The focus for our Year 8 boys’ philosophy lesson and the senior syndicate assembly this week was a very interesting interview on RNZ over the weekend. Jesse Mulligan was talking to Tyler Brickley, founder of The Kindness Mob.
Tyler Brickley woke up one New Year’s morning several years ago and noticed how much negativity there is on the internet, and particularly how many shallow and offensive comments there are on social media.
He decided to do something about it. He noticed that if there were a few negative comments on someone’s post, the next comment was likely to be negative; a result of herd mentality. In this case, people stop thinking for themselves and try to fit in. Tyler Brickley thought if he could get ten people to comment positively on a post, this would spread in the same way. Since its inception, The Kindness Mob has grown to half a million members worldwide, including participants in New Zealand. The organisers find postings, often videos, that are being bombarded by negativity and flood them with kind comments.
The effect of this, as you can imagine, transforms the lives of the people who are the recipients of The Kindness Mob’s actions. However, the really interesting thing is that the greatest benefit actually seems to go to the people who are making the kind comments. Many of them report how their own relationships have improved and how their lives have become happier. This is not through any recognition, because one of the principles of The Kindness Mob is anonymity. The recipients don’t know that they are being mobbed, no calling card is left.
The main message to the students was a reinforcement of our third School Value: Respect All. Respect comes from the Latin root spectare, which means ‘to look or see’, and the prefix re means ‘again’; so, to respect someone means in its simplicity to look again. Instead of judging a person by what they look like, or how they present themselves, we show respect by looking more deeply to see the real person. When we do this, we have the opportunity of connecting with that spirit which unites us all. The famous Russian writer, Leo Tolstoy, expressed this most eloquently: –
“Man finds happiness only in serving his neighbour. And he finds it here because in rendering service to his neighbour, he is in communion with the divine spirit that lives within them.”
Leo Tolstoy (1847 – 1910)
Peter Crompton, Principal