Third Letter to Dear Grimmi: Kindness as a Policy.

I hope you read this, Grimmi, though I shall abstain from "pinging" you.


I just want you to know that I appreciate your kindness since it seems authentic, well-informed, and wise. My criticism rather was for those who grow *dependent* on that sort of sentiment. They either seek to emulate it as a form of flattery or try to go so far as to enforce it as a substitute for policy. They lack discretion and don't recognize those situations wherein "meanness" is appropriate instead, as though there were not countless errors worse than being "mean", such errors that can*not* be solved by kindness. They do not use kindness as a form of social currency or merit, but instead demand it unconditionally, which of course is a barbaric tendency. When others treat them less than kindly, they do not observe the error in themselves but rather in the critic; they assume that "harshness" is no more than "failure to be kind", instead of recognizing harshness as success in its own right, depending on the context.


Often, they're the very people who enable many of the meanest members of Society to come to power in their social groups, because they are too weak to lift a sword in opposition to the people they believe, out of their desperation, to be friends. They'd have us compromise between compassion and discretion, failing to acknowledge that the one is but another version of the other, thus ensuring that the both are compromised. They sympathize regardless of the merit of the Other, meaning that, effectively, they sympathize with no one, and, when others try to earn their place in life by noble means, they question the integrity of that pursuit, as though to earn one's place in life through kindness was self-interest instead of merit. They pretend that hatred and disgust are just a lesser form of sympathy, despite the fact that one can hate another with just cause and sympathize with that same other by mistake. They take all criticism personally and do not set boundaries; what "boundaries" are possible for one who does not have the basic sense to draw the line between the guilty and the innocent? (Such "boundaries" are nothing more than personal entitlements.)


These tendencies, no doubt barbaric, as I've stated, never work. They *don't* make people stronger, wiser, more discerning, more enduring or persistent, nor, in fact, compassionate, for they erode and pacify the passions to the point of impotence. If kindness is required but it's not rewarded, as a form of merit, then it festers. It becomes a *privilege*: a luxury reserved for those with wealth, required less of those "in greater need", so, though the needy may be murderous and guilty of all sins, they're pampered even if they slaughter those who treat them kindly, while the "smarter" (read: "more psychopathic") members of Society forsake the principle of "kindness" altogether, wearing it as nothing but a temporary mask to fool the sentimental patsies.


At the root of this dystopian absurdity, as stated by your fellows, is a *nihilism* masquerading as true sympathy. Beginning with the demonstrably false impression that one's life is meaningless and lonely, one is desperate to turn to sympathy to fill the void which *ought* to be supplied instead by meaning, purpose, and the Greater Good, a value which is neither selfish nor mere "altruism", since it is not *founded* on the *false dichotomy* between "my own needs" and "the needs of others". It's this false dichotomy, a failure of the modern individual to follow an objective moral code, which is the source of mental illness and societal unrest. I see no reason to deflect to other explanations.


In conclusion, I would like to cite the *Tao Te Ching*: "*When Tao is lost, there's goodness, and, when goodness has been lost, there's kindness*." It is not that Nice Guys *ought* to Finish Last. It's rather that we should not need to be *dependent* on their kindness as a *substitute* for virtue. Only then can kindness truly flourish.


**[({R.G.)}]**


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