I have a story:
During a rough period of my life I found myself relying on the kindness of others for survival. Immigrants, “foreigners,” “illegals,” whatever folks want to call them (I call them friends / neighbors) were always 100% ready to feed me, no questions asked.
One experience really touched me. During a time very little was reaching my heart, I walked into a small Brazilian restaurant with about 90 cents. I placed it on the counter and asked what I could get for it. They took the change and said it would be right out. 10 minutes later they had half a chicken, fries, & rice. Easily 20$ worth of food (probably $50 by today’s prices). They placed it at the table and said enjoy my meal and asked what kind of soda I wanted.
They saw I was struggling and instead of kicking me down the road they fed me and treated me with dignity.
I ate and cried at that table and here 15 years later I still hold it as one of the first moments that reminded me I was going to be okay.
Reminds me of the “Today you, tomorrow me” story from that site Aaron Swartz helped build
Do you mean reddit? I think he also built progressive voter.
I want nothing to do with a US that doesn’t include immigrants.
Americans have thanksgiving because Native Americans extended SNAP to them.
It’s removal of responsibility and we are all guilty of it.
If we set up a whole bunch of complicated bureaucracy, rules and regulations and institutions and organizations to deliver a program and tell someone to do something at some time, some place for some reason … we’re separated from the final action by dozens or even hundreds of people. We don’t care because it’s being done by other people somewhere else and none of it is happening in front of us. The people setting up the rules remove their responsibility by saying that they just gave orders and others are free to disagree with them - those doing the actions remove their responsibilities because they’ll argue that they were ordered to do it and it was all just part of their job. (Look up the legal arguments of Nazis and German veterans being prosecuted during the Nuremberg trials after WWII).
If someone were sitting in front of you and you had a sandwich in your hand and the man in front of you said they were hungry and asked for your sandwich … for the majority of people everywhere, no matter, race, religion, creed, background … they would give them the sandwich without much thought.
When we are closer to the event, we are more apt to act humanely towards our fellow man. Once we remove ourselves from each other, we will do the most terrible things to one another.
You’re mainly talking about the Monkeysphere. People outside our Monkeysphere aren’t really human, not in the way insiders are. Never read anything that covers so much human behavior in a single article. We didn’t evolve to behave in groups of larger than 150-200 or so.
i’ve met like 3 other people outside my family who talk about monkeyspheres. it’s such a great model.
I know a lot of people who would not give the sandwich in their hand
Which is why I said “the majority” of people. I also know a few people who wouldn’t give the sandwich.
But the situation also plays out differently if it is just those two people alone with no witnesses.
If the same thing happened and there were one, two or more people watching it all happen … the person with the sandwich is more apt to do the humane thing because other people are watching.
Probably feed you some delicious shit too.
Agriculture products are some of our most lucrative exports as a nation, yet we refuse to feed our own.
If action movies have taught me anything, it’s that a table can become a wall faster than a speeding bullet.
Woah woah woah is that compassion for people? We don’t do that in the land of the free 🇺🇲 /s
