Against Kindness and Modern Kindness
The authors' thesis (you may not agree but try to see this on a societal level, not from your individual perspective) is that, “[m]ost people appear to believe that deep down they (and other people) are mad, bad, and dangerous to know. . . our motives are utterly self-seeking, and that our sympathies are forms of self-protection” (4).
The authors suggest that although many of us live life in “instinctive sympathetic identification with the vulnerabilities and attractions of others. . . but without a language in which to express this, or cultural support for it” (4)
(Again, remember, at times we have to over-generalize in order to be able to examine collective issues, and if we look at the state of our own country in the moment, there may be some evidence that supports these claims.)
One of the reasons, that the authors suggest, for our ambivalence about our instinct for kindness, has to do with making ourselves vulnerabile, weak: “Bearing other people’s vulnerability—which means sharing in it imaginatively and practically . . .––entails being able to bear one’s own” (11). In a sense, what we have in common is our vulnerability (an idea that Judith Butler will elaborate on in Precarious Life).
Thus, kindness has an internal tension—it brings us pleasure but it also reminds us of all that we fear about ourselves including change. (There is also an interesting discussion about whether kindness requires selflessness—hopefully we will discuss in class as this is important and a theme that will come up in C. Fred Alford’s book on whistleblowers.) How do you see the role of vulnerability in your service-learning experience? Think about yourself, those you work with etc. As always use the text to support your ideas and specifics from service to illustrate.
Also think about this in relation to and tie in the final chapter, "Modern Kindness" where the authors start by citing Winnicott who wrote about our moral ability to imagine the "thoughts and feelings and hopes of another person" (95). Jonathon Lehrer also described this capacity for empathy and its source in the emotions. The argument is also very much the message that is so well captured in I Am, for those who saw it: "We depend upon others not just for our survival but for our being. The self without sympathetic attachments is either a fiction or a lunatic" (95).
The authors continue to discuss the reasons why this is such a difficult reality for us to face: "Our resistance to kindness is resistance to encountering what kindness means in us, and what we meet in other people by being kind to them" (113).
Of course, our issues with vulnerability and dependence as discussed in the first chapter are a large part of this resistance. So keep thinking about the connections and how you see the implications in your own relation to your service experience (remember to start with yourself, not just about what you see in others).
“In one sense kindness is always hazardous because it is based on the susceptibility to others, a capacity to identify with their pleasures and sufferings.” (page 5) In my service learning, I try to not display so much kindness, in the sense of being so weak, because I don't want to appear weak to the students. I am a college student, but I still am shy towards any crowd. Thus, I don't want the students to feel as if I am scared or afraid of any of them.
ReplyDeleteAs for the students I tutor, they do not like to show their vulnerability. They do not like to show that they are weak because they hold so much pride in themselves. Afterall, they did go through a lot of pain throughout their lives to be in the position they are in right now. Therefore, "Living according to our sympathies, we imagine, will weaken or overwhelm us," which is probably how these students feel about showing their weakness.