As a determined optimist, I never thought I’d be saying this, but it’s true: the world is mean and getting meaner. Instead of bringing us together, the internet seems to have fuelled our divisions by empowering those who are best at sowing fear, mistrust and outrage. We’re angry with each other over migrants, gender identity, climate catastrophe, wokeness and so much more.
A recent survey by King’s College London found that for the first time a majority (52%) of the UK population believes that culture wars are a serious problem for society and politics. I’m sick of this. I suspect you are too. I’ve spent the last few years looking for an antidote. Just possibly, it can be found in a pair of human instincts wired deeply inside us: generosity, and our response to it. At the start of the pandemic lockdown, stories of death, chaos and grocery-hoarding filled the media. Like many of us, an Australian woman, Catherine Barrett, felt on the edge of tears much of the time. One day, one of her neighbours put a box of tissues on the communal table in her building with just a simple note: “Please take if needed.”
Barrett was deeply touched by the act. It gave her an idea. She created a new group on Facebook and posted a picture of the box of tissues and the neighbour’s note. She wrote: “I’m setting this group up to spread kindness … to restore our faith in each other.” She called her group the Kindness Pandemic. The group quickly grew to more than 500,000 people, with members from all over the world telling stories of kind acts they had witnessed or done themselves.
Barrett’s group proved that simple acts of human kindness are happening around the world every moment of every day. But they are largely invisible to us, drowned out by headline-grabbing nastiness. Why do we do this to ourselves?
It’s not as if the dark stories somehow reveal a deeper truth. Yes, it’s awful that 100 people died in a violent incident today. But is that really more significant than the fact that more than 20,000 children’s lives were saved today, and every day this year, thanks to the tireless efforts of tens of thousands of invisible public heath workers over the last three decades? Their remarkable generosity has led to the global infant mortality rate falling by 59% since 1990. By succumbing to the allure of the dramatic and the recent, we are inadvertently feeding ourselves a poisoned worldview. No wonder we feel sick.
What would it take for tales of kindness to eclipse tales of violence and fear and division? Here are three of the catalysts that can help nudge acts of kindness across that chasm.
The first is simply emotion. Sometimes, the positive stories we share are told in the dry language of statistics or generalisations. The statistic above about the spectacular fall in preventable childhood deaths may have connected with you intellectually, but I doubt that it moved you. Yet if you were to sit down and watch the Carter Center YouTube video that shows what childhood Guinea worm disease looks like and how it is being eradicated, you would feel intense emotions – including dismay, disgust and deep gratitude. The numbers are incredible – a reduction from 3.5m cases in 1986 to just 13 in 2022 – but seeing for yourself a 2ft worm being pulled out of a screaming child is what will make you care. It’s no wonder then that this video has been seen 18m times and has done as much as anything to alert the world to the incredible story of a horrifying disease being consigned to history.
Second, courage. Dylan Marron is used to haters on the internet. As a proudly progressive content creator, he made a series of social justice-oriented videos, covering topics such as police brutality and the controversies surrounding transgender people’s use of public bathrooms. As the number of views soared, however, so did the aggressive comments from strangers.
Reeling from the barrage of hate, Marron developed an unexpected coping mechanism. He messaged a few of his trolls, asking if they would like to get on the phone with him. The result? He was able to find common ground. One 18-year-old troll who had told him he was a moron and that being gay was a sin turned out – like him – to have been bullied in school and to share Marron’s love of the movie Finding Dory.
Third, creativity. The bolder, the better. A group of friends in Japan were sick of the litter on the streets of Tokyo. But instead of just going out there and tidying up, they decided to do so in a way that would get noticed. They dressed up as samurai warriors and used their acting skills to pick up the trash with drama and panache, grabbing discarded bottles with tongs, and flipping trash into the baskets on their backs. It’s easy to understand why the videos of them in action have been seen by millions and attracted many to join the group.
We live at an incredible moment in history. It’s possible today to give away knowledge, creativity, connection and enchantment at unlimited scale. It’s also possible to amplify stories of other people’s kindness like never before. Everyone can do this. Next time you are on social media, look for someone somewhere who’s sharing something positive – anything from a kind comment to a gift of creative, uplifting content. There are so many of them out there. Like them. Repost them. Follow them. It will start to teach the algorithms controlling your feed that you are not the person they thought you were. And it may help lift this content into other people’s feeds. The ripple begins.
Chris Anderson is the founder of Future Publishing and the head of TED. His latest book is Infectious Generosity
