Kindness

Perhaps the most undervalued thing in our world today is simple kindness. We are besieged with cries from charities of all sizes and flavours; we are reminded in every form of media that war is raging all around us and threatening to get much, much closer. Help the needy by sending a cheque to such and such a mailbox in New York.

Interviews of the most unbelievable variety are served with our meals each evening. “What did it feel like… “ is asked of people in the most personal, private and difficult moments of their lives. There we are to see it all between commercials for soap and cereal. Then there’s more in half an hour.

Raw and oozing sores of life have come under such scrutiny in the witless glare of the camera, that humanity is rendered to just another packaged product, cynically sold.

The problem is not that any particular life situation is being examined, it is the fact that an in-depth interview is considered to be about 20 minutes long! An hour is considered a major television special with Barbara Walters. I don’t know about you, but my meager life doesn’t compress into a 20 minute or an hour segment without some major distortions.

And I’m not even that interesting.

What we’re presented on national television is the really intense stuff, the painfully difficult, ‘there but for the Grace of God’ stuff. Think about it, how can they do it justice in 20 minutes? Even assuming that they get the facts right, which is to say, there are no factual errors, there is no way that the TRUTH can squeeze through such a tiny aperture.

Too many desperate situations that we can’t do a thing about; too many fake emergencies saved by fake heroes with perfect noses and chins and tummy tucks. We’ve become so jaded that they’re bringing us real blood and guts now. People bleeding to death on the street under the camera man’s lights. People getting busted and sent to prison for the rest of their lives while the cops high five each other in the background. Close to rap music with an attitude.

Even the gladiators are back. They just play silly, harmless games right now, but they bill themselves as gladiators and you have to ask yourself, how long before the gladiators and the real blood and guts get together in the same show? Somebody is working on it believe it.

Not too surprisingly, we have retreated. It is the very definition of apathy; too many stressful situations with the viewing audience strapped into a passive role. What can you do? Channel surf to more of the same?

The problem is that we’ve retreated not from television or even from crass and soulless television shows, but from our real neighbours, our families and even from our own lives.

Small wonder that so many despair of life to the degree that they consider ending their existence here. A terrible mistake.

It is not life that has been diminished, only the quality of the “product” going out over the airwaves. Life is as vital and precious as it ever was we just need to reestablish contact with it.

Most people past middle age remember another kind of world, a world which they often refer to as “the old neighbourhood.” The old neighbourhood was not rigidly defined as geographic, but was a shared set of values which translated into the way we treated our neighbours and our neighbours treated us. We lived a set of values that rose out of our common, day to day experiences.

In the 50’s television gradually drew us in from the evening walk and the long chats on the veranda, to long sittings in dark rooms. No one spoke, because a television performance was on. It was a miracle of technology that proved to be irresistible.

Sponsors soon realized that in order to keep people off the front porch in the evenings, the level of excitement on tv had to be maintained each and every evening. Actors alone weren’t enough, they had to be put in ever more dramatic situations, new adventures, terrible dangers. There needed to be bad guys, really great bad guys. So there were.

Gradually we began to see our neighbours not from the front porch, but through the dark glow of a tiny box which portrayed them as dangerous creatures, capable of unspeakable (but highly broadcastable) evil. Crime was perceived to be all around us. Young people no longer lived in the neighbourhood, they lived in the ghetto, or at least, in something less than the Beaver’s household. Bad manners and open defiance became “youth culture” until generations no longer spoke to each other, no longer considered themselves part of the same community. The sixties brought outright war between the generations. Each accused the other of absolute corruption.

We did not turn to each other for answers, but to the ubiquitous box. It told us that there was a generation gap. It just was. If the box said it, it was true. Even if some people hated what the box said, (there were plenty that claimed they did), still they had to conform to the box’s frame of reference. The box defined the outer edges of any argument. If something was beyond the scope of the box, it was not mainstream, and therefore extremely suspect. The box had gained absolute control over our definition of “normal”.

Most of this happened because we didn’t understand the power of this thing we’d let into our homes, into our families.

Then the sharks moved in; the bright boys who are very handsomely paid to understand trends and to figure out how to manipulate any social force to their bosses' ends. These people saw and understood the power of the box. They began quietly and deliberately to massage the machine until it purred the message they whispered in its ear.

We long ago fell asleep in front of the tv now we are sleepwalking through our lives.

Television has become a formidable force. It is a daunting foe. But there is a way to battle this monster. It will take tremendous strength, resolve and discipline, but it can be defeated.

Turn off the tv. Go sit on the front porch and say hello to the neighbours and even strangers as they go by.

If you live in one of those new houses that come without a porch, sit on the lawn in a nice comfortable deck chair. Never mind the back yard with the deck where you go to retreat, go out front. Talk to people as they go by. You don’t have to say a lot, just a friendly word or two will do.

They will probably think you’re a little crazy, but remember why you’re there.

You’re there to remind them that kindness has a human face.

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