What makes us kind? Why are many of us inclined to be kind to some and unkind to others? I think this could be found in the word itself. Kind. To be of the same kind. Or, as an old friend of mine said shortly after we met, "You and I are the same kind." (And we did have a lot in common. Except, he was an alcoholic and an ex-ballet dancer and I was a strong Christian and aspiring writer.) Or, kinship, because the two words appear to be related. So, in order to be kind, it helps to see the kinship, to feel that we are the same kind as the one receiving kindness from us. It is easy to have empathy towards those who most resemble us, or at least resemble our most flattering notion of ourselves, and to have little regard for others. This could hardly be called true kindness and more a kind of projected narcissism. We are all like this to some degree.
One of the most egregious examples of this kind of selective kindness: the German Nazis who drafted Hitler`s Final Solution were not terrifying monsters. They were very ordinary German family men. After each day of laying out the plans for the systematic slaughter of thirteen million innocent Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and disabled persons they would each go home to their fraus and kinder, bouncing their little Hanses and Heidis on their knees while eating their schnitzel and cabbage washed down with good German beer and kuchen or strudel with coffee for dessert. The banality of evil. They could not, or would not, see the humanity that they shared in common with the alleged inferior peoples while loving to death their own kind.
It is this mentality that makes it possible to kill the enemy in war, or to even have an enemy. In our minds we systematically dehumanize the other. It is really something sinister and evil. Because in many cultures women are treated as less than human, men think they have a blank cheque to rape and abuse and exclude them at their whim; queer people are regarded as the other and are marginalized and persecuted; racism is rampant because in each designated group only those who look like me need apply, and so on. For this reason our sad human history has been marked, punctuated and wholesale debased by slavery, massacres, sexism, racism, homophobia, class hierarchies, religious intolerance, poor-bashing, even genocide. This is how the church managed to justify the Inquisition and the slaughter of alleged witches and heretics. They were the other. This is how Hitler stuffed six million Jews into gas chambers and mass graves. They were the other. This is how Stalin starved millions of Ukrainians to death during the thirties. They were the other.
The categorical opposite to kindness.
Whenever I find that I absolutely dislike someone, or want to say or do something nasty and cruel I try to ask myself two questions: 1. What do we have in common? and 2. What could I actually like about this person?
Especially in my profession these are essential questions that I sometimes have to ask when I am presented with a new client. We are not always going to have a lot in common. And we are not always going to like each other, at least not at first sight. With the vast majority of my clients I tend to do very well, but I sometimes have to work at learning to like them before it actually happens. And sometimes they have to learn how to like me, and I have to be prepared to accept and respect this. As long as both parties are willing, I think that almost any relationship is redeemable as well as being redemptive.
Even yesterday on the bus I had a very enjoyable conversation with the passenger seated next to me. It was brief and inconsequential and at first blush we would not appear to have a lot in common. She was a young woman, perhaps thirty and I am an aging man pushing sixty-one. She had brown skin, likely South Asian descent, though her accent was pure Canadian English, and I have pinkish-white skin. She is a woman, I am a man (well, sort of). She appeared well-educated, probably with a few degrees and I appear to be well-educated while being a college dropout. I was trying to adjust my big golf umbrella so it wouldn't hit her and she asked me if I wanted to leave the bus, in case she needed to get up and give me room. I told her not to worry, that I just wanted to be sure my umbrella wouldn't injure anyone and she laughed about how golf umbrellas can be dangerous weapons and I agreed and there we went. But the humour brought us together, however briefly as friends, and as she left I thanked her for taking the time to chat with me.
Kindness takes so many different forms but if it is authentic then it will proceed out of a real desire to express love, care, joy and compassion, often with humour, to those around us, and to help us be the change that we desire to see in our small world.
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