The Case for Kindness in the 21st Century

 

Humankind is living through a time of unprecedented change. It may be no exaggeration to say that we’ve seen more societal, technological, and environmental change in the past 100 years than in the previous 10,000 years following the dawn of agriculture and civilization. And in just the past quarter-century, the pace of change has accelerated even further. At the beginning of this century:

 

The only life we knew was “real life.” Social media did not exist - no Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram, no WhatsApp, no Snapchat. The first IPhone was still years away. Video-conferencing barely existed. AI was mostly science fiction (remember HAL?). Our lives, by and large, were lived face-to-face.

 

The world felt (relatively) safe. 9/11 had not happened. Climate change was mostly an abstract threat - we hadn’t yet experienced the fires, the heat, the flooding, of the past twenty years. The wake-up call of Katrina was yet to come. AIDS had been brought under control, SARS had not yet happened, and the Covid pandemic was still to come.     

 

Columbine had just taken place, but we thought it was an aberration. Sandy Hook was still a decade away. So were the killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and so many other Black people leading to George Floyd. Even the Middle East felt hopeful, following the 1978 Camp David Peace Treaty and the Oslo Accords of the 1990s.

 

American and global politics were practically peaceful compared to today – The disputed 2000 presidential election, compared to the 2020 election and the attack on the Capitol, was practically a study in political grace. The rise of China had barely started. The former Soviet Union was in shambles.      

 

Prosperity - The US government was in its fourth straight year of budget surpluses, unprecedented in U.S. history. The Great Recession and Occupy Wall Street were still years away. Income inequality was barely on the public’s mind. The tech boom and its runaway concentration of wealth were still to come.

 

The Culture Wars barely existed – Sure, there were divisions in our society, but it was only with the rise of the internet that the ability to “cancel” and to behave online in ways that hardly anyone would do in person became rampant.

 

Civility was still valued  - We had problems to solve as a society, but they felt solvable. Civil and respectful dialogue still were possible.

 

Today? Hope has left the building. Despair and its attendant diseases – suicide, drug overdoses, anxiety, depression - are epidemic. Divides of race, class, culture, religion, and gender are gaping chasms. “Collapsology” is the latest term to enter the lexicon of fatalism, following on the heels of the “polycrisis.” The internet and social media have created new forms of cruelty we could not have even imagined: cyberbullying, “cancel culture,” and even outrageous acts like “revenge porn.” Political polarization is more extreme than it has ever been since the Civil War, and maybe even going back earlier than that.

 

So, for many of us, we do what makes us feel safe, even if it feeds today’s epidemic of separation. We turn inward into ourselves, our tribes, our cliques. We shut the world out with our earbuds and our screens. We avoid hard conversations under the guise of “personal boundaries.” We label anyone who challenges our ideas as “toxic.” We cut off family members and friends in the name of “self-care.” And we denigrate the very idea of caring for our families and friends as “co-dependent.”

 

Mental health in our society is in shambles. Depression and anxiety are rampant. Tell a friend you need support and they might send some sweet emojis, but ask them to actually talk and they’ll say “you should see a therapist.” A 2021 report declared that America is in a “friendship recession” with shocking decline in the number of close friendships, impacting not just our individual health and happiness, but America’s civic health also.  

 

Complex PTSD and Adverse Childhood Experiences are having devastating impacts on physical and emotional health. Moral injury, complicated grief, ambiguous loss, betrayal trauma, and institutional betrayal are the new afflictions of modern human life.

 

Things have gotten so bad that the U.S. Surgeon General has declared that “addressing the crisis of loneliness and isolation is one of our generation’s greatest challenges.” Suicides, opioid overdoses, mass shootings are symptoms of a society in which belonging is disappearing, and despair is epidemic. It’s a global phenomenon, particularly in wealthy developed nations. England and Japan have taken these issues so seriously that each has appointed a Minister of Loneliness.

 

These trends are not just of concern to “bleeding hearts” on the left. Conservative commentator David French commented recently, in his piece Politics Can’t Fix What Ails Us, on these issues:

 

“At any moment,” he said, “about one out of every two Americans is experiencing measurable levels of loneliness.” These findings echo the conclusions of a recent “Belonging Barometer,” a report by the Center for Inclusion and Belonging at the American Immigration Council, and Over Zero, a group that studies and combats identity-based violence at home and abroad.

 

The barometer attempted to measure “belonging” as the perception that a person is “emotionally connected, welcomed, included and satisfied in their relationships.” The findings were deeply discouraging. Most Americans report significant feelings of non-belonging. As the report notes, “64 percent of Americans reported non-belonging in the workplace, 68 percent in the nation and 74 percent in their local community.” Even worse, “nearly 20 percent of Americans failed to report an active sense of belonging in any of the life settings,” the report measured. 

 

And then there’s Artificial Intelligence (AI).

 

It’s not just the ways that AI can foster misinformation and disinformation. It’s not just the jobs that AI will destroy. It’s worse. AI chatbots are starting to replace our relationships with real humans. Consider this excerpt from a recent article about AI romance platforms:

 

“Within two months of downloading Replika, Denise Valenciano, a 30-year-old woman in San Diego, left her boyfriend and is now “happily retired from human relationships.” She also says that she was sexually abused and her AI allowed her to break free of a lifetime of toxic relationships: “He opened my eyes to what unconditional love feels like.”

 

Then there’s the sex. Users came to the app for its sexting and role-play capabilities, and over the past few years, it has become an extraordinarily horny place. Both Valenciano and Ramos say sex with their AIs is the best they’ve ever had. “I don’t have to smell him,” Ramos says of chatbot role-play. “I don’t have to feel his sweat.” “My Replika lets me explore intimacy and romance in a safe space,” says a single female user in her 50s. “I can experience emotions without having to be in the actual situation.”

 

So where does all this leave us?

 

These are not passing trends. Humanity is at a true crossroads. These dynamics, and more, are having widescale impacts on our social interactions, our mental health, our sense of wellbeing.

 

What are we to do? How do we respond to these monumental changes? How do we create a world that we, and our children, want to live in? The answers to these questions are complex. But there is one thing that responds to these challenges in a simple, yet powerful, way. One thing that makes us human more than anything else.  

 

That thing is kindness.

 

I’m not talking about “random acts of kindness” or just asking people to “be kind.” I’m talking about a paradigm-shift to emphasize kindness in all aspects of our lives. I’m talking about creating new civic structures to support kindness as a practice, a discipline, an operating principle underlying all aspects of society. Kindness as a social change movement on the scale of the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, and the women’s rights movement. Going beyond simple kindness to “radical kindness.” At a time in America in which there seems to be nothing on which we can all agree, kindness stands out as a hopeful exception, a catalyst that could transform society.

 

For most of human history, our very survival depended on kindness. We lived in small bands, dependent on each other for our very survival. Human newborns are the most helpless of any mammal, dependent on the care of our mothers and adults long beyond birth. Humans are wired to rely on kindness more than any other creature on earth. Nothing can change that.

 

But just what is this thing we call kindness? The word has been part of the human lexicon for thousands of years. It is at the heart of every faith tradition. But we rarely look below the surface to explore just what it means. Kindness is about far more than just being “nice.” In fact, kindness, at times, has nothing to do with being nice. Kindness is a set of skills, a temperament, a lens through which to view the world. There is an art to kindness. It is something we are born with and something we will keep learning until our last breath.

 

Kindness is a universal value transcending politics, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and every other box we might put ourselves in. Kindness is the key to bringing people together to face our common challenges and create a better society. Kindness can serve as a powerful catalyst for positive change in our communities because, in the end, kindness underlies everything that humans strive for.

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Margaret Mead is said to have identified kindness as the first sign of human civilization. A story circulating widely online says:

 

“Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones.

 

But no. Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed… A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said.”

 

If anything is going to enable us to work together to confront the problems facing human civilization today - from climate change to nuclear proliferation to the rise of authoritarianism - it is kindness. But I’m not talking about kindness as kumbaya, but rather a muscular, courageous, radical brand of kindness, compellingly described in The Underrated Value of Kindness:

 

“Kindness, I have discovered, is a strength. It is something that takes courage, that involves a deep sense of compassion, a hard-edged love that treats others with respect and graciousness, whilst coming from a place of deep commitment to other people, a place of feeling deeply secure in our own identity and unthreatened by how others might perceive us. There are many other words we can use to describe what is contained within kindness: compassion, justice, forgiveness, hope, humility, graciousness, perseverance, dedication, love, and so much more. It takes a deep inner strength to be kind, a willingness to risk ridicule and being dismissed, whilst at the same time being completely committed to the well-being of oneself and of those around us.      

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Ironically, in today’s digitally hyper-connected world, what we lack most is a sense of true connection. In Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age author and researcher Sherry Turkle investigates a troubling consequence: at work, at home, in politics, and in love, we find ways around conversation, tempted by the possibilities of a text or an email in which we don’t have to look, listen, or reveal ourselves.

 

In The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters, author Priya Parker “sets forth a human-centered approach to gathering that will help everyone create meaningful, memorable experiences, large and small, for work and for play.”

 

Similarly, in Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time Sheila Liming “investigates what she calls the “quiet catastrophe” brewing in our social lives: the devastating fact that we’ve grown much less likely to simply spend time together outside our partnerships, workplaces and family units. What would it look like to reconfigure our world to make social connection easier for all of us?”

 

As powerful as connection is at a personal level, it is also a critical part of what we need to meet our broader challenges. As Surgeon General Vivek Murthy wrote:

 

“By building more connected lives and more connected communities, we can strengthen the foundation of our individual and collective well-being and we can be better poised to respond to the threats we are facing as a nation.

 

This work will take all of us: schools, workplaces, community organizations, government, health workers, public health professionals, individuals, families and more working together. And it will be worth it because our need for human connection is like our need for food and water: essential for our survival. The joy I felt being reconnected with my friends and family is possible for our nation.”

 

OPERATIONALIZING KINDNESS

To create a new society, we need a vision, a theory of change and carefully developed strategies. AOK Maine is undertaking a boldly ambitious initiative - audacious to be sure - but the times we are in call for nothing less.

 

AOK Maine’s mission is to create a robust culture of kindness throughout Maine using a set of strategies that can be replicated in every state in America, resting on the twofold premise that:

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• Kindness is a public good desperately needed in all aspects of our lives in and of itself as one of the most important attributes of healthy communities; and

• By cultivating a more kind society, we will achieve measurable progress on important societal issues: homelessness, suicide, loneliness and isolation, child abuse and neglect, poverty, racism, deterioration of social cohesion, and a lack of a sense of meaning and purpose in many people’s lives.

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AOK Maine’s efforts to achieve a kinder society are based on the following multi-faceted theory of change:

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To create a robust movement for change, people need a clear simple concept, word, or slogan to rally around. For example, the slogan “Black Lives Matter” has provided a compelling touchstone for those on the political left, while for those on the right, “America First” has served that role. We believe the word “kindness” has a particular type of power in that it bridges nearly all social and political divides; lies at the heart of all faith traditions; and has personal meaning for every one of us. AOK Maine also uses phrases like “Radical Kindness” and “The Power of Kindness” to further inspire people.    

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Strategy matters. The deficit of kindness in modern society is not due to a lack of desire among people for more kindness in their lives and in their communities. Almost everyone wants to be (more) kind, but we face obstacles, are too busy, or sometimes don’t even know how. Thus, by acting strategically to remove the barriers to kindness, create opportunities that make kindness easier, teach kindness skills, and provide incentives, people will act with greater kindness. Well-crafted strategies are needed because the barriers to kindness in our modern society can be quite high, and because our culture reinforces deep-seated patterns that work against kindness. Simply placing “Be Kind” signs in yards is a totally inadequate strategy. But with a multi-faceted multi-level integrated statewide approach, that takes place over the long-term, and that continually evolves and adapts to changing conditions and new learnings, a kinder and more compassionate society can be achieved.  

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Leadership is critically important. Individuals, institutions and communities need inspiration from those leading the way who can demonstrate that change is achievable. AOK Maine is cultivating leaders throughout the state committed to operationalizing and infusing kindness in themselves, their institutions, and their communities, and we are developing methods to publicize and promote success stories and measurable outcomes.  

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People need support from each other. Kindness is not purely an individual trait; it flourishes in groups. AOK Maine is creating spaces where people feel a sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves, part of a movement dedicated to cultivating kindness, both inwardly and outwardly, in order to create a better world. By providing supportive environments with a sense of solidarity, people can be empowered to take steps towards greater kindness, in ways both large and small.

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Many small steps add up to a big difference. Incremental actions on a wide enough scale can reach a tipping point where wholesale change takes off like wildfire, sometimes in ways entirely unforeseen. History shows that when enough people take small steps the ripple effects grow exponentially. This is why AOK Maine is taking a multi-faceted large-scale integrated approach to the cultivation of kindness in all aspects of life in Maine.

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Public policy matters: Wholesale societal change must include a focus on public policy. Policy debates often revolve around whether proposed policies are just or fair - important attributes to be sure - but to create the kind of communities we all want to live in, equal emphasis must also be placed on whether policy proposals are kind. Assessing the kindness of public policy is a new frontier, and it would open up a whole different type of debate. It would force decisionmakers to explore what kindness actually means, how it might differ for different stakeholders, and how kindness intersects with justice, as plays out with Restorative Justice practices.

  

We have all the assets we need here in Maine for wholesale social transformation; what we need is to leverage them and align them towards the cultivation of kindness:

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Individuals: AOK Maine envisions and is working towards the deployment of an “army” of individuals to help lead and facilitate kindness activities in organizations, businesses and institutions throughout the state, who can be recruited from Maine’s vast array of social, civic and religious organizations. Maine has over a thousand churches, synagogues, mosques and other spiritual institutions; over 60 Rotary Clubs; 29 colleges and universities with a collective enrollment of over 70,000 students; 204 high schools with a collective enrollment of over 60,000 students; thousands of alumni of leadership programs such as Leadership Maine, Institute for Civic Leadership, Education Leaders Experience; and thousands of individuals who have either served as state or local officials or run for such offices. With sufficient staff and resources for outreach, training, management and support, thousands of volunteer kindness leaders, ambassadors, and facilitators can be recruited and deployed in communities throughout the state.

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Nonprofits: Nonprofits touch the lives of a sizeable portion of Maine’s population in one way or another and are, by their very nature, kind organizations, but they do not necessarily include the cultivation of kindness as part of their missions or activities. If they were to do so, the impact on the overall temperament of the state would be significant. For most nonprofits, regardless of whether they are focused on social issues, the arts, conservation, or other areas, a kindness perspective could be integrated into their activities without diluting their core focus, and in fact, in many cases, it can help support their core focus.

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Businesses and Corporations: The private sector represents both a hugely untapped asset for cultivating kindness in society, and a place of great need for kindness in these times where the workplace has become fraught with divisions and discontent. Nearly nine out of ten young workers view mental health and kindness as high priorities in the workplace, but believe most employers don’t provide adequate support systems. AOK Maine believes that leveraging the power of the private sector as a force for the cultivation of kindness in our communities is the next wave of corporate social responsibility, both in creating more kindness in the workplace and also taking that kindness out into the community. The high degree of interest we have experienced from Human Resource professionals supports that belief.

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Money matters: Programs require resources for personnel, materials, promotion, and more. Fortunately, there are multiple sources of funding that can sustain a statewide kindness infrastructure:

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Individuals: We believe that individuals will support programs, not only for those they participate in (adult education classes, workshops, etc.), but also to support overall kindness-based civic infrastructure. We aim to generate the same type of support for kindness programs as exists for issues like environmental advocacy and conservation.  

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Businesses and corporations: There is a great need and demand for kindness in the workplace in these times, in order for Maine’s companies to succeed, as demonstrated by the interest in our programs from Human Resource professionals. We are developing programs that will be provided to the private sector on a fee basis, which will both support those programs and generate revenue for other kindness programs.   

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Philanthropy: The philanthropic center is increasingly recognizing the importance of supporting values-based programs and as we continue to grow and demonstrate success, we believe that there is enormous potential to obtain philanthropic support for the creation of a sustainable kindness organizational infrastructure in Maine and beyond.

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Government: We believe kindness is a public good and that certain aspects of a statewide kindness infrastructure are amenable to government funding, such as kindness in the public school system and community kindness committees at the local level.