Yesterday, the website Upworthy posted the following image on Facebook:
I love everything about this picture — well, everything except the responses to it.
The commenters on Facebook fell into three camps — those who embraced the message and exalted it; those who didn’t even see the message in green, and failed to understand that Being the Good and Believing there is Good go hand in hand; and those who denied its veracity, either in part or entirely.
It was heartbreaking.
Of the 198 comments at the time of this post, at least 100 of them were about the evil in the world. Some comments were extreme (about warlords, weapons, rape, starvation, etc.), but some were just resigned (“Wish I could believe, but the bad far outweighs the good”). It’s this latter group that I take issue with.
The bad DOES NOT far outweigh the good in this world. It’s not even close!
Of the 7 billion people on this planet, most are able to adequately feed our families, and live without disease, and are not in war zones, and have basic human rights, and for those who aren’t — there are hundreds of thousands of people working and fighting to feed, heal, protect and defend them, most as volunteers and many at risk to their own lives. This is pure Good! It outweighs the Bad the way a book outweighs a diamond — it’s larger, it carries more weight, it has more intrinsic value and experiencing it will more vastly improve your life.
Yes, the monetary worth of the tiny diamond is blown way out of proportion, and sadly there are some who can only see that one metric. This is the same way the effect of small pockets of evil gets blown out of proportion to the daily realities of most of the planet’s population, which causes some people to only see the Bad, and extrapolate it to cover all of us.
In fact, just to drive the point home for the commenters on Facebook, if you are able to sit at a computer, with working electricity and working phone/Internet, and have the physical ability and personal freedom to type cynical comments into a public forum using your real name without fear of torture, death, loss of rights or seizure of property, then your world is 98% GOOD, so stop bitching and get out there and do something for someone else!
I’m not saying we should all just be happy and ignore the bad/evil/unjust/corrupt in the world. In fact, just the opposite. Like the image above, I believe we have to both Believe in the Good and Be The Good. But it has to start with Seeing the Good that already surrounds us. And it absolutely surrounds us.
Amen. A perfect example is the awful killing in London and the three women who stepped in to Be the Good. There is wonder everywhere, we just have to see it. If we let the pockets of evil blight the whole world in our eyes then they’ve won.
Love this post (and that graphic). Well said!
Fred Rogers said that when something bad happens we should look for the helpers.- there will always be helpers.
Yes! And the helpers almost always outnumber the perpetrators.
I loved this sign the moment I saw it. So I was really surprised to read your second paragraph. Maybe we also need to be, believe, and see the good in FB comments…
You make a valid point. Unfortunately our media thrives on the bad and viewers demand that we inform on the bad, so that’s mostly what people see and hear. It’s downright depressing. So yes, the good in this world far outweighs the bad, but perception is what drives people, not actuality.