(Note: I’m travelling, and so this Sunday I am reposting one of my favourite old Endgames. This week, Endgame #50 - Kindness. Next Sunday, March 23, there should be a spanking new Endgame.)
Toronto, December 17, 2023
Kindness
Kindness, the dictionary tells us, is “the quality of being generous, helpful, and caring about other people...”
“Generous, helpful, and caring.” Nice qualities to be sure, but sounds a bit quaint don’t you think, pie-in-the-sky, aspirational, hortatory, not to be taken too seriously, loved your sermon Reverend, see you next Sunday, maybe.
Kindness can be trite, the expression of superficial and saccharine sentiments, the stuff of greeting cards. It can be insincere and manipulative, a tool of persuasion. And doesn’t the very idea of kindness ignore the reality of life? Don’t we live in a zero-sum world, where competing forces fight ruthlessly for dominance, where dog eats dog and only the strong prosper? No room for kindness there (unless tactical). Don’t preach kindness to a young and aggressive capitalist attempting to make his way in business, or someone trying to survive on a street corner in the poorest part of town. Your gain is their loss. Your weakness is their strength. They know that.
Kindness is an individual quality, not something that applies easily to groups or institutions. Whoever heard of a kind corporation, or labour union, or a kind government, or country? These organizations are not supposed to be kind. They’re supposed to be tough, to promote aggressively the interests they represent. Mind you, moderate and left-wing political parties sometimes claim to be kind. You are excused if you think this claimed kindness is synthetic. Those of the centre and left want to put political daylight between themselves and the mean right-wingers with slicked-back hair and no sense of humour. Corporations also sometimes mouth commitment to kindness and similar virtues when it suits their purpose. Senior executives wax lyrical about this stuff at shareholder and employee meetings. Do we believe them?
Even if you are personally inclined to kindness, you may be pushed in a different direction in the workplace. In some circumstances, confrontation will be seen as necessary and smart. (For a compelling example, see Rob Copeland’s recent book The Fund, about Ray Dalio and the Bridgewater Associates hedge fund.) Kindness will be held against you. Your boss won’t appreciate your finer instincts. Your opponent won’t buckle in the face of gentleness. As Hogan Ross tells his brother Cashel in William Boyd’s fine new novel The Romantic, “there comes a moment in any dispute, argument, negotiation—what you will—when main force is the only way to make people see sense.” (That approach doesn’t work out too well for Cashel.)
Maybe you think that my analysis of kindness is harsh and bitter, or, at least, overstated. You’re right. So let me strike a different note. What I have written is contrary to what we learn from experience and know in our hearts. We know that it is essential both to give and receive genuine kindness. Genuine kindness is not targeted or tactical kindness, not noblesse oblige, but general and random gentleness. Only then is life supportable.
The problem is, how are we to be kind in the cruel world we inhabit?
I remember Stephen Fry recounting his first day at Oxford being told by a don, "Don't try and be clever. There are a lot of clever people here. Just try and be kind"