“Be kind” is an over used hollow phrase. Kindness is abstract, acts of kindness are tangible. When action is absent, kind words are hollow.
The Oxford Learners Dictionary defines kindness as “the quality of being kind to treat someone with kindness and consideration.”
Can we ‘be kind’ to our companion animals while eating farm animals? Can we be kind to refugees while being cruel to captive enemy soldiers? Can we be kind to family while being mean to co workers or neighbours?
These are subjective questions which we could quibble over never to reach a satisfactory conclusion. Or we could dispense with the mindless need to be “right” and open our minds so that we may open our hearts.
The history of human consciousness is littered with the ability to “other.” From the horrors of slavery, colonisers (indigenous peoples have consistently been at the receiving end of unkind actions) and animals are casualties of the human minds ability to disassociate. As far as we may believe we’ve progressed modern day slavery exists. Colonisers have cleverly veiled their actions by establishing countries and territories. Animals in factory farms suffer some of the vilest abuses your mind can conjure.
It wasn’t hard for us as a species to train our minds to accept the concepts of factory and extend it to factory farms. The human mind is a master lesson in compartmentalisation.
Educators are our first line of defence. We’ve successfully convinced parents to ‘leave teaching to the schools’ So while students learn science, math, literature, languages- all vital – who teaches them kindness?
Empathic children are taught to ‘toughen up’ and we are confused when we have an epidemic of violence on our hands.
We cannot teach students self serving behaviours and paradoxically expect them to magically care for the natural world around them.
Image from @gruhttp://@gruntveganntvegan
This image is disturbing, and these are the truths our education system does not teach. Once you take the most intimate act of feeding one’s self and hijack the mind into conforming to ‘normal’ behaviour how can we ‘un teach this indoctrination?’ In prepping generations to climb the educational ladder we have failed to equip them to be empathic (toward themselves and the beings they share their world with)
If we’re paying for the best education available why are we turning out the least aware adults?
We define cruelty by our ability to witness it. Unseen, hidden cruelty is still cruelty.
Selective kindness is liberally taught, outrage is cherry picked which mean equal rights are far from equal.
The equal rights ‘feminist’ who marches and enters marathons for the women’s cause publicly may be a raging narcissist privately. A thoughtful and fair minded teacher in a controlled class room setting maybe unable to function in the an uncontrollable real world! We’re a wildly complicated species who’ve “advanced” so rapidly but are emotionally primitive. Charitable endeavours online are impressive for reach and ability to help across borders- but they give a false sense of community involvement. Our online wonderland has created a sense of detached involvement.
Involvement is real when it is hands on. Fund raisers online are safe havens for feel good moments.
Are you kind or a conformer?
Are you an intrinsically kind person? or a conformer? We conform to actions deemed as kind or unkind by societal standards. The individual concepts of kindness or affinity for a kind act is acceptable only by standards of the majority. And the majority are wickedly unkind to non conformers. All that kindness and love to fellow beings disappears quickly when entrenched customs and practices are questioned.
Let’s recognise that homogenised actions are not kindness or empathy in action, they are merely mass actions deemed to be acceptable.
So let’s demand more. Be kind to the kids, we’re not leaving them much else. Once they see the world through compassionate respectful eyes their behaviour changes and they unlearn the structured and staid rules. There is no longer a justification for the education we’re dolling out.
If you attended school post 2000 and emerged more confused than when you entered the confusion is real. Why single out these two decades? Because the explosion of information at our finger tips is mind boggling. No educator can feign ignorance on any subject. They may not be a master at it, but the most vital subject of climate change and action has subtly been ignored by the majority of educators across the world.
And that is the unkindest act of all.
Cover Photo: Photo by Tara Winstead: Pexels
Leafy Fox 