Small gestures of mutual trust resonate widely because they seem threatened with extinction

Evidence

Most interesting is that when a local paper picked up the story, it quickly went viral across the web and traditional media. Millions of people read and responded to this drama, presumably because it stirred memories of something precious and necessary but now threatened with extinction. Jim Ford reminded us of the most cherished requirements of a civilized life: our shared assertion of rights to the future tense and its expression in the joining of wills in mutual commitment to dialogue, problem solving, and empathy. He was eloquent on this point: “Just be nice to people. It’s not that hard. The fact that this has gone so crazy is kind of sad. This should be a daily thing, a normal thing.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1056

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to ‘On Sacrifice’ and ‘Grafting & Growth’ essays as an example of small humanized exchange against algorithmic normalization; the repo man’s kindness parallels the humanized trust counter to cold systems.