bel, bel--don't lose your faith, child! Your father was RIGHT! People ARE inherently good! Maybe not every last one on the earth, but the VAST majority of us are! To start with, look at us here on the board: are we a group who was handpicked for our kindness and good will? No! We are a completely random group, though I will admit to a kind of segregation by virtue of education. And look how much real caring we have demonstrated for each other--we who came together with no foreknowledge at all of each other.
Anywhere you go in first-world countries, you find instance after instance of human-to-human good will. Capital Kiwi and his wife were bought dinner by complete strangers in Detroit. People who need driving directions are helped by willing strangers. Are there very many times when an obviously stricken person is ignored? No. My friend who went to the Ukraine a few years ago reported desperate shortages, including food. Yet when she purchased anything intended for a meal for her and her hostess, her hostess insisted on sharing it with others who were also deprived.
I do not know how far kindness to others is extended in countries where starvation and warfare are a constant way of life. But please remember that these are extreme conditions, and if people are not "good" in these circumstances, that is not an indication that the good wouldn't show itself were they living in a normal situation.
Speaking of extreme conditons: I thankfully know nothing firsthand of the prison camps of WW II, but from everything I have learned, prisoners of all kinds took as good a care of one another as they could. I read where a doctor in the killing fields of Cambodia was at the point of death from dysentery; his wife gave him the only food she had been able to find for days: a potato, charred nearly solid. But the charcoal saved his life. I believe she lost hers.
Lastly: look, just LOOK, at the genuine, grass-roots sorrow displayed by nations all over the world today, on this, a United States national day of mourning. Their governments had OUR national anthem played and sung. The governments can order a ceremony, they can order our song played, but they cannot order citizens--people-- to come and to cry. I saw this in every ceremony that was on our television, including yours, dearest bel, and I have cried at every one. People all over the world have literally stood up for America today, no matter that their opinion of us might have been less than positive prior to Sept. 11th., and as our day of mourning draws to a close, I add my thanks to all--to all. It is so heartening...so strengthening.
