A friend shared a post from the caustic political pundit Ann Coulter ridiculing the son of Tim and Gwen Walz forcrying at the Democratic National Convention. “Can you believe it?” my friend asked indignantly.
Yes, I can believe it. Election season brings out the worst in people, but not much is gained by sharing indignities. Sharing dignity is the better course.
Lately, I have been asking people to tell me about an act of kindness they witnessed. Recently, I heard the following:
“I was in a store when someone came up to the counter and asked the clerk to call 911. An elderly man in the parking lot seemed to be having some kind of medical difficulty. A police officer arrived a short time later, and he was just so kind and gentle, asking the man how he was feeling, whether he needed any help. The man insisted he was OK, and he thanked the officer. It just made me smile.”
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That is what witnessing kindness does: it makes us feel good. Researchers find that kindnessmakes our lives betterby boosting our happiness, reducing stress and anxiety, improving heart health, and improving our relationships. And it doesn’t matter whether we perform the action ourselves, are the recipients of kindness, witness it, or just hear about it from others. Kindness, especially in those moments when it is not anticipated, brings a smile to our face.
But it does more than that. It also makes us more inclined to act with kindness. The Roman writer Plutarch, in his “Lives of the Greeks and Romans,” observed that “moral good is a practical stimulus; it is no sooner seen, than it inspires an impulse to practice.” Witnessing something good makes us more likely to act that way ourselves.
Kindness is not a virtue that gets much attention in ethics textbooks. Plato emphasized the cardinal virtues: justice, wisdom, courage, and temperance. Aristotle added generosity, pride, truthfulness and patience. Immanuel Kant argued that acting out of compassion or benevolence had nothing to do with ethics; only actions done for the sake of duty have genuine moral worth. Apparently, kindness is just too ordinary to receive much attention from philosophers.
When I am teaching ethics to college students, I like to ask them to describe the character traits of those who have had the greatest influence in their lives. That’s where I hear about the virtues that matter most to people. Over and over again, I hear young people tell me that the person they admire most — the person they want to be like — is one who treats others with kindness.
I think kindness is first among the virtues. It is how we acknowledge the humanity of another person, perceiving and responding to their inherent moral worth. We do this whenever we demonstrate compassion, care, concern, consideration and respect, which are all forms of kindness.
Kindness involves more than just being nice to people. It’s nice to be nice, of course, but there also can be a superficiality to the overt forms of politeness that characterize niceness. Kindness is more substantial than that. For example, I can be angry at someone and still act nicely. But kindness involves a change of perception. As soon as I act out of genuine kindness, my anger dissipates.
Most forms of unethical behavior stem from a failure of kindness, a failure to recognize another person’s humanity. And many of the worst forms of behavior, such as bullying, insulting, denigrating and ridiculing, are attempts to publicly deprive someone of dignity. Kindness is the opposite of that; it is the way we recognize another’s humanity. That’s what makes even small acts of kindness so powerful. In the right context and at the right moment, a simple gesture can restore dignity to a person who has lost it.
That’s what happened to Gerda Weissman Klein when American soldiers liberated the Nazi concentration camp where she and others were imprisoned. As a soldier approached the building, she spoke up: “We are Jewish, you know.” Six years of dehumanizing treatment had led her to expect more of the same. The soldier paused and said, simply, “So am I.” Then he reached out and held the door open for her. “That was the moment of restoration of humanity, of humaneness, of dignity, of freedom,” she recalled years later.
Kindness is so contagious that simply observing another person acting kindly can make us happier. And if the people around us are observing kindness, they are more likely to treat us with kindness regardless of how we treat them.
So, make an effort to treat people with kindness this week, and ask others to tell you about the kindness they have seen. It will not only make you feel better; it will make the people you interact with feel better, too. It may even restore dignity to someone who has lost faith in themselves or others.
Kyte is the director of theD.B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadershipat Viterbo University in La Crosse, Wisconsin.He also cohosts"The Ethical Life" podcast.
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