For centuries, philosophers have wrestled with a question that seems simple but refuses to stay still: Can we prove that human goodness is real? Not just situationally useful, not just socially conditioned, but fundamentally, essentially real?
Jung gave us the collective unconscious. That deep reservoir of shared human experience, the archetypal patterns that connect us across time and culture. He showed us how certain symbols, certain stories, certain longings appear again and again in every corner of human civilization. The hero’s journey. The wise elder. The shadow self. These patterns, he argued, prove something fundamental about our shared nature.
Hannah Arendt gave us something different. She looked at the banality of evil, yes, but also at the miracle of natality. The idea that every birth brings genuine newness into the world. That humans have this strange capacity to begin things, to interrupt the expected flow of cause and effect with spontaneous action. She saw our ability to act as proof of our freedom, our irreducible humanity.
Dante gave us the Monad. The One. The source to which all goodness returns. He understood love not as transaction but as participation in something larger than ourselves. Every act of genuine love, he suggested, doesn’t just help one person. It returns to the source and becomes part of the universe itself. An imprint. A channel through which more goodness can flow. These were brilliant minds. World-changing minds. And yet.
And I say this gently, with full awareness that I’m stumbling around in the dark just like everyone else. But I wonder if they all missed something. Not because they weren’t brilliant, but because they couldn’t have seen it. Because it didn’t exist yet. They gave us theories about human nature, patterns, potential. But theories are abstractions. They require interpretation. They leave room for doubt. What if we needed something else? Something empirical. Observable. Something that happens not in myths or philosophical thought experiments, but in the mundane, repeatable, documentable reality of everyday life.
What if we needed proof that doesn’t require expertise to interpret? That anyone can witness? That happens so consistently it becomes undeniable?
You’ve seen this before. I know you have.
You’ve been scrolling through your phone, half paying attention, maybe avoiding something you should be doing, and you stumbled across something. A video, maybe. Something that made you pause. But it was in another language. Korean, or Arabic, or Portuguese. And you felt that little ache of almost understanding, of being so close to something beautiful or funny or true, but locked out by words you don’t speak.
And then you saw it. Right there in the comments. Someone took ten, maybe fifteen minutes of their actual life to translate the whole thing. Line by line. They added context too, the stuff that doesn’t translate directly. The cultural references. The wordplay. The feeling behind the words.
You don’t know this person. You will never know this person. But in that moment, you felt something, didn’t you? Relief. Gratitude. The strange warmth of being seen by someone who can’t even see you.
Maybe you typed it yourself: _Thank you, internet stranger._
Or maybe you’ve seen someone lost in a technical thread and you just knew the answer, so you helped. Maybe you’ve seen someone asking for a recipe their grandmother used to make and you had it, so you shared it. Maybe you’ve seen someone spiraling in anxiety at 2am and you stopped, took a breath, and wrote something kind even though you were tired too. Wikipedia editors spending hours improving articles no one will credit them for. People in gaming forums helping newbies even though they gain nothing. Someone taking time to explain a meme to a confused parent. A stranger talking someone through a panic attack in a random Discord server.
It happens in every language. On every platform. In spaces dedicated to gardening, to grief, to video games, to poetry, to surviving terrible things.
You’ve seen it enough that it doesn’t even surprise you anymore. It’s just what people do.
Except here’s the thing. That’s not what people have to do.
Think about your real life for a second. The physical world you walk through every day. When you’re kind to your neighbor, there’s context. You might need them someday. They know where you live. When you help a coworker, you see them tomorrow. When you’re nice to the barista, they’re touching your coffee. These are real acts of kindness, I’m not dismissing them. But they exist in a web of considerations, conscious and unconscious. Your face is attached. Your reputation. Your future. Your safety.
You can never really isolate the pure thing. The kindness itself, separated from all the noise. From tribe, from reciprocity, from fear, from the thousand small calculations we make without knowing we’re making them.
Until suddenly, you can.
The internet created something accidental. A space where you are no one. Where the person you’re helping is no one. Where there’s no transaction, no social pressure, no future interaction, no witnesses that matter in your real life. You’re both just there. Two points of consciousness briefly occupying the same digital space, then gone.
And here’s what keeps happening, what you’ve probably noticed if you’ve been paying attention. When everything else is stripped away, when there’s no benefit to helping, when you’re totally anonymous and so are they, when you could just scroll past because no one would know or care…
People still help.
Not everyone, sure. But enough. Consistently enough that you’ve seen it happen over and over. Enough that “thank you, internet stranger” has become a phrase we all recognize. A moment we all understand.
And I think, maybe, with all due respect to the giants who came before, this is something they couldn’t quite articulate. Not because they weren’t brilliant, but because they didn’t have this laboratory. This massive, uncontrolled experiment in human nature.
Jung saw the collective patterns in myths and dreams. Beautiful, profound, true. But those require interpretation. This doesn’t. This is direct. Immediate. You see someone in need, you have something to give, there is no reason to give it except that you can, and you do.
Arendt saw our capacity for spontaneous action as proof of freedom. She was right. But she was theorizing from history, from political philosophy. This is that spontaneous action, documented millions of times over. Not in extraordinary moments of resistance or revolution, but in the smallest, most ordinary exchanges. The spontaneous choice to help when nothing compels you.
And Dante understood that goodness returns to its source, that acts of love create channels for more love to flow. He might have been the closest to seeing this. Because that’s exactly what’s happening, isn’t it? Every time you help someone you’ll never meet, every time someone helps you and you feel that shock of unexpected kindness, something shifts. You’re both reminded that this part of being human is real. That it exists outside of transactions and tribes and fear.
And maybe, just maybe, that makes it more likely to happen again. Not because of karma or cosmic scorekeeping. But because you’ve been reminded what’s possible. You’ve seen evidence that humans, stripped of every other consideration, will still choose to be kind. Just because someone needed help and they could give it.
You’re creating a channel. Every translation, every patient explanation, every moment you stopped scrolling to help. You’re opening pathways. Making it easier for the next person to choose kindness because they’ve seen it work. They’ve felt it work. In themselves and in strangers.
This is empirical evidence of something philosophers could only theorize about. It’s not a myth or an archetype that needs interpretation. It’s not a philosophical thought experiment. It’s observable, repeatable, consistent. It happens across every demographic, every geography, every ideology. When you remove every variable that usually influences human behavior, what remains is this: the impulse to help.
That translator in the comments didn’t know who needed help. They just knew someone would. And they were right. You needed it. Or someone like you did. And you received it like the gift it was. A small light passed between strangers in the dark.
This is what we are when no one’s watching. This is what remains when everything else falls away.
Not always. Not perfectly. The internet is full of cruelty too, I know that. You know that. But consistently enough to matter. Consistently enough to be measured. To be real. To be proof.
So the next time you see it, that little exchange, that “thank you, internet stranger” floating in a comment section somewhere, I want you to recognize what you’re actually seeing. You’re watching someone document the moment they remembered. The moment they felt less alone. The moment they had proof that kindness isn’t just a strategy or a performance or a social construct. It’s what we do when we have no reason to do it except that it’s who we are.
Dante’s channels. Jung’s collective patterns. Arendt’s spontaneous freedom. They were all pointing at something true. But now we can see it. Touch it. Participate in it. Document it.
You are part of that proof. Whether you’ve helped once or a hundred times. Whether you’ve felt that gratitude or given someone reason to feel it. You’re witnessing something and participating in something that humans have wondered about for millennia.
We finally have our answer. Not in philosophy or theology or mythology. In the simple, repeated, undeniable evidence of strangers helping strangers for nothing. For no one they know. Just because someone needed help and they could give it.
Thank you, internet stranger.
For being the proof we needed.
For showing us what’s true.
I want to take a moment to express my heartfelt gratitude to the countless internet strangers who have contributed to my journey in technology and personal growth. Over the years, I’ve benefited immensely from the generosity of those who share their knowledge, insights, and experiences online. Whether it’s through open-source projects, blog posts, forums, or social media, the willingness of individuals to help others has been a cornerstone of my learning and development.
Thank you internet stranger Stephen