My Faith in Humanity Got a Boost Today

This past weekend I watched two disturbing movies: Woody Allen’s Whatever Works and Shutter Island. Whatever Works was not meant to be disturbing, but in typical Woody Allen fashion, the protagonist raises persistent questions about humanity’s cruelty and destructiveness, and for some reason, this particular time, such rants left me less amused and more despondent. Shutter Island is a dark movie about people who have perpetrated the worst imaginable atrocities, with Holocaust visuals to boot. So after a weekend of these two films, I was aching for some renewed hope and faith. As luck would have it (or, more accurately, as lack of luck would result in), I got my wish.

The morning after watching Shutter Island, my husband and I loaded my old car up with our trash and recyclables to bring to the transfer station (aka the dump) on our way to our local mountain to walk our dogs. About a mile past the transfer station my car died. While I was calling for roadside assistance my husband walked to the nearest house to see if he could buy a gallon of gas just in case the reason the car died was because the fuel gauge had broken. Although the man he spoke with had no gas, he offered to drive my husband home (15 miles round trip). Meanwhile, someone I knew passed my car and quickly turned right around to help, followed by another person who did the same thing.

So in a world awash with such horrors as slavery, genocide, rape, torture, and so on, kindness, generosity, and helpfulness still remain the norm, at least in my neighborhood in Maine, and they remind me that most of us are good despite all evidence that we cannot seem to create a truly humane society.

Zoe Weil
Author of Above All, Be Kind and Most Good, Least Harm

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