This is very addicting WARNING... from personal experience

Spreading love is the healthiest things for us right now.

With the times where they are, with the negativity.

We just need to change our game.

these are two short videos on how you can help the solution starts at YOU.




www.kindspring.org...

The 21-Day Kindness Challenge launched September 11th. 98 countries. 6000 people. And a collective tidal wave of good that inspired many -- including young rapper-activist "Nimo" Patel at the Gandhi Ashram in India. Nimo wasted no time channeling that inspiration into an infectious music video. "Being Kind" was created on super short notice by an intercontinental crew of volunteers working out of their living rooms. It features footage from all over the world and heart-melting appearances by the children Nimo works with in the slums. Watch, listen, and prepare to smile big at this lyrical reminder that kindness really is "all we can leave behind." - See more at: www.kindspring.org...

Thanks for the reminder

They were onto something- kindness and forgiveness are so much more rewarding than competition, comparison and condescension, yet, the media (and reality TV) pushes the 3Cs as the gospel way to get ahead. Too many people have fallen so far into the trap that they don't even think of trying another way.

nice vids.....I like that little snippet..."compassion is the new gold"....spread the love

reply to post by hknudzkknexnt

Yeah, OK, nice in one way, but also very unrealistic.

Even The Beatles competed, and ultimately broke up and weren't that nice to each other.

Clip 1 reminds me very much of what we saw in SA just after 1994.
But tokens of kindness don't last.

Kindness can quickly be misinterpreted as weakness.
Towns became over-run with beggars from the whole African sub-continent.
Violent criminals took advantage and literally hijacked buildings and entire areas.

And it's not alarmist to say that the local people became exploited.
You can't park anywhere without having to pay car-guards from all over Africa.
Even police stations must sometimes hire private security.
Everywhere one is intimidated out of money and people with a sense of entitlement.
And that's all because some stupid over-compensating liberals started this idea of a warped history where kindness means collective ideological guilt for some, and natural entitlement for others.

You all in the US, for example, are seen as global "imperialists", and all your wealth must be redistributed big time according to such ideologues.
You stole it all, and it must be redistributed via kindness or some other means.
But let's leave all the major theft after decolonization by African (socialist) ideologues, and how they quickly reduced jewels and breadbaskets built up by the white man's burden into absolute ruins.
We have phoney academia to cover that, and make matters worse by never addressing the root.

Now it's almost like organizations that work with the homeless of all races say that people make the problem worse by feeding them.
Most of these people actually have homes, it has just become too easy to be addicts on the street.
They can just leech off everyone else.

Kindness -yes.
But kindness needs a balance, or it's a kind of national and cultural suicide.
Kindness also to our own first.

I see the way the Chinese operate, and for them kindness appears to only extend to the family or clan, and they are very successful here.

But what's in it for me?

Kidding. Peace out. Love ya Alvin. Miss ya.

Beautiful and inspiring!

I was coming out of the grocery store the other day and upon walking to my car I noticed a guy backing up, right into a cart so I yelled at him to get his attention and got a lovely view of his middle finger.

I did chuckle when I heard the crunch.

Sorry but you can keep your "pay it forward", i'm keeping my pay right where it is.

reply to post by hknudzkknexnt


I know it's nothing special and this is what we should be doing (and trust me I try and enforce it as much as possible where i live- especially on public transport etc) but this video made me feel really good! That guy is awesome!

You're definitely right. I have a hard time staying both kind and educated though. The more I read about current events, the more hateful I become. It's like the only way I can stay happy and kind is to stay ignorant, and I can't figure out how to do both...

I even tried reading only news sites like Good News Network, and others that show only positive news, but I find myself dissecting every article and proving why it's actually bad news misconstrued as good.

I'm trapped in negativity and I can't get out. D:

reply to post by hknudzkknexnt


There's a lot wrong with the world and the people in it, but that only means great potential and so much improvement to be had. I can see it, we just have to make it happen.

Great, so I'm crying before work. The SnF was done begrudgingly haha.

"When the power of love overcome the love for power, the world will know peace."
-Sri Chinmoy Ghose

I'd love to see a world where everyone cares for each other. But nowadays, it seems like everything is done in the name of profit. People take advantage of each other only to put themselves "ahead."

I hope one day we as a species look back and see just how distorted our realities had become.

reply to post by hknudzkknexnt

A little pollyanna for my taste ... but if it works for you, then great. Side note - since you mentioned ... addicting ... I have to add that SUGAR is the most addicting thing I know of.

I watched the first video, but I really need to ask...how are all of the acts of helpfulness, returning items to owners, good tipping, feeding the homeless and such...spreading love? Helping a stranger with a task when they are clearly struggling isn't spreading love, that's alleviating a burdening problem. Tipping well should be commonplace, not seen as something to back-pat about (waitstaff get paid crap, I won't tip less than 20%) If someone hits the ground for whatever reason, you should certainly see if they're ok, they may need medical help. Returning someone's forgotten items to them right away is respecting property ownership (not enough people do this, though)

Maybe I'm being too literal, but I'm seeing a lot of acts of common sense examples in the video, and not really seeing what makes it any kind of special "love".

Thanks OP, lovely idea! Go kindness!

AlliumIslelily I have a hard time staying both kind and educated though.

Been there and totally understand. Clue: there are infinite sources and kinds of education.

I've thought a lot about this in my own life too.

The more I read about current events, the more hateful I become.

Modern so-called news is as poisonous as modern so-called food.

I once realized that "cynicism is like the dark tarnish on the gold coin of knowledge." That the more knowledge I got, the more cynical I got. But that I needed to recognize this in myself and clean it out, or I "paid" in my own way.

It's like the only way I can stay happy and kind is to stay ignorant

In a universe -- well let's narrow it down to the world lol -- of options, you could not possibly be informed about more than the tiniest sub-fraction of them. You are defining ignorance merely as being uninformed about events of a certain source and/or nature. You (everyone) are actually ignorant about a billion other things too, you just don't define it that way. So it is really not a matter of ignorance but a matter of what you choose to define as important. If you see what I mean.

We get neurochemically addicted to certain experiences (e.g. the news) which function kind of like caffeine but not as obviously--but we are definitely physiologically influenced by our body's response to our perceived experience. So you have to think of psychological events which affect you like this no differently than you would think of eating events which would affect you like this.

Some people for example won't touch gluten, msg, or GMO's but will spend half their weekend in angry sad angst over issues on a web forum (not this one. ATS being, of course, solely a hall of virtuous light, lol...) not really seeing that energy which pollutes and stresses us does not have to come through our mouths. It enters us just fine through our brains.

I even tried reading only news sites like Good News Network, and others that show only positive news, but I find myself dissecting every article and proving why it's actually bad news misconstrued as good.

Maybe it is. Maybe this is not your innate cynicism, but merely an intellectual recognition of something underlying. For example there is no real news sources for positive news. So probably any official positive news aggregator has to look at the regular sources of news and try to find something positive in them, which much of the time may involve re-interpreting small pieces of something which actually isn't.

I'm trapped in negativity and I can't get out. D:

I used to watch the TV news, listen to the radio news, and read the newspaper. I took this very seriously. I felt that it was my DUTY AS A CITIZEN to be "informed" about what was "going on in the world."

I did a study on the news when I was 18. To summarize the result, I realized that news was predictive more than reportive. When this finally 'sunk in,' I mean the implications of it, I was so overwhelmed with the horror of what it really meant to our whole culture and world that I was profoundly depressed for months.

And then I quit watching, reading, or listening to the news. I just stopped entirely, in every form. This was when there was no www, so I didn't run into much news on the internet of those days. I actually quit watching TV and took up watching videotapes instead so I would not watch commercials or news breaks. (Now I watch netflix and sometimes hulu.)

And you know what's funny... it didn't matter. The world moved on. It turns out that everything I had felt so obliged to "stay informed about" was not affected my lack of information about it at all. Which eventually led to my realizing something I hadn't before:

I had never been engaged with the world. I was engaged with myself. The 'world' was basically a picture on a screen, like Plato's cave shadows. I projected my own meanings and angst into them. I had an entire relationship in my head and in my body with these things but they were virtual, they were literally tiny bits of light, of information, of atomic message units, like tiny little groups of virii and bacteria that are merely 'information' molecules but which, IF we internalize them, IF we provide a supportive environment for them, can then 'breed and multiply inside us.'

It had never been about the world truly. That was the marketing hook that got my attention, the way Casteneda's inorganic scouts capture people's attention in dreams perhaps. That was the point of interest for me, the point of emotion, the point of vulnerability that made me open the door, even seek it out, even PAY for it.

But it was really: someone else's collection of highly pre-planned, filtered and modeled marketing message units, designed to operate as psychophysiological bacteria/virii/meme, of which I was voluntarily internalizing and providing a receptive breeding environment, so I could, like the flu, pass them on.

So of course one can get trapped in negativity. The modern world of information and news is like spending your entire life walking between the ER and the contagion wards. Some people are more vulnerable or receptive for various reasons. Including because they are not hardened enough yet. Which people eventually become for their own self-defense. That has other psychospiritual effects, alas.

So what am I saying, that one can't 'engage with' others about current event topics? No, not at all. But:

1. I learned to re-categorize what seemed important, to find other focii. (This is hard for people who have no hobbies and live on the news obviously.) Having chunks of your time/attention refocused to things which are grounding and real-world and, if not positive, at least not negative, helps a lot. Make 15 minutes a day to pet the cat, throw a ball with the dog, crochet something badly, clean out a drawer -- anything. More time in real life, less in virtual life.

2. Work on being objective about info and its effects on you. Everyone has tolerances. I can talk about social politics online. But national politics make me want to fight a revolution, there is nothing I can do to FIX the problems that upset me so, and this stress combined with helplessness is physically and psychologically unhealthy. Now I know. I just don't go there because it's self-destructive. Evaluate how things really affect you and work out a filter on what you do/don't allow yourself to engage in. Usually the filter is 'by default' what other people choose for you; I mean, choose your own filter on purpose.

3. Pray, unless you're not spiritual, in which case, take up self hypnosis or some non-paradigm meditation such as zazen, something that has a physical effect of grounding on the body and mind. Healthy anyway but especially for online-detox. Petting the cat "with utter focus" would do (e.g. Zen).

4. To me, most important: never talk to idiots. Even if you're responding to someone vile and ignorant. Always be talking "to the good people, who might appreciate a decent response." Sometimes that's a mote buried in someone. Everything else is irrelevant. The white chaos noise of background.

The outer world is always a screen. Pay attention to how stuff makes you feel. Learn to focus on the colors, topics, people who contribute to what's good inside you.

Maybe worth what ya pay for it, but it worked for me. Eventually.

reply to post by hknudzkknexnt


Although it shouldnt hurt to think that way, it is definitely not a solution to the world's problems. Your love wont save anything if thats the only solution you think that is needed. At best it will be fix your loneliness and give you peace of mind. Love as a solution? Without talking about the real reality behind the notion of love, which is one of the most used lie and excuse to countless atrocities of humankind, it is still a dead end. I can see all the potential abuse of such a way of thinking. And love isnt a weapon neither a shield. Try it against armed ennemies and we will see.

And if that doesnt convince you, maybe something visual will help:

AlliumIslelily
You're definitely right. I have a hard time staying both kind and educated though. The more I read about current events, the more hateful I become. It's like the only way I can stay happy and kind is to stay ignorant, and I can't figure out how to do both...

I even tried reading only news sites like Good News Network, and others that show only positive news, but I find myself dissecting every article and proving why it's actually bad news misconstrued as good.

I'm trapped in negativity and I can't get out. D:

Wow, so I'm not the only one.

I have found that taking a break from all news media can be a great (temporary) way to alleviate this condition. Unfortunately, the day you begin reading about current events again, all the negativity comes back.

Maybe it requires a complete rewiring of the thought process but I haven't been able to achieve that.

I will say that the first video presented by the OP did affect me in a very positive way. Then I came back to reality.

When I spread my love all I end up with is child support.