You've Got To Be Kind

When I was in high school, a friend of my father’s sent me a copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan. I appreciated the gift. But I did not read it. To spur me on, I even at one point received a postcard, featuring a picture of Vonnegut frowning. Still, I didn’t read the book. I’m not really sure why. But, I think, I wasn’t ready for it. Not yet.

My freshman year of college, Vonnegut actually came to campus to speak. There was a gravity to the man. But I still hadn’t read The Sirens of Titan or for that matter any of his books. I knew it was important to have seen him, but I couldn’t really say why at the time.

In May of my junior year, I was taking a “May Term” course - one class, three hours a day, three weeks - on the Sixties. We were assigned Player Piano. Only then, finally, when I was 20, did I read Vonnegut.

I’ve since read pretty much everything he ever wrote.

There are three things Vonnegut wrote which keep creeping back into my brain. One of them was actually in an introduction to a new edition of a Nelson Algren book, where he commented about how Algren demonstrated a basic respect for the humanity of the people he wrote about. This notion of a basic respect for humanity sticks with me. It carries me through a lot of difficult questions.

Another thing was from one of Vonnegut’s collection of essays, A Man Without a Country. Writing about speaking at a memorial service for Issac Asimov:

Well, I take the joke a little farther. To me he will always be Saint Kurt.

The final thing, which is certainly the best known of the three, is a paragraph pulled from a speech he regularly gave to college students. I don’t remember him saying it when I saw him. But it rattles around my mind more than any other quote I can think of. I quote it in entirety here:

Today, February 17, 2020, is Random Acts of Kindness Day, and the beginning of Random Acts of Kindness Week. I don’t know who came up with this. I don’t know what Kurt Vonnegut would think of such a thing.

One the one hand, it’s not especially random if we’re now designating a specific day and week. And we also shouldn’t need such prompting just to be kind to one another.

But good grief, have you been out there lately? Anything that can help instill a conscious awareness of kindness should be welcomed.

I give this idea of kindness a great deal of thought. I’ve got a son. And when I boil everything down, I want him as he grows up to be happy, and to be kind.

We don’t use the word “kind” a lot though. We use the word “nice” instead. I’d suggest that “nice” and “mean” are about precise antonyms, and in correcting certain behavior, we might emphasize being nice instead of being mean. Mean behavior would be intentionally interrupting; not sharing; blatantly not listening; maybe some other things which are more “rude” than “mean” but which are close enough. “Nice” involves paying attention, saying please and thank you, etc.

The catch is that “nice” is often superficial. You can be a superficially “nice” person, always saying please and thank you, while still being a cut-throat asshole. But you can’t be a kind person and also be a cut-throat asshole. Nice is something you can seem. Kind is something a little different.

Another thing that isn’t a great synonym for kind is “friendly”. As I’ve explained to my wife before, I think I’m a kind person, but maybe not a terribly friendly one. When we were first dating she’d feel like I could be too quiet and disengaged when meeting people, and she was right. She’s much more natural at being able to jump into a social setting and flash social grace. Here again “friendly” can be kind of superficial. I think though it’s more accurare to say that there’s a lot of overlap between kindness and friendliness, even if they’re not quite the same things.

To me, kindness overlaps with friendliness and niceness, but there’s more to it. Kindness involves being helpful, deferential, caring, compassionate, empathetic. Kindness, I feel, is what the Golden Rule is really about. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Well, if Person A is a physical, touch-feely, lot-o’-hugs type of person, and Person B isn’t wired the same way, you might imagine the Golden Rule, applied literally, bringing them into conflict. But that’s a misread. It’s not “I want a hug, so I’m going to give you a hug!” Instead, it’s “I want you to respect my wishes, so I’m going to respect yours.” It’s not about ay particular method. It’s about fundamental, mutual respect.

The other aphorism that I think fits in is this one: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Now, I know what you’re thinking: this lunatic just equated Marx to Jesus. Well, maybe. But let me give an example here.

Let’s say you’ve broken your ankle and you’re hobbling around on crutches. There’s a light about to change, one of those where if you don’t hit the button, the walk sign doesn’t come on. I see you trying to get to the light in time but I know you’re not going to make it. I hit the button for you.

That, to me, is an essential act of kindness. I’ve done for you what I’d hope you’d do for me. I was able to do it, and you weren’t. I didn’t even have to sacrifice anything notable; it took what, two extra seconds of my time?

The song “Lean On Me” also neatly encapsulates the notion of kindness. Lean on me / when you’re not strong / I’ll be your friend / I’ll help you carry on. What is a greater act of kindness than being there for somebody when they’re in need? And everybody loves that song, right? (Must be because we’re all Marxists!)

What I especially like about the idea of Random Acts of Kindness Day / Week, though, is that it reminds us that part of the spirit of kindness is about going above and beyond just being someone to lean on. Kindness can, and must, be proactive in our world as well as reactive. We must not merely respond with kindness, we must also lead with kindness. Kind can’t just be what we do, it’s got to be how we are.

We were in a bookstore on Sunday, and they actually had a little display in the front for Random Acts of Kindness Week. There were some children’s books, and a couple of what I’ll call “thought-piece” books which grabbed my attention. Our next stop after the bookstore happened to the library, and I jotted down the names of the books so I could see if they were on the shelves. One of them supposedly was, but when I got to the 177.7 shelf, it wasn’t there. I did however find other books about kindness.

I checked out a book called On Kindness. It’s short and I’m about half way through. It purports to be a brief history of kindness, which means a fast overview of paganism through early Christianity through the Middle Ages through the Enlightenment. I had figured a book called On Kindness would be more like a self-help book as opposed to a short paper on Rousseau, but I’m intrigued nevertheless.

Now, if Western philosophy seems like an odd way to approach a consideration of kindness, might you instead consider whatever this is that passes for today’s politics? Interestingly, in this book, one of the named proponents of kindness as a powerful virtue is no less than Adam Smith, often credited as the father of capitalism. It’s hard not to see the connections, and how surprising some of them are.

Where I’ve gotten to in the book is a place where kindness, in Western thought at least, had come to be considered as something of a weakness, but then as something feminine and especially maternal. There is also a traditional Christian construct of self-sacrifice interwoven. While I’m familiar with the idea that someone might be too kind - in other words, a pushover - I have to admit that in general I don’t think I’ve been brought up to perceive kindness as some kind of weakness.

Admittedly different people have different notions of what the kind course of action is. Some people think that the kind thing to do is let others fail, because it’s through failure that they become more self-reliant and stronger in the long run. Certainly, in the abstract, the argument can make some sense. But when do we get to a point where allowing others to fail is really nothing more than cruelty?

One of our great - and woefully underappreciated - living songwriters is Darren Hayman, formerly of the British indie-pop group Hefner. As with so many great songwriters, a song which is ostensibly about something else entirely winds up saying something tremendously profound about… everything. From the middle of the song “Greater London Radio”, he wrote and sang:

Critically, there’s a distinction to be made between what we believe and how we act. I don’t think Hayman was getting at the idea that people can be hypocrites, though we certainly can be. Rather, I think the point is that it’s not about whatever label we try and apply to ourselves. It’s about our actual individual conduct. It’s about whether or not we’re kind.

In late 2018 The Atlantic published a piece by Adam Serwer, “The Cruelty Is the Point”. The subcaption pretty much sums it up: “President Trump and his supporters find community by rejoicing in the suffering of those they hate and fear.” I think if the subcaption simply added the words “most ardent” to modify “supporters”, it’d be spot on. As it stands, I think the article gets it very right, and also very wrong.

Trump, to be sure, revels in the cruelty. He exudes cruelty-as-strength. He is, among so many other things, a manifestation of a dog-eat-dog worldview, a Spencerian creation for the 21st Century, survival of the tweetingest. And I do think there are a fair number of people attracted to the cruelty in and of itself. It provides a simplistic worldview that they can more readily buy into. But, crucially, I just don’t believe that these people exist in overwhelming numbers.

Others may be more able to admit to what is plainly evident, but still buy into a Social Darwinist construct. And still others may think only in terms of seeing a winner and wanting to follow whomever may be winning.

A great many people, though, while they may be attracted to the perceived strength, are not necessarily entranced by the cruelty. Indeed, they may not even really see it, and would be crushed to actually accept it. They aren’t necessarily buying into the meanness, even though they may well be buying into the fear. And they are being given plenty to be fearful of: Hamburgers and straws and guns all being taken away. Socialism, with all of its supposed crackdown on freedom. Her emails.

I think a whole lot of these people are actually kind people - but also people who have, to some extent or another, become convinced that such kindness, far from being a virtue, is actually a sign of weakness. Maybe not just a weakness… maybe even, somehow, a sin.

It is no such thing.

The reality is that this country was founded upon exploit: exploit of the land and exploit of people, be they displaced Native Americans, enslaved Africans, coal miners brought over from Eastern Europe, or whomever else that a buck could be made off of.

The further reality is that much of that exploit necessarily involved cruelty.

Even today, when such extreme exploit is widely understood to be consigned to the past, we still see so very many examples of exploit, and how so many of them manifest in such cruel ways. For some, sadly, the cruelty is indeed the point. But even when it is not the point, the treatment is often still cruel. It is antithetical to kindness. It is antithetical to the plainest teachings of Jesus Christ. And you certainly don’t need to be a devout Christian to readily understand that. Few people argued more pointedly about what Jesus plainly stood for than…

Kurt Vonnegut.

I call him Saint Kurt, but of course, he was no saint. Neither are you, neither am I, neither was Gandhi, neither was King. Oh, there are humans who have been given the title. But we’re all humans here. We’re all imperfect, and thank God for that.

Now, far be it for me to argue that holding a door open for a little old lady is going to magically convince her to vote the way you want her to vote. That’s not how things work.

But when we fail to treat each other with basic human decency, we facilitate an environment where people fall prey to their fears instead of focusing on their hopes. We help allow cruelty, instead of unity, to be a stand-in for strength.

Random Acts of Kindness Week may sound silly, but from where I’m sitting, it’s anything but. It’s an opportunity to refocus on what’s truly important in this world: being someone to lean on when you’re not strong.

It is an opportunity to get in touch with that spirit of essential respect for each other’s humanity.

That humanity, of course, is a great many things. Sometimes it is mean or cruel. But as Neil Young put it, love and only love will endure. That means love for one another. That means treating each other the way we wish to be treated. That, critically, means we must also find it in ourselves to love ourselves, which in turn requires that we must be kind to ourselves.

It also means that we must embrace, or at least accept, some zaniness, some randomness. As deliberate as we all may try to be at times, intrinsic in our essential humanity… is that we’re all just a wee bit fucked up, too. And this is why I think Random Acts of Kindness is actually a perfect way to think about things.

John, if I never actually told you so directly, thank you for sending me The Sirens of Titan. I may not have been ready for it then. I hope that this piece can help make up for my thoughtlessness at the time. Hi ho.

As for the rest of you, remember what our dear saint said:

God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.