[ALBSA-Info] NYTimes.com Article: A Time of Gifts

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A Time of Gifts

September 26, 2001 

By STEPHEN JAY GOULD


 

The patterns of human history mix decency and depravity in
equal measure. We often assume, therefore, that such a fine
balance of results must emerge from societies made of
decent and depraved people in equal numbers. But we need to
expose and celebrate the fallacy of this conclusion so
that, in this moment of crisis, we may reaffirm an
essential truth too easily forgotten, and regain some
crucial comfort too readily forgone. Good and kind people
outnumber all others by thousands to one. The tragedy of
human history lies in the enormous potential for
destruction in rare acts of evil, not in the high frequency
of evil people. Complex systems can only be built step by
step, whereas destruction requires but an instant. Thus, in
what I like to call the Great Asymmetry, every spectacular
incident of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of
kindness, too often unnoted and invisible as the "ordinary"
efforts of a vast majority. 

We have a duty, almost a holy responsibility, to record and
honor the victorious weight of these innumerable little
kindnesses, when an unprecedented act of evil so threatens
to distort our perception of ordinary human behavior. I
have stood at ground zero, stunned by the twisted ruins of
the largest human structure ever destroyed in a
catastrophic moment. (I will discount the claims of a few
biblical literalists for the Tower of Babel.) And I have
contemplated a single day of carnage that our nation has
not suffered since battles that still evoke passions and
tears, nearly 150 years later: Antietam, Gettysburg, Cold
Harbor. The scene is insufferably sad, but not at all
depressing. Rather, ground zero can only be described, in
the lost meaning of a grand old word, as "sublime," in the
sense of awe inspired by solemnity. 

In human terms, ground zero is the focal point for a vast
web of bustling goodness, channeling uncountable deeds of
kindness from an entire planet - the acts that must be
recorded to reaffirm the overwhelming weight of human
decency. The rubble of ground zero stands mute, while a
beehive of human activity churns within, and radiates
outward, as everyone makes a selfless contribution, big or
tiny according to means and skills, but each of equal
worth. My wife and stepdaughter established a depot on
Spring Street to collect and ferry needed items in short
supply, including face masks and shoe inserts, to the
workers at ground zero. Word spreads like a fire of
goodness, and people stream in, bringing gifts from a
pocketful of batteries to a $10,000 purchase of hard hats,
made on the spot at a local supply house and delivered
right to us. 

I will cite but one tiny story, among so many, to add to
the count that will overwhelm the power of any terrorist's
act. And by such tales, multiplied many millionfold, let
those few depraved people finally understand why their
vision of inspired fear cannot prevail over ordinary
decency. As we left a local restaurant to make a delivery
to ground zero late one evening, the cook gave us a
shopping bag and said: "Here's a dozen apple brown bettys,
our best dessert, still warm. Please give them to the
rescue workers." How lovely, I thought, but how
meaningless, except as an act of solidarity, connecting the
cook to the cleanup. Still, we promised that we would make
the distribution, and we put the bag of 12 apple brown
bettys atop several thousand face masks and shoe pads. 

Twelve apple brown bettys into the breach. Twelve apple
brown bettys for thousands of workers. And then I learned
something important that I should never have forgotten -
and the joke turned on me. Those 12 apple brown bettys went
like literal hot cakes. These trivial symbols in my initial
judgment turned into little drops of gold within a
rainstorm of similar offerings for the stomach and soul,
from children's postcards to cheers by the roadside. We
gave the last one to a firefighter, an older man in a young
crowd, sitting alone in utter exhaustion as he inserted one
of our shoe pads. And he said, with a twinkle and a smile
restored to his face: "Thank you. This is the most lovely
thing I've seen in four days - and still warm!" 
Stephen Jay Gould, a professor of zoology at Harvard, is
the author of "Questioning the Millennium."

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/26/opinion/26GOUL.html?ex=1002574042&ei=1&en=52c1714cae4b544e



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