We can’t LEGISLATE LOVE
or outlaw H A T E
. . .b u t
You
I
US
WE
can make a difference
H I S T O R Y
proves that as well. . .
We know that
Compassion and Kindness
Loving and Caring
DO NOT
stop bullets or halt bombings
or roadblock rented Home Depot Trucks
from running up on sidewalks and
killing people
b u t
Loving and Caring
Compassion and Kindness
don’t pull trigger or light fuses or press on excelerators, either. . .
The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, was founded in Denver, Colorado, in response to the city’s “Summer of Violence” in 1993, when dozens of people were killed in gang-related shootings, including several children. One victim of stray gunfire was just 10 months old.
The organisation borrowed the writer Ann Herbert’s call for people to “practice random acts of kindness, and senseless acts of beauty”.
The phrase has since been popularised on doormats and bumper stickers across the US and encourages Americans to surprise one another with good deeds.
Kelsey Gryniewicz, a director at the foundation, advocates activities such as anonymously leaving hampers of food on neighbours’ doorsteps and paying for the person queuing behind you at a coffee shop.
“It’s not just about single acts, though,” she says. “It’s about changing your mentality from day to day.”
The World Kindness Movement represents the work of organisations from 23 different countries. “It has gone way past the level of community endeavour,” says its secretary general Michael Lloyd-White.
Would you buy a “suspended coffee” for someone in need?
But measuring the impact of these groups is not easy.
Each year, the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) publishes a World Giving Index, which attempts to track certain types of giving behaviour in 146 countries across the globe.
The data is extracted from an annual poll conducted by research firm Gallup and ranks countries according to the proportion of people who have volunteered, helped strangers at random, or donated money to charity in a typical month.
In first position last year was Australia, where a third of the population volunteers each month and two-thirds claim to have helped a stranger and donated money to charity.
Lisa Grinham, from CAF’s Australian branch, says that the rise is due to the flooding that hit Queensland and Victoria the year before, pointing out that figures tend to rise in times of national hardship.
In the US, which dropped from first to fifth place in the global index last year, a team of academics is working on a programme of compassion education in schools to try to reverse the decline.
Richard J Davidson from the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison thinks that the level of kindness in society can be improved if children are taught to be more empathetic from an early age.
“Compassion should be regarded as a skill that can be cultivated through training,” he says.
The kindness curriculum is currently being taught in 10 schools across Wisconsin. The project is still at the research stage, but “the early signs are promising”, he says.
Not everybody is convinced that focussing on compassion in this way is helpful, however.
“We have made altruism a sacred object, so we’ve been blinded to its deleterious effects,” says Barbara Oakley from the University of Oakland, Michigan.
In a new book called Pathological Altruism, she argues against what she sees as a cultural obsession with the notion of kindness.
“There’s a misguided view that empathy is a universal solvent. Helping others is often about your own narcissism. What you think people need is often not actually what they need.”
Kelsey Gryniewicz doesn’t think that the American kindness movement is guilty of that charge, arguing that there are tangible, practical benefits to the activities they recommend.
“It doesn’t have to be about cradling people in a bubble of kindness,” she says.
In Singapore, William Wan takes a more reflective view. “We must be realistic. We mustn’t be naive. Kindness movements can’t solve all our problems, but if they can solve some of our problems, why not use them?”
Truth:
Love
Compassion
Kindness
Caring
are only WORDS. . .
They only become
MASS WEAPONS OF CONSTRUCTION
when we decide to let those very
a c t i o n s
possess us with all of their force
Love
Compassion
Kindness
Caring are only WORDS
Until SomeONE
gives them Meaning. . .
Are
Y O U
That Some One. . .
It’s November 14
. . .in just 8 days
We will be celebrating
T H A N K S G I V I N G
NO MATTER WHAT
. . .Hopefully we’ll understand
Before November 22
and way past it
That G R A C E
is not just a prayer
we say before
a meal. . .
It’s a L I F E S T Y L E
The ultimate Question
and even more Significant Answer:
IS IT YOURS ?
It’s really the neverending
S E A S O N
For You
I
Us
WE
To continue being an arsenal
in the armory
of the assembling
of the Greatest
Assortment of
MASS WEAPONS OF CONSTRUCTION
THIS IS NOT A POLITICAL STATEMENT. . .
It is an invitation for a
Personal Inventory to
REALIZING BY
BEING A DIFFERENCE
i s
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm of the DAY:
Sometimes. . .
M A K I N G A D I F F E R E N C E
I S J U S T B E I N G T H E D I F F E R E N C E
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