Kindness and kinship: a different lens for a decent future

Meanwhile, the UN highlights the global emergency: ‘there is a decade left to stop irreversible damage from climate change, to protect the climate for future generations according to the economic, social and environmental dimensions of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ (UN General Assembly, 2019).

The irony is that both human suffering and environmental destruction are neither natural nor necessary; they are human-generated. We have more than enough for everyone to live without hunger, with need but not greed. The problem is that we are choosing consumerism, a system that favours the greed of the privileged at the expense of the poor and the environment. The argument for economic growth as the route to ending poverty is not only a futile defence of capitalism, but is a trajectory that is killing the planet itself. The time for connected ideas is urgent:

What we urgently need is an economy that replaces the universal of profit with a universal of care for both each other and the natural world which keeps us alive. (Swift, 2020: 26)

Kindness and kinship: a different lens for a decent future

Values change life on Earth! Not only do they frame the way we see the world, but also they influence how we behave towards each other and how we treat the environment. Tracing a timeline from World War II to the present day illuminates the ways in which changing the values has changed the world. From a post-war commitment to the common good based on a natural propensity for people to be kind, caring and cooperative, the British welfare state was born. But within a few decades a dramatic change in values, driven by Margaret Thatcher, planted the seeds of a global neoliberal revolution, one that has now reached world crises of catastrophic proportions.

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear. (Gramsci, 1971, quoted in Hoare and Nowell-Smith: 276)

We find ourselves in that ‘interregnum’, the gap referred to by Gramsci where the current global social order is dying but the new has yet to be born. It is a space in which morbid symptoms erupt in the form of political, social and economic contradictions culminating in crises that cannot be solved by the existing social order. Consider just some: the near collapse of the global financial system in 2008; the rise of extreme right movements in Europe and the US; populist politics in the form of Donald Trump in the US, Boris Johnson in the UK, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil; the environmental crisis; the world hunger crisis; the crisis of misogyny as violence against women and girls escalates the world over; the crisis of structural racism; and the rise of xenophobia as millions of displaced refugees seek sanctuary from climate change, war and poverty … And, on top of all this, as this book

goes to press, not only Europe but the world has been thrown into crisis as Putin rages a savage war on Ukraine that constitutes a crime against humanity.

Using the benefit of hindsight, let’s glance back at the UK to discover how changes in values have steered it from having the second most equal society in Europe to being the most unequal (Dorling, 2020). The key to understanding how such a dramatic change has been achieved lies in the use of stigma (Tyler, 2013, 2020). Constantly repeated stories of the poor and vulnerable as welfare scroungers, the detritus of society, have permeated the popular imagination as a ‘real truth’, endorsing punitive policies that have punished the poor and privileged the rich, dismantling the welfare state and privatising the commons (Standing, 2019). The exciting part of this awareness is that a counternarrative of kindness and connection, so much more part of the human condition than alienation and selfishness, could bring about a counter-revolution for the better.

What constitutes a good society? What are our responsibilities and obligations to one another? After more than four decades of a dominant ideology driven by individualism, how do we begin to reconnect with each other through kinship, community and the common good? The last vestiges of a social contract are evaporating: instead, we no longer have means-tested benefits, more a punitive system of stigma-tested poor relief! But life is risky for everyone: family breakdown, unemployment, poor health, ‘dis’ability, age, mental illness … ‘A good society recognises these risks and insists they should be shared and insured against in an agreed system of collective insurance’ (Hutton, 2015: 45). In other words, the risks of being alive and part of a society call for a social contract that underwrites those risks. That is social justice.

Imagine a society based on the common good, in which our common humanity is the focus for everything we do. Intelligent Kindness (Ballatt et al, 2020) changed my thinking. Ideas do this. They grow and evolve. Kindness is much more than a rather weak, wishy-washy emotion; it is part of the essence of our being, a concept with ancient roots that link to kinship, meaning that we are of a kind, connected across time and space, interdependent, with responsibilities to each other …

Kindness is kinship felt and expressed … it emerges from a sense of common humanity, promotes sharing, effort on others’ behalf, sacrifice for the good of the other. (Ballatt et al, 2020: 10)

This extends beyond personal relationships in family and community to other cultures, countries and continents. Being kind is a way of life that embraces the entire human family. ‘It is the “glue” of cooperation’ (Ballatt et al, 2020: 16). A radical, transformative concept, it offers a lens on the world framed by compassion, caring, reciprocity, mutuality, equality … Imagine how the world would be if kindness was our greatest priority!

… every living creature has its own variety of genius, and everyone is born into this world with a mind brilliantly capable of solving the

problems relevant to their survival … Our lives should be measured not by how many enemies we have conquered but how many friends we have made. That is the secret to our survival. (Hare and Woods, 2020: 196)