Comedian Patton Oswalt may be known for his bawdy, bold, and bizarre feats of wordplay during his standup comedy routines. But in the wake of the tragic explosions at the Boston Marathon earlier today, he put his verbal skills to better use on his Facebook account.
In a post that’s gone viral with over 30,000 shares in just over an hour, Oswalt, who’s a noted atheist, asserts his optimism and faith in the human race. Echoing the words of Fred Rogers, Oswalt notes that many members of the audience at the marathon immediately ran towards the explosion in the few seconds after the blast. “[T]he vast majority stands against that darkness…like white blood cells attacking a virus,” he wrote.
The full text of Oswalt’s post is below.
Boston. Fucking horrible.
I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, “Well, I’ve had it with humanity.”
But I was wrong. I don’t know what’s going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.
But here’s what I DO know. If it’s one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we’re lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they’re pointed towards darkness.
But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We’d have eaten ourselves alive long ago.
So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, “The good outnumber you, and we always will.
Photo via About.com
