Friday, April 18, 2003
Kindness and Suspicion
Shoshana Johnson said: "More than once, a doctor said that they wanted to take good care of me to show that the Iraqi people had humanity. I appreciate the care that I was given. But I also know that there was a reason behind it. They didn't give me care just for the humanity of it." What “reason behind it” she assumes, she does not state. It is at that juncture, that split second of uncertainty where doubt creeps in and the desire to know for sure instead of wait in uncertainty can lead the mind to cynicism.
What leads us to believe good of each other; or to want to?
I just read Honeymoon in Purdah by Alison Wearing. I was drawn in by her statement, ”I have come to this place (Iran) because it frightens me; because it frightens the world. And because I don’t believe in fear. In giving it such power.” (She had me at, “I don’t believe in fear.”) The book is a series of moments, her trip through Iran over five months. The people she describes are kind, at times almost assaultively, so intent are they on their goal of making their guest happy. But mostly I am struck by the generosity of strangers with whom she has chance meetings inviting her to share tea and food, to stay in their homes. It seems that this is a cultural artifact in this area of the world. To sacrifice one’s self for the benefit of others, even strangers, is a-good-thing.
As a Value, it is not unheard of here in the ol’ USA. Some of the nicest and most helpful people I have encountered were native Manhattanites whom I asked for directions on the street. Just the other day two women stopped me in a parking lot to ask directions and it felt good to take the time with them to make sure they got their bearings and were safely on their way.
In times of trouble people pull together. It has been called reciprocal altruism, and is traced to the evolutionary hardwiring that developed into such human survival behavior as tribal group hunting, cultivation of crops, towns, in short, civilization. This is reputed to have first happened – or first been recorded – somewhere between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers.
Interesting. And around we go – it’s all connected.
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