Here is the germ of the idea. Have people see that other people are actually mostly not being greedy nasty bullies. Instead, show feedback as in the following scheme.

BACK: a Billion Acts of Compassion and Kindness. Here’s the idea. During 2017, people throughout the United States perform acts of compassion and kindness every day, particularly across potential divides like age, gender, race, religion, political party, national origin, but basically everyone counts if you’re doing it without monetary reward. We have people on Facebook and Twitter (perhaps other social media) use #BACK in their messages about it. At the end of the day, the various social media update the totals and they are posted by all participating social media. I think the results should be displayed with stickers in groups and super-groups shaped like American Flags. Every day, citizens will be reminded that there are plenty of generous people out there doing good things. By the end of 2017, I would like to see a BILLION acts reported. In some cases, all people need to do is post or tweet something very minimal such as: “Helped a non-English speaking person get directions” or “invited a LBGT couple over for Holiday dinner” “called out some absurd misogyny” or even “chalk up another one.” In other cases, maybe people have come up with a good idea that can be used by other local communities and they may want to include more details.

In the news media, there is a natural tendency to report on “bad news” which may be inherently more fascinating and attention grabbing. If you add the profit motive on top of that, it is very tempting for the mainstream media (and many sponsored sites as well) to report on outrageously bad behavior. This makes it actually *more likely* for others to think such anti-social, anti-American behavior is acceptable.Instead, if people are shown feedback that indicates the vast majority of Americans actually spend most of their time being productive contributors and some of their time helping others even when they aren’t compensated.

If we can get this going it also sends an important message to the government of other countries. “Of course, you have to deal with the official government of the USA. However, never forget that we as a nation are comprised *not* of mostly fascists but are a diverse nation of mostly good hearted people and we’re still here. Keep that in mind.”

Comments and suggestions welcome.