Comment by runamuck
2 days ago
99.9% of the people I meet want to be kind and help. You just need to "tune into that frequency." Fantastic anecdotal article that speaks to the goodness of humanity.
2 days ago
99.9% of the people I meet want to be kind and help. You just need to "tune into that frequency." Fantastic anecdotal article that speaks to the goodness of humanity.
And the 0.1% ruin it completely.
It takes only one bad apple to spoil the entire barrel. (Literally: the bad apple produces ethylene which spoils the rest of the apples in the barrel).
Examples of this phenomenon are everywhere. One bad cop makes the entire force untrustworthy, two to three unruly kids can make a classroom unteachable, et cetera.
And a 0.1% chance of a bad encounter with a stranger as a vulnerable person can make it not worth approaching strangers at all.
You're gong to throw away a life of living above fear if you focus on the 0.1%. And you'll never know what you were missing.
You can stay at home your whole life, avoid travel, avoid meeting people. From my experience (60+ years now) the best times of my life have involved taking those "chances".
Me too. But is it the privilege of being large, male and white with a small but real family safety net? I specifically specified "vulnerable people" in my comment.
3 replies →
Not traveling alone on foot in a country in which you barely speak the language does not mean staying shut in your house and never traveling at all and never meeting people. There is a middle ground.
Everything you said here is selfish, do you understand that?
"From my experience (60+ years now) the best times of my life have involved taking those "chances"."
You are not focused on giving, it is all about getting. And why is staying at home your whole life something looked down on? Just think of all the carbon it saves going into the atmosphere, if you can that is.
Just don't push your luck. There are a lot of people -- usually women -- who travel the world to prove the goodness of humanity and get killed by some rando along the way. Look up Pippa Bacca.
I can think of one example. There are likely hundreds of thousands of non-examples though.
You get one life. If you choose to live it to maximize personal safety you'll never know all the wonders you sat out.
I wonder what the rate of "getting killed by some rando along the way" actually is. Sure, lots of anecdotes, and I don't really know how you'd measure it, but I'm curious how it plays out by the real numbers.
For men I suspect the “killed by a rando” number is pretty low, but robbery/theft is very high. Of course if you have nothing to steal, that does insulate you a little.
For women I suspect the “killed by a rando” number is low, but the sexual assault number is higher.
s/killed/harassed/ and the numbers are pretty damn high at least in my circle
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>There are a lot of people -- usually women -- who want to travel the world to prove the goodness of humanity and get killed by some rando along the way.
"Wont someone think of the (lots of?) women?"
Honestly: how are you defining "a lot" here? A dozen or two? That's a vanishingly small proportion of humanity, my friend. And would you even hear the tales of those who travel the world and don't get killed? I am just saying that you are making a big claim, but provide no evidence.
They're human beings, not numbers or statistics.
Or would you have us believe that a certain number of these kinds of murders are OK, because they're just "rounding errors" or "edge cases?"
What's the over/under number?
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>99.9% of the people I meet want to be kind and help. You just need to "tune into that frequency."
Jesus.
The only people who say this are white men.
"You just need to "tune into that frequency."" Is especially gross. You were raped and murdered by a stranger? It's your fault for tuning into the rape-and-murder frequency instead of the give-me-stuff frequency. That's what the implication is. Ewww.
Oh....what's the frequency Kennith? I have a hard time tuning to frequencies though, due to my severe mood disorder, so can you offer me some help on getting my tuner repaired first?
Goodness of humanity? Possibility of it, yes, yes, but have you seen the homeless counts rise in the U.S., richest country in the world?