Lately I was wondering if maybe I should recombine some thoughts in my head.I know that the news tends to air problems and tragedies, so the impression that, for instance, the world is a dangerous place is reinforced. If you look at some thing like Columbine you see how a very small percentage of a group can imprint themselves on the spirit of a group. The one bad apple theorem.

If the larger number of people were doing okay and not being too much of an asshole, then by golly it was just that doing "okay" is not newsworthy or even memorable, and so it just diffuses thruout the fabric of space and time. Confused? Don't be. It means maybe we're all doing mostly "okay" but we don't talk much.

Recently on ebay I got my first "positive feedback", and a big spiel was made about how great that was. And it was, because we tried to do good and normally we'd never know anybody noticed.The other day I found a purse in a wagon at a store, and I never looked inside, I just took it back. They took my name and phone number incase the person wanted to contact me. They never did, and why not? It would have taken a minute to say "You did a good thing, thanks." If it was a child you were raising, you'd do that, so why not with a grown up person? We're all growing up and older, so we all have a lot to learn, especially about how to deal with people. Where's our positive feedback?

Now on the web we can all put ourselves up and get some input. It's safe, because it's just a digital universe, and if we all agree to be honest, and if honest people are in the majority, then honesty will be the overwhelming base mode. And if not, you turn the thing off. If we are in the majority it will be nice to hear about all the kids who did not shoot up the graduating class. And the husband who did not kill all his children when his wife threatened to divorce him....all that stuff.

It might just be the sort of eyebrow-raising, nod-of-the-head kind of thig whereby we can be fairly sure we are in the midst of reasonable people again. The books indicate that from time to time it was safe to trust the people around you, just sometimes. And lately I get the feeling that the people who disperse the news are choosing more dynamic news to disperse.

I didn't need to hear from that person about her purse, but it would have done her good to have me tell her I appreciated her getting back to me, so I could be sure she had, in fact, gotten her purse back. She would have felt a bit safer/