You’ve probably seen them — T-shirts enjoining you to “Be Kind.” It is hardly an objectionable sentiment. But it also seems to me to indicate something worth noticing in the broader culture. These T-shirts are on the same continuum as signs at the bank or pharmacy reminding patrons to treat employees with respect. It is the kind of thing that went without saying until very recently. Such a cultural development seems worth exploring.
More insidiously, while this is certainly not the case for every wearer of such shirts, the invitation (or is it a demand?) to be kind is often weaponized in the service of ideological ends. Certain positions are simply asserted to be unkind, and so any principled objection to some policy proposal or other is immediately ruled a failure of kindness.
I recently saw a very scientifically confused social media post about intersex conditions that concluded with the injunction to “be kind” — as if the (scientifically accurate) position that there are only two sexes automatically requires being unkind to gender-nonconforming folk. As if the fact itself was unkind — and therefore in need of amendment.
For the record, I think you should be kind. But this pattern troubles me. In addition to its political weaponization of kindness, it imagines that being kind is a simple and straightforward thing to do; that the only reason people aren’t kind is because they forget to be.
Such presumption exhibits an utter lack of self-reflection. All of us fail to be kind almost daily, not only with those who threaten our lives and livelihoods, our homes and families, our values and our identities, but with the people we love the most. We snap at our kids. We hold petty grudges against our co-workers. We gossip about the neighbors. We ghost people rather than confront an awkward situation. The struggle is, as the saying goes, real.
Rooted in virtue
Kindness is not something we simply will in the moment. Rather, kindness is the result of cultivated virtue. You cannot be kind if you are not patient and humble and prudent and self-controlled and courageous, to name only a few necessary prerequisites. You have to practice things like biting your tongue or offering the benefit of the doubt or facing down your fears. When we live in a culture that actively denigrates and mocks such virtues, at least sometimes in some forms, we should not be surprised that the folks at the bank feel the need to post signs about kindness and respect.
You can’t tell kids that they deserve whatever they desire and then be surprised at how they act when they don’t get what they desire. And you can’t teach young people that anyone who disagrees with their politics is, by definition, unkind, and then expect them to be kind in return to such people — which explains why at least some of the voices demanding kindness manage to do so in such unkind ways.
And, of course, kindness is not the same thing as agreement. The real test of kindness is how we treat people with whom we disagree. Real kindness is loving our enemies. This implies that we actually have enemies! There actually are people out there doing and saying things that hurt us, hurt our families, hurt our communities and hurt society. We should oppose them vigorously. And we should do so with kindness.
Cultivating kindness
This means undertaking some basic practices — practices like acknowledging that the vast majority of people, whether we agree with them or not, are seeking genuine goods, however confusedly and disorderedly. In other words, we should not demonize our enemies, not even in our own heads. How we think of others when they are not there goes a long way to determining how we treat them when they are.
This is the wisdom behind the Christian duty to pray for those who persecute you. When you pray — really pray — you start to see the situation, and the other people in the situation, from God’s point of view. Prayer decenters our egos. And when we can see other people as God sees them, then we no longer feel the need to defend ourselves against them, and kindness becomes much more possible. This is the secret behind the surprising and creative kindness of the saints.
In our soundbite culture, sloganeering is a serious temptation. A T-shirt encouraging others to be kind may seem harmless. Perhaps it usually is. But I worry about any slogan that is aimed first at others. Perhaps one reason not to wear such a shirt is because I have not earned the right to publicly and indiscriminately chide others on the matter of kindness.
Maybe I should wear one inside out. Or get a scapular.
