A Fascinating Experiment

You know, the past few days I've been talking about the health care issue, what I'd like to do, some of the impediments to having it all work out well. There are a lot of strong emotions on this issue, misconceptions, angst, resentment, ire. Different opinions and discussions are all over the net - these three are from NYT just today.

But I want to change gears a bit and tell you about something else, a different experiment: Tweenbots. Kacie Kinzer made up some little simple robots, simple mechanisms with no clever navigating mechanisms or sophisticated mobility units, just tiny wheels and a cardboard chassis. Also, a sharpie smile and a flag that told a passerby where the robot was intended to go with an appeal for help.

The intent was to see what would happen if these were set free on the mean streets of New York. They were set out far from their destinations, often deliberately pointing the wrong directions or headed for obstacles. Would most be destroyed? Stranded? Ignored? What would people do with an anonymous request for help? Without even a reason for the destination given?

Perhaps you'll be surprised at the results:

The results were unexpected. Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers. Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal. Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged. Often, people would ignore the instructions to aim the Tweenbot in the “right” direction, if that direction meant sending the robot into a perilous situation. One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, "You can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.”

But I'm not.

There's a lot of ugly in the world. There is. We see it on the news. We hear about the dissension and the arguing and the hatred and the fear. The violence confronts us on our televisions and even in our lives.

But I believe that most people are good, quietly good in an unnewsworthy way. Not that they can't be manipulated or tricked into doing bad things, but it's not what they want to do. If given a chance to do a little something nice, most people will. And be glad to do it. Doing a little something nice makes your own day a little brighter.

So, although I don't know that we'll solve our problems as soon as we'd like, I believe we can and will solve them. Every problem we have, someone has had before. People are good and I think, if we can focus on that instead of what separates us, we'll find out path out.

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