Kindness?

And also, sorry for jumping into the thread after only reading the title instead of reading all the comments posted and the conversations that have taken place. I'm probably just reiterating either what everyone here already knows or just basically what someone has already said.

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Welcome to a2k, Abouhamdan. Your post was very interesting and really not off topic. This thread, however, looks like it might have gone as far as it's going to go. I hope not, you bring new ideas, but if nothing happens here, there are plenty more, especially in philosophy that are extremely interesting.

Kindess is not always to be found there, but if you can build up fairly thick skin, I think you'll do just fine.

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Abouhamdan- I too think your post is very interesting and very much on the topic. Especially the part where you talk about groups that form and are "kind" to each other, but not to outsiders.

See, I wouldn't call that being a kind person- if they were only actively helpful or polite or loving to certain people based on certain criteria.

I guess what I'm saying is it's not a choice to be kind- it's a choice to act kind- but not to truly be kind.

People who are truly kind don't pick and choose who to bestow their kindness upon.

I think a lot of people interpret kindness as weakness or vulnerability. Maybe that's why there are so many people who choose to remain alone and apart- so that they won't make themselves feel or be seen as vulnerable.

That sounds like an interesting book. Thanks for posting about it.

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Yes, Abouhamdan, nice contribution. And welcome.
I am interested in this notion of groups within society. Gangs, cliques, families, religious confessions, etc. Members of such subgroups seem to see themselves as more obliged to one another than they are to outsiders. There is a notion in social science of "amoral familism", referring to the feeling/value that one is vastly (sometimes exclusively) more obliged to members of one's family (whether nuclear or extended, like linages and clans). Even within so-called universal, that is to say non-tribal, religions that are supposed to include all humans (as "catholics" declare) as within their moral community, there is favoritism. This favoritism may be defined in terms of members of one's species, people within the cultural nation, or within the community and within the community of relatives, favoring people who are more closely related.

There is another area not so far discussed in this thread: the various kinds of expressions of kindnesss, e.g., self-sacrifice (e.g., Finestein, and the altruistic suicide of kamakazi divebombers, islamist martrys, american soldiers,that is to say, those who die for their society), giving to charities, giving of organs, social service, and so on.

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Greetings Abouhamdan,
I'm no stickler for formalities when posting, I have learned some and hope to learn more, have fun!

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Well guys, there is a good group right here, right now. Why not get things going again?

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In Ontario, students are required to complete 40 hours of community
service in order to graduate high school....a rather enlightened "kindness"
requirement, in my opinion.

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Shepaints, I see such a compelled altruism as more a case of learning social responsibility rather than kindness. Nevertheless, I can imagine how community service might introduce some students (those who have fulfilled certain psycho-spiritual prerequisites) to "the joy of kindness."

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True enough JL, I like your term "compelled altruism".

I looked at 2006 US census information (it must be quite similar to
Canada's) and found the following:

" Adults and teens will spend nearly five months (3,518 hours) next year watching television, surfing the Internet, reading daily newspapers and listening to personal music devices."

What luxury!

The 40 hour community service requirement can be reduced to only one community service hour per month for four (ten month) years of high school..... not too arduous! I suppose most students serve a larger block of time a few days a year. It's an eye opener and a great opportunity for students to be introduced to the real life needs of their own communities. Hopefully social responsibility and kindness develops as by products of service.

I wonder if other countries have a community service requirements
for high school?

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Shall we start a new thread somewhere else to further the discussion on sciology and general human psycology? It's something I've been interested in and researched quite a bit, though, I've never takin' any classes on it. (I'm only 17) Anyone with any further knowledge on that sort of subject, feel free to enlighten me on a few things. Well--I'm rambling again--new thread?

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shepaints wrote:

In Ontario, students are required to complete 40 hours of community
service in order to graduate high school....a rather enlightened "kindness"
requirement, in my opinion.

There is a big difference
between being KIND,
and
being the victim of extortion.

If I were a student in Ontario,
I 'd REBEL against this extorted slavery.
I 'd demonstrate great and abundant CONTEMPT for it.
The difference between seduction and rape
is salesmanship and the difference
between charity and robbery is FREEDOM of volition.

Indeed, something over half a century ago,
I DID that, to the chagrin of my high school principal,
when a NYC radio disc jockey, Murray Kaufman,
visited our school. He ran some student interviews.
I denounced extortionate presure to donate to the
" General Organization " known better as " G. O. "
I pointed out that neither school teachers nor their principals
have the power to tax. The principal was outraged,
which afforded me some degree of satisfaction.

The collective shud labor under the heavy boot of the INDIVIDUAL on its neck,
or
put another way, by having a lesser degree of association,
( figuratively speaking, by moving further apart )
society shud be weakened to the greater glory of the INDIVIDUAL,
in his personal liberty. The goal shud always be l'aissez faire libertarianism

Let us bear in mind that INDIVIDUALS created society,
by associating with one another. As John Locke has pointed out:
society and its henchman, government, have only that authority
which has been granted to them, by their creators, INDIVIDUALS.

In other words,
Individuals are the parents of society,
and society, or the collective, is their little child
who owes its existence to Individuals, for creating it;
hence, society shud look up to Individual citizens as gods,
who both created it and who sustain and nurture it.
It is a high honor to society to be permitted to grovel at the feet of the Individual,
never robbing its parents.
David

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shepaints wrote:

Quote:
True enough JL, I like your term "compelled altruism".

This is the underlying principle of naked communism,
( which has been far worse than nazism; very dangerous ).

Quote:
I looked at 2006 US census information (it must be quite similar to
Canada's) and found the following:

" Adults and teens will spend nearly five months (3,518 hours) next year watching television,
surfing the Internet, reading daily newspapers and listening to personal music devices."

What luxury!

The more luxury, the better.
It shud be the everyone 's goal
to cram as much luxury and delight into his life as he POSSIBLY CAN.

Quote:
The 40 hour community service requirement can be reduced
to only one community service hour per month for four (ten month)
years of high school..... not too arduous!

It IS too arduous,
in that the exploiter, the community,
has NO RIGHT to even one nanosecond of the individual 's time.
That is like saying that a little cancer is not bad.
It seeks to establish an extremely dangerous principle,
which its victims shud reject out of hand
like Jews refusing to wear tiny, little yellow stars.
David

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So, tell me OSD, would you consider a mandatory year of service to the country (whether military, peace corps or some other public service) for high school graduates as "slavery"?

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Students are also required by law in Ontario to attend school from the ages of 6 - 16.

I see the community service requirement as being very positive. Parents usually expect children to contribute something to the running of the household, in terms of doing chores, for example. Children in Ontario are able to take advantage of a myriad of communitiy activities from the time they are very young. These activities only exist because of the unflagging efforts of thousands of community volunteers. Why should they be no expectation of reciprocity?

To me it is healthy for kids to get away from TV and devote a few hours
to the community. There are myriads of jobs to choose from, in all kinds of areas of interest, the environment, social, recreational etc. Some examples might be helping out at a community sports event, picking up litter in a park or forest, stocking shelves in a food bank. I think it helps kids to appreciate a lot that they take for granted.

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I agree Shepaints, especially in that it exposes them to other people in other walks of life to which they may not otherwise have ever been exposed.

This is so important in that it provides opportunities for young people to even just simply become more aware of other people and situations and this awareness is the first and most necessary step toward empathy- especially in the case of children or young people who legitimately may not realize what a difference their expressed empathy, which may then eventually translate into kindness (whether it be simply in attitude or expressed in action) can make in another person's life.

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OGDavid says that "(compelled altruism) is the underlying principle of naked communism, ( which has been far worse than nazism; very dangerous ).

Is it possible that he really believes that? Does he deny that one of the bases of Nazism was compelled cruely. Just as the guards at Auswitz.

And which is preferable, altruism or cruelty?

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But this is where it gets sticky again for me. Of course, looking back objectively and not having been in the middle of the Nazi occupation, I can see that the actions that were taken were blatantly cruel. Same with the people who jeered the black students who were the pioneers in integration in the segregated south...but do you think those people really believe that they themselves were cruel people or even really believed that they were engaging in cruel behaviors?

The reason I can even ask myself that question is because I have relatives in my extended family who would be as kind as the day is long to me and my family, but who were (and maybe still are- I don't really know because I avoid the subject with them) actively racist. And I guarantee you, they believe they are kind, good-hearted people who believe I am a kind, good-hearted- but very misguided person.

Do you see what I'm saying? I think when there's a cause at hand, such as David's libertarianism and individual freedom, or the Nazi's ethnic cleansing, or the American south's insistence on segregation and cultural adherence to tradition- the adherents don't believe they are being unkind or cruel; I think they believe they are in fact, being kind in that they are preserving what they believe in for their children and society.

I can't really see it myself, but it's the only way I can believe that these otherwise ordinary people are or were not absolute monsters.

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Sorry- this also just occurred to me:

David said:

Quote:

It IS too areduous , in that the xploiter, the community,
has NO RIGHT to even one nanosecond of the individual 's time.
That is like saying that a little cancer is not bad.
It seeks to establish an extremely dangerous principle,
which its victims shud reject out of hand
like Jews refusing to wear tiny, little yellow stars.

But how about if you think of the community as a lot of individuals- which is how I think of it- truly- I rarely think of it as a collective- because when I do, there are only a couple of communities of individuals that I can think of that I do feel positively enough about to care to help. But there are a lot of individuals who inspire me to feel empathetic and altruistic and kind.

So since, as you said, the individual is king, it'd seem to follow that the giving of our time and talents to other individuals would be a viable request-or even requirement- or is every individual only supposed to serve/worship him or herself?

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Aidan, your post opened up a field of thought that I've gone over for most of my life.

When I was in Mississippi with a friend who was doing research on a book, I went with her to look at population records and found an ancestor who was listed as owning slaves. I realized that if I had been in that family, I would have loved them and even agreed with them. Hard to accept even though, at that time, that way of life would have been all I'd ever known.

My own father im sure could have, maybe even was, a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He was horribly abusive, but in the long run, I was oddly grateful for his brutality because it made me question everything he stood for. BTW, the abuse is long gone and I wouldn't have mentioned it except for the purpose of relating the story.

I saw a photo on the cover of the Southern Poverty Law Center's newsletter--it showed a man holding his little 3 or 4 year old son--both of them were giving the Nazi raised hand signal. He was totally loving his son and the feeling was mirrored in the little boy's face. My fear, and I know this sounds terrible, is that that man will be such a good father that his son will take everything he says and think it must be true.

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People are very inventive at disassociating themselves from others, perhaps it's (arguably at times) a survival instinct gone awry.

One slightly different note, can anyone claim to truly empathize with the pain and sorrow of the world and still function?

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