Empathy, Kindness, Respect and the Platinum Rule

 

 

I had a day that makes me think that humanity is a lost cause. Let me explain by setting the stage.

From my bedroom I can hear the whoosh of traffic on two nearby highways and more than one night I have lay awake wondering about all the people driving their cars, and motorcycles and trucks by the thousands whooshing by, every second of every day. And I wonder, Where are they going? Why are they up? what are they doing? Whats their life like? Imagining and trying to imagine the infinite and finite lives that pass by my house from a distance, all of them oblivious of my existence or the fact that people are listening to their vehicles as they whoosh by traveling to some destination. 

So in all that distant rush of continual traffic the following happened to me today.

I woke up this morning, got some coffee and proceeded to catch up with a community I belong too. Flipping through the conversations, one was discussing alcohol and how it generally is bad for your health and I shared in that conversation that my mother was a working alcoholic and that alcohol had never done anything good for me and was involved in repeated trauma to me. The next response comes and the poster says "Well I disagree alcohol got me through many years of depression." To which I reply "all our experiences may be different, which is normal" Acknowledging their viewpoint while continuing to hold my own. Yet between you and me... I found this posters comment very off putting. Alcohol in general wrecks lives, is toxic and generally leads to bad. And I was also annoyed that they failed to even acknowledge my shares and how it had negatively impacted my life with very real trauma that also involved said alcohol.

Later I was browsing and posted a share that I had contracted a couple weeks ago COVID-19 -  the latest variant - and how it was hard on me. So then another selfish poster says.. "I don't vaccinate, don't see the need". To which I reply, that I had never had COVID and I spent the night on top of my sheets naked, sweating, heart racing for two days. And I was glad that I had vaccinated cause it probably saved my life.  I also shared that someone I knew had lost their life to COVID. To which they replied "Its just the flu." 

At this point I'm thinking what the F### is going on with people today. 

OK it gets worse... So as you know our president and his minions, Brendan Carr, tried to shut down Jimmy Kimble, and to be real they were successful until the public outcry and massive Disney/hulu cancellations made Disney step fourth and reinstate him. Days Later the president declares that, a United States city is "War Ravaged" and he needs to send in troops. 

https://www.npr.org/2025/09/27/nx-s1-5555381/trump-sending-troops-portland.

So on Reddit the community rally's, and we /r/Portland all agree don't do anything, leave the national guard alone, bore them to tears. So later I am driving home from the Gym and on the side of the road, outside Portland are 5 buses in front of a McDonald. so I post  that the NG is at location X. and I start getting 'thanks for the heads up' and suddenly my post is banned by the Mods. So much for freedom of Speech. 

A bit later, another person posts similar and I respond that  "I also reported this here to give our community a heads up and my post was banned" to which others pointed out that the Mods Suck.. and to be real.. I Agree they do. Yet during all this someone replies to me and says "Yours was taken down because it needs to come from a credible source."  which of course... if you have ever been in this reddit everyone posts and its just a place to post. This guy clearly was trolling me. Another great human being in action. 

So circling back to the highway swooshes of people going places and doing who knows what..and living their private lives in many differnt ways from my own, and many some living very similar to my own. 

Yet...in one day I had multiple experiences of people, just being dicks. Insensitive, uncaring, selfish, troll-like, assholes.  

There is a new YouTube video by Adam Savage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMtcxaj02mg about these uncertain times and he talks about "Kindness", "Empathy", and "Respect" and he dove tails this into the terrible scarcity model. His point being that we all need to show more of "Kindness", "Empathy", and "Respect" to each other.  And that Scarcity model (lose win) is a bad model and we should abandon it. I agree. 

 I try to 'be the change you want in the world', and I am trying so hard to be that change, yet I feel like socially we are fundamentally broken. And part of that problem is that people are narcissistic and I suspect social media, selfies, like counts, friend counts, karma count has replaced good character with metrics. And I think more than ever we as a people don't try to empathize, be kind, or respect each other.  

I truly am discouraged. Yet I think I've learned something valuable and that is, be yourself, be kind, empathic, give respect, yet don't expect to get it back. 

There is the "Golden Rule" which is "Treat others as you would want to be treated".  And then there is the "Platinum Rule". The Platinum rule says "Treat Others well, be good to them BUT don't let others treat you badly".  I think in these days the platinum rule is what I'm going with, it supports being the change I want to see in the world, and also defensively acknowledges that there are a lot of bad people, a lot of assholes in the world who I should not tolerate. 

In the distance I can still hear all the cars swooshing by.