on hardcore kindness

A lot has happened over the past couple of weeks. Chief amongst that lot: the owners of a popular Mac news site re-joined twitter without telling any of their team and, upon getting lots of negative attention, posted an explanation on not-their-website. Lots of people had thoughts:

• their team was super upset (from all that I could tell)
• lots of folks were upset because of what current twitter represents
• a number of folks (maybe lots but I only saw a handful) got visibly upset and cut ties with mastodon in favor of the twitter as well
• lots of words were said and thrown about.

One continued refrain from some circles was the common, "why can't we all be nice to each other?" or "what happened to kindness?"

Interestingly, I tried engaging (kindly) one of those guys and he repeatedly jumped on his high horse about the people of Mastodon being caught up in thought terminating cliches (he didn't like current twitter being referred to as a nazi bar) but honestly, "we need to just be nice" is one of the biggest thought terminating cliches of them all.

A thought terminating cliche is loaded language designed to end an argument, forgive cognitive dissonance and eliminate dissent. Nice or kind has become this in many (probably most honestly) circles. You see the call to niceness or kindness carries subtext: you need to make certain people, typically people with some sort of power (like white tech bros), feel ok about their bad decisions or bad actions or bad beliefs. You aren't worthy of seeking accountability or encouraging a better way or different decisions. You aren't worthy of calling out the harm they cause.

Sure, they'll give you an option: "Talk to us in private about what you have an issue with." but this is just another thought terminating cliche they don't have to actually deal with. More often than not when this happens, nothing changes but their butts are covered from public criticism.

hardcore kindness

So what does kindness really look like? Is it letting your friend experience harm so the people causing the harm can feel good about themselves? Is it making sure the ever-present shadow of nuance is around muddying the waters of right and wrong? Is it stifling very real emotion about very real things just so some folks can feel good about themselves? Is it excusing publicly done harm so as not to rock the boat? To some people, this is what they'd obviously hold if you believe what they write on the twitter and blogs and such. But none of this is kindness.

Kindness never chooses someone causing harm in favor of victims intentionally harmed. Kindness is being honest about circumstances and isn't afraid to call a spade a spade. That doesn't mean yelling and screaming and ALL CAPS messaging (things I didn't see much of over the past week anyways) but it does mean speaking truth. And speaking of truth, kindness recognizes that it might be uncomfortable but kindness pushes through anyways for the sake of everyone not just the sake of the powerful. And it's important to remember: kindness never dehumanizes as it engages with truth and as it challenges power. It's aim is justice and where that occurs, reconciliation.

Kindness is a force. It has the potential to liberate and affect society for the good (if we don't opt to neuter it for the sake of the powerful).

Don't ever let anyone neuter kindness to assuage their guilt or eliminate dissent they don't like. Embrace kindness for what its meant to be.