Kindness

Content Warning

This post is the third and last on the theme of sensitivity and offence – deliberate or otherwise. Everything will be from my perspective, and the views expressed are not intended as guidance of any kind.

If this is a delicate subject for you, please skip forward to tomorrow’s topic: Light Verse. Thank you.

Kindness, genuine kindness, is a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, there are many less wonderful behaviours that get called “kindness”, when they’re nothing of the kind. These include:

• Kindness as a power move
• Kindness as virtue signalling
• Transactional kindness

Kindness as a Power Move

This is the “kindness” of self-conscious patronage, often called (disparagingly) “charity”. People love to give this sort of kindness out, because it’s a huge ego-boost. It is made up of words and actions that scream: “Here, lowly creature, let me stoop down and aid you.”

Which is why most people are proud of never taking charity, and feel humiliated if the need is forced on them. This false kindness sets out to benefit the receiver, but really exists to serve the needs of the giver. And woe betide the subject of such charity if they fail to show proper gratitude!

Ask: If my offer of help is refused, am I offended? If so, why?

Kindness as Virtue Signalling

This is related to “charity”, but is more performative. In words, actions, body-language, clothes we say “Look at me being nice to these poor people! I’m so kind!” The receivers don’t matter at all in this equation, it is all about the giver and the giver’s peers. If the audience disappears, so does the kindness.

Ask: Do I need my kindness to be acknowledged? How do I feel if no-one knows about it?

Transactional Kindness

Also known as “Nice Guy” Syndrome, this is when you’re nice to someone with the expectation that they will return the favour on your terms. The trade is rarely equal, with small acts of basic human decency offered as a down payment on enormous favours, but that’s not my biggest problem with this type of “kindness”. The thing that I find most horrible about it is that it assumes selfishness, even cruelty, to be “normal” behaviour, and anything else to be an entry in the credit column of social interaction.

Ask: Do I wonder if being kind is “worth it”? If so, what “worth” am I expecting?

Genuine Kindness

Genuine kindness has many faces. It’s can’t be described easily, but we know it when we see it. It comes from a place of respect, love, and sincerity.

In The Avlem Burden, Brinnesha has to identify and correct all sorts of mistaken kindnesses in her behaviour. Ironically, it’s only once she learns to show genuine kindness and respect to others that she finally earns the genuine respect of the “lesser” people who had been the subject of her patronising, ostentatious “kindness” in the past.

At least, this is the plan. She’s still stuck in the “why don’t people appreciate me?!” mindset at the moment. I need to get back to the draft, so that she can move past that.