The Necessity of Kindness

No society can exist without it.

The saddest day of my life was, and continues to be the day that I realized that I was never going to be as kind and as thoughtful a person as I'd wanted.

I’ve always admired people who are unfailingly generous, and who just seem to know how to do or say just the right thing to help.

There’s just too much damage, too many burn scars, and to many miles on me to ever be that open. Too many times I was punished for being earnest, treated like a fool, played for a sucker. The thundering voice in my head berating me relentlessly for having been taken for a mark again deafens my heart.

I still try. But I am not as persistent or bold in my kindness as I wish I could be. I hope that the world is better for my having been in it, but I have not been as constructive or helpful as I could have been.

And that saddens me every day.

At the core of a healthy human being is the desire to care for others, and be cared for by them in our turn. We want to support and be supported – to be a part of a community that cares for its members; where mutual support is the expected behavior.

This is the dynamic that helped us become the world-spanning species we are today. This long-reinforced habit of community, of society is how we adapt – sharing resources, knowledge and skills. It is how we endure hard times, mutually aiding each other at need.

But the world we live in today has no room for this. The people who own and run our culture know that an individual human, starved for connection is an easy mark for manipulation. Instead of cooperation, and deriving our identity from the societies we inhabit and support, we identify ourselves by what we buy and consume. “Consume, Compete and Conform” leaves little room for cooperation or identifying the good of others with our own.

Most of us will never reach the top of the competitive ladder. Many of us will desperately hang on to one of the lesser rungs of “success” until time or misfortune removes us. Competition creates winners and losers. It pulls us apart, differentiates us. And while it has its important uses – progress is often created by competition, and the desire to excel at what one does and to be recognized for one's excellence is a very human trait, it cannot be the be all and end all of a society.

Or you have no society at all.

Most advertising, commercial or political is based, not around making oneself a useful member of a community, but around competing with them in consumption-based displays that one goes into debt for. Buy this, and all the neighbors will envy you. You'll be one of the cool people. You'll be sexy and popular. Why it is better to be envied than admired is never, ever explained.

Drink this beer and you'll be a cowboy, gathered around a campfire, chortling a manly chortle with other cowboys. Buy this car and people will look at you on the street, jealousy almost visibly seeping from their eyes. Use this credit card and you'll feel like a hip young, fit, vibrant dancer. Eat this, drink this, live like this, pay this, believe this if you want to feel like you belong.

But you never do. Maybe for just a moment having bought something makes you feel like something new has happened. But that feeling fades quickly. And you are in your too-expensive house, watching your enormous television, alone. Even if there are other people there, you aren't really connected to them. If you met with misfortune, they would shake their heads and say nice things, but to actually do something that cost them to help you? Unlikely.

And you probably wouldn't help them either. Why? Because they're not “your people.” You haven't built the mutual bonds of support, and borne things together. You've been too busy chasing a “lifestyle” brand. In all your getting, you failed to get the most important thing of all.

We live in a time and place where kindness, empathy, and the willingness to give to others is mocked incessantly. Concern for oppressed others is being “woke,” and a “snowflake.” It is seen as macho, manly, and a condition of leadership to express and perform callousness and cruelty to those who are in a vulnerable position. But you cannot run a human society like a rat-baiting pit. Cooperation is at least as important in a society as competition.

Kindness is not a luxury. It is not something you can live a full and meaningful life without. And in order to experience kindness, you have to have people to be kind to. While being kind to strangers is laudable, there's something special about being kind to people close to you. And something precious about the times when they, unlooked for, went out of their way to be kind to you.

I am saddened by the fact that I will never be that person as consistently and completely as I once hoped. It wasn't as simple as I once thought to be kind. You can waste your efforts, cast your seed on hard, sterile ground where it does no good to anyone.

But still, try. I try as much as I can, when I can. It will never be enough, but it will be heartfelt and as well-considered as I can make it. And that will have to do.