9 years ago
5
How Kindness Became Our Forbidden Pleasure
"People are leading secretly kind lives all the time but without a language in which to express this, or cultural support for it." We’ve come to see the emotional porousness that kindness requires as a dangerous crack in the armor of the independent self, an exploitable outward vulnerability — too high a cost to pay for the warm inward balm of the benevolence for which we long in the deepest parts of ourselves.
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That was a really interesting, thought-provoking read.
Kindness and empathy are difficult in our current lives. People agree with it in principle and laud it when they see larger-than-life examples of it (e.g. Mister Rogers), but when it comes right down to it, people in general are afraid to show kindness. It's seen as a weakness that will be exploited.
I want to know, how do we change this?
I believe that at it's core, the problem is the ideology of capitalism. This is actually a common view among many sociologists and philosophers. Capitalism is all about self-interest. And to not be self-interested at least to some degree makes life extremely hard. Many feel that the pros in this case outweigh the con of a self-interested society although I personally beg to differ. When it comes down to it though, many just feel there are no alternatives but that is exactly what's stopping an alternative from being found.
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What i feel nurtures kindness is having pets . Since everyone can't or won't have pets, I'm not sure what the answer is.