People are good... in Japan!!!

[ketostix]

It's important to embrace reality, however my reality may be seen from a different perspective than yours.


This reminds of when, about a year ago, I found a wallet while walking to my car in some parking lot. I remember picking up the wallet, looking around, and see nobody around. So, I opened up the wallet, no identification, a few misc cards and some cash.

I walked around the parking lot looking for someone who would appear looking for a missing wallet. I came across a security guard and told the security guard I had found a wallet.

As it turns out, the security guard happened to be talking to some frantic teenager, who had happened to lose his wallet. The kid was able to prove the wallet was his by identifying a few things in it, without seeing first, and the security guard gave the kid his wallet.

I remember the kid was absolutely overjoyed about getting his wallet back. He even offered me money, which I refused.

I'll admit, I did enjoy seeing how happy this kid was, and how getting his wallet back made his day.

Why did I return this? Was there a selfish motive behind it? The main reason was because I felt it was the right thing to do. Furthermore, I remember many years back, when I was about this kid's age, I had lost MY wallet, and some good citizen returned it to me.

And so the cycle continues...perhaps this kid will find a wallet one day, and remember when someone returned his. There is a lot of people doing good things, that have similar stories...

and that my friend, IS reality, IMO.

This is exactly it. You seeked to return the wallet with little likelihood the original owner would be found and therefore the resulting good feeling of seeing it returned to the owner. One can argue that you just did it to satisfy your principles so it's not really a good deed, but that's just taking things too far and basically saying there's no such things as good or bad. And the result of your action of you being happy with it and the kid being happy with, was also you foster the likelihood of this cycle repeating its self like you said.

While the people are good side rests comfortably tonight dreaming of chocolates and rainbows I'll make sure my doors are locked and handgun is loaded and in place to take out any son of a b!tch that thinks they can take my life or my stuff before I too dream of those same chocolates and rainbows

I think this is taking things too extreme again. The people are good side don't necessarily believe that all people are good all the time and are naive. They still lock their doors and may have self-defense weapons. They just don't focus constantly on the fact that they might get burglarized. I's kind of like the saying those who worry about death die a 1000 death and those who don't die only one, or something like that.

 

[Mr.Positive]

This is exactly it. You seeked to return the wallet with little likelihood the original owner would be found and therefore the resulting good feeling of seeing it returned to the owner. One can argue that you just did it to satisfy your principles so it's not really a good deed,

No, you are right Keto, it really wasn't a good deed per se, I didn't sacrifice anything except a little bit of my time.

It really was facing a decision to do the right thing (seek the owner of the wallet), or do what I feel would be the wrong thing, either nothing or take what wasn't mine. I chose to do what I felt was the right thing.

But that's exactly my point when it comes to these "people are good" threads, most people would have done exactly what I did. They may say they would do differently, but I'd say most in reality most would do the right thing..

 

[Gubby]

And they have a wierd transvestite singer who models women's clothes.. and they just say "interesting!"

HAha it's a dream of mine to live in Japan. I'm gonna do it sooner or later