So, this just happened. George Zimmerman has come out from hiding and went out of his way to get some people out of a crashed truck.
Good on him.
http://abcnews.go.com/...
I think Zimmerman has the same problem I have: a bit of a Batman complex. He wants to be the hero, half because it brings attention and half because he genuinely does. If he had grown up with less racist, you-look-different-so-you-are-the-enemy values, maybe we'd just know of him for stuff like this.
My working hypothesis is that lot of people who have their heart in the right place were never taught how to engage their brains to do actual good with it. There are a lot of people who are anti-abortion because they genuinely believe life starts at conception and want to protect life even if it means voting against their interests. There are a lot of homophobic people who genuinely believe being gay is a disease and want to help cure it.
There are a lot of people who would probably be very happy to work towards genuine progress if they could be persuaded into looking at the notion that maybe the world is more interesting and varied and crazy and complicated than the story they were told when they were little.
This likely includes me.