KINDNESS π€
OR THE LACK OF THE SAME
βThat best portion of a man's life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.β β William Wordsworth
This is a topic that is long overdue! Kindness and compassion are on the decline with no end in sight. The division of people started a long time ago and has culminated with Covidmania and the hideous measures. Kindness and humanity have gone out of fashion and this is being reinforced with further absurdities like the fear of alleged man-made climate change and the attack on our children by the rainbow cult. People and even families are being alienated, the construct of the family is being defamed and portrayed as irrelevant, and censorship at all levels is further contributing to division thus to the further decline and lack of kindness. Instead of kindness, there are bans, regulations, and constraints. It is no longer a question of facts but of the feelings of an absolute minority that everyone has to handle with kid gloves - be it the Covidmaniacs (ok, here we, unfortunately, have a majority), the Climate Terrorists, or the Rainbow Cult. Independent thinking is just as unwelcome as kindness.
βHuman kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.β β Franklin D. Roosevelt
The EU's latest coup came into force on 25 August this year, which will provide for further and more extreme censorship.
The DSA - the Digital Services Act - will in the future determine what content is permitted or prohibited online within the EU. It is considered "one of the most important building blocks for the shaping of Europe's digital future announced by the EU Commission."
Since 25 August 2023, social network operators will be even more obliged to ban undesirable content from their platforms. Since violations of this will be punished with severe fines, we can assume that in the future, as a precaution, many posts will be censored, labeled, or deleted.
Above the DSA towers a questionable EU with a highly undemocratic leader at its head. Firstly, Ursula von der Leyen was never elected to this office but got there through a backroom coup. Secondly, her lord of the manor is highly non-transparent and, in my eyes, feels more corruptly connected to the (pharmaceutical) industry than to the individual EU citizens. It is not for nothing that several public prosecutors' offices are investigating them.
Superficially, it is about stopping hate speech. That may be desirable. However, it is much more important that the EU's Ministry of Truth dictates the only true truth and that critical voices can be silenced even more easily.
You might ask what this has to do with the decline or lack of kindness in our world. It is actually quite simple. People are so busy just watching out for themselves, seeing others as a potential danger to their way of living that the thought of kindness or kindness itself is being eradicated. There is so much hate out there, especially from the minorities I mentioned earlier, that living together has become living against each other. Of course, there are exceptions and I do all I can to surround myself with these as much as humanly possible.
βWherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.β β Lucius Annaeus Seneca
To me, it looks like we are deliberately designing a system to break empathy and kindness with the society that is being created. I believe that the more disengaged we become from others, the more time we spend online, or in crowded cities filled with strangers with whom weβll never speakβthe less empathic and kind we become. In a meta-analysis by University of Michigan researchers, the average young adult in 2009 showed less empathic concern, or motivation to improve othersβ well-being, than 75 percent of young adults in 1979. Can you imagine what those numbers would look like today after all that has happened and changed just in the past few years?
What I worry about most is our children. Our children are currently being confused, attacked, as well as indoctrinated by the rainbow cult to hate themselves and especially their bodies. Kindness comes primarily from self-love. How can people who do not love or accept themselves, people who are totally confused, live and give kindness?
Perhaps this is a plea for more kindness, empathy, and humanity. Perhaps we should once again adopt values that seem old-fashioned yet so simple, such as "do a good deed every day".
βYou cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.β β Ralph Waldo Emerson
πΆMy Song of the Week
You Might Need Somebody - Randy Crawford
For more good music, go to this Spotify playlist where you can find all the songs from the Change & Evolve Letters!
πMy Poem of the Week
Are these beautiful words by Muhammed Ali (1942β2016)
He took a few cups of love
He took a few cups of love. He took one tablespoon of patience, One teaspoon of generosity, One pint of kindness. He took one quart of laughter, One pinch of concern. And then, he mixed willingness with happiness. He added lots of faith, And he stirred it up well. Then he spread it over a span of a lifetime, And he served it to each and every deserving person he met.
πImpressions
Something relaxing⦠play it loud!
How do you feel about the lack of kindness around us?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments or send me a message. I very much enjoy hearing from you.
Wishing you a great weekend.
Yours
Tanja π€
Tanja - I hadn;t thought about it but even the idea of kindness is almost a foreign concept in our societies today. It may even be seen as a form of weakness as opposite sides retreat to their corners. I wonder how we foster kindness and model it for our children? It certainly doesn't mean acceptance of any form of behaviour. It's interesting that the Hebrew word used in the Old Testament (ΧΦΆΧ‘ΦΆΧ - hΜ£esedΜ±) also carries the sense of mercy, compassion and goodness. We seem to have driven kindness out of the social milieu with criticism. Interestingly, King Solomon wrote: "A man who is kind benefits himself, but a cruel man hurts himself" (Proverbs 11:17). So, you get the sense that the opposite of kindness is cruelty. However, being kind is good and backs our own self-interest! Somehow we need to foster kindness, and of course, the easiest place to start is with ourselves! Thanks for alerting us all to this fundamental character trait that we all need to seek after.