Brian’s Reflection: Tuesday, October 25, 2011

It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly
and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were,
we would millenniums ago have disappeared
from the face of the earth.

John Steinbeck; on this date, 1962, he
was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature


I know that I am often cynical. I do express my discontent with “the human condition” and with human behaviour probably more than I ought. After all, I could attribute the fact that human beings have not yet disappeared from the face of the Earth to our belligerence, penchant for aggression, etc. However, I won’t.

Nope. Today I praise the potential and actual goodness of human beings. We can be miserable bastards, true. But for every Hitler there have been millions of Schindlers.

Do we hear about good people and about goodness in the news? Rarely. So, tomorrow (though we don’t watch much “news”) I am going to take note of what I see reported about us human beings in the media, and I’m going to email or write to them and let them know that I don’t want to hear or see the “ugly and quarrelsome” more than 5%; that 95% I want to hear about people doing wonderful, kind, thoughtful, helpful, generous, loving things for the human race and for our planet home.

99 Percenters and Occupiers I place in the latter category, in general. Real heroes, in my book.

And, since I’m in a very slight sense “media”, I make the following report: our neighbour Barbara, bless her heart, brought us a bag of Red Delicious apples from her tree ….. and she was right, they are definitely better than the store-bought one! Thanks Barbara!

Brian+