People can come together in hard times

IKindness should remind us that despite what our Facebook feed may say, humans are an inherently cooperative species and when times are tough, they are more than willing to help out others in need.

f there’s one thing the last two years have taught us it’s the importance of helping each other. As the pandemic took over our lives, it affected everything in a way no disaster in recent memory really had, at least not on such a large scale.

Institutions that might have once seemed reliable crumbled under the weight and many communities were left for the first time in the unenviable position of having to rely on their own efforts to get by.

Admittedly it could be argued that this was a trend long in the making thanks to the continued hollowing out of vital organs of state but Covid19 certainly accelerated it.

Thankfully, it seems that many communities are fast learners and have managed to organise themselves in order to fill in the gaps.

Such is the case with the new Kleinemonde branch of Coastal Kindness, who’s story is featured in this week’s paper.

Founder and chair Robbie Avis told a captive audience last week that the organisation first came about because Kenton-on-Sea residents saw the lack of health resources in their area and decided to do something about it.

In the two years since then they’ve managed to go from strength to strength and are now helping other communities to do the same.

When disaster hits, it can be too easy to focus only on the negatives, especially in an age of social media where the attention arms race has resulted in increasingly dramatic stories – some true, some not – to be pushed out at an increasing rate.

However, stories like Coastal Kindness should remind us that despite what our Facebook feed may say, humans are an inherently cooperative species and when times are tough, they are more than willing to help out others in need.

“Competition is the law of the jungle, but cooperation is the law of civilization,” wrote Russian political theorist PyotrKropotkin back in the early 20th Century and if you look hard enough, you’ll find this still holds true today.