From "Around the world- Without a plane", the story of the first man to travel every country without a plane.

"My main lesson from all of this: You can’t judge a people by the actions of their government. The friendliest country I went to, by a mile, was Iran. I just wasn’t expecting that. I was on this overnight bus, and this little old Persian grandmother was sitting in front of me, nattering away on a mobile phone. She turned around and waved at me and gave me her phone. I didn’t know what she wanted me to do with it. I said “Hello,” and there was a guy on the other end, perfect English. He said that his grandmother was concerned about me—the bus gets in very early in the morning, and she’s worried that you won’t have anywhere to go or anything to eat, so she wants to know if she can take you home with her so she can cook you breakfast. Faith in humanity, restored. That’s the lesson: People are good. The spirit of common decency is everywhere you go. Maybe I’m just the luckiest motherfucker in the world, but I went to every country, and I didn’t get robbed, I didn’t get beaten up—I didn’t even get ill."

My take on this -- being an Iranian living in the west, is that people are good, and kind and in fact crave empathy everywhere. What they are missing is not kindness, it's the courage to be kind, and the courage to be on the receiving end of kindness, as these two could only go hand in hand. 

Or maybe it's only the pacific northwest.