alt Hacker NewsI'm pretty sure the message is about the general goodness of humanity and the positivity of connection, "the better angles of our nature." As the culture gets more divided and us vs them, people are actually fundamentally good and helpful. I'm sure the people who helped him also got a positive experience out of it. It is not zero sum that he took something from them, both were positively affected by the experience.
> I learned from hitchhiking to think of this as an exchange. During the moment the stranger offers his or her goodness, the person being aided can reciprocate with degrees of humility, dependency, gratitude, surprise, trust, delight, relief, and amusement to the stranger. It takes some practice to enable this exchange when you don’t feel desperate.
That's his view. Transactional and rehearsed.