, but they needed a win more than I needed the money."
"Why?"
"Because they did."
"I woulda bought myself something."
At which point I shut up and went back to playing Borderlands without speaking.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
Don't give up on people, buddy! You did the right thing. Gotta keep on going, no matter what. Can't stop the signal, Mal...
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
In G&T, I asked for advice on what to buy, and a fellow PAer gave me a Radeon 6870 (~$200 card) he had sitting around for the price of shipping from Australia.
Shit, man, I did some volunteer canvassing out of that office when I wrapped up my other stuff, we should have hit up Bottoms Up for pizza at some point.
Today we celebrate the beginning of the second term for the first black president on MLK Day.
Basically everything about that makes me feel warm and fuzzy.
Not too shabby, really. Especially when you consider where we were at seven or eight years ago.
I remember when Big O got ellected in the first place. I was pleased and completely fine when I heard it was offical. Texted all my friends and family who I knew were also celebrating.
That night as I was turning down to sleep, I had an errant thought: Maybe America isn't a lost cause after all...
I literally crashed to my knees and started crying with relief. I hadn't even realized I'd written us off as a failed experiment until that moment and I was so very happy to be proven wrong.
3DS Friend Code: 1461-7489-3097