A Sad Day
One of my neighbors, a wonderfully kind person, died unexpectedly today of a cerebral hemorrhage. She was a Christian is the best sense of the term – nice to everyone, kind to animals, got along with everyone it is possible to get along with in the neighborhood. She was truly committed to forgiving and forgetting offenses directed towards her. She didn’t talk about it, she lived it. I would get extremely angry about people abusing her trust, but she just moved on.
She was more than a decade younger than me, and that has an effect when you get older.
Most people will ignore her passing because she wasn’t rich or famous, but they are missing out. She was better than rich or famous – she was a very good human being and there aren’t nearly enough of them on the planet.
9 comments
We need all the people we can get who restore our faith in mankind with their genuine goodness. The loss of such a person leaves a hole in hearts and neighborhoods. I’m sorry for your loss.
Thank you for your thoughts, Ellroon. I wish I didn’t feel so certain that the number of good people in this country is declining as the population climbs.
One of the things I have had to accept over the years is that it is the people with little who will share what they have, while those with much, only seek more. That is not the way things should be if we are going to exist as a nation, or community at any level.
We have set up a system of economic organization which rewards people for being selfish and punishes them for being generous, so of course the number of selfish people rise every year and the number of generous people decline every year. So when you see someone who ignores the rewards and punishments dealt out by our society and simply does the right thing because it’s the right thing… well. It is noteworthy because it’s unusual. Alas.
You see people at the bottom of the economic ladder being generous because they haven’t been rewarded for being selfish. People at the top… they’ve been showered with rewards for being selfish, so what personal incentive do they have to change? Of course, you can’t organize a long-term sustainable society that way, but if you’re personally doing well and have a villa in the Caymans waiting for you if things go south, why should you care?
– Badtux the Rewards-and-punishments Penguin
The Rand malignancy is spreading, which should be a problem for those infected only, but it has a corrosive effect on everyone. What is really objectionable is that those infected don’t want to be called out for being stingy slime. They think they should be ‘admired’ for their personal faults.
They will certainly have a problem when the sea level overtakes the Caymans because doing anything about climate change might have cost them money.
Randiosis is a symptom though of an underlying disease in capitalism — the fact that it inherently rewards greed and selfishness, and that most people just go along with what society rewards. This has been papered over from time to time with regulations to reign in the worst of capitalism’s abuses, but capitalism as currently comprised by its very nature rewards those who are most greedy and venal.
I don’t know what the solution is to reform a system of evil incentives that most people apparently never question, but the end point of where we’re currently going is hell on Earth, and I’m tired of being in this handbasket.
It’s a shame our society doesn’t celebrate kindness and those who possess that trait. I am sorry to hear of a wonderful woman’s passing.
Until the government is prepared to prosecute the corporations as the con men and criminals they are, there is no solution. When you eliminate risk with lies like corporations [technically ‘legal fictions’, but really lies] and then reduce the minimal risk with special treatment, crime will continue to pay.
Jill, ‘society’ has become so devalued as a concept that it is not worth considering.
Bryan,
Great post, just the way you describe your friend shows the impact she had on your life, which in turn, you passed it on here to others, and as you live and interact with other outside this blog, you will spread her spirit, as well as yours. It may not seem as effective as being a Randian Butthead superstar with all of the press fawning over your every move, but maybe, in the log run, it will make a difference in the world.
I can here via Badtux, I will look forward to coming to your blog everyday.
Chuckle…I want to be a penguin…Nuts
Welcome to the comments, ‘Chuck’.
I have met a lot of ‘famous’ people, especially in the computer world as I was in San Diego for a decade when things were just taking off, but most of them were arrogant pieces of work who believed their own PR.
My friend was a collector of ‘strays’, mostly cats, but a few dogs and people. She didn’t have a lot, but she shared what she had. That’s how communities are built.