So, here is a story I like to share about learning kindness and empathy.
A little background. I grew up in a poor city right outside Birmingham, Al. All the kids I grew up with including myself had racist, homophobic parents. In return all the kids I grew up with including me were also racist and homophobic. When you grow up where I did with a silent generation dad and greatest generation grandparents from rural Alabama. You aren’t taught “hate”. You’re taught the way it’s always been.
I dropped out of school in the 9th grade. I got my GED and graduated college, but while I was working on all that I worked at Walmart when I was 16. I dated a girl that worked there and when we broke up I started dating a different girl that worked there a few days later.
Fast forward a couple of weeks and this loud and flamboyant twink named Joe that was our age tells my ex and current girlfriends that I dated them both at the same time. Then proceeded to drive both of them to my house where both chicks came in my house and yelled at me for a bit. When I walked outside I saw Joe in the driver seat of one of the girls car.
I figured that they probably met up at Walmart and I was going to beat the shit out of Joe. So, I jumped in my car and raced to Walmart. When they pulled up for Joe to get his car. I was sitting on the trunk of Joe’s car waiting. Fortunately, they left, and what follows is not great, but was necessary for me to learn a lesson.
After they left I was so angry that I used my key to carve the F slur so big that it took up Joes entire trunk lid. Nothing came of it for a few days. Then my phone rang. I can remember it like yesterday. A grown man asked for my name. I said I was he. He said that his name was Ronnie. (If you’ve read my other stuff this isn’t the same Ronnie that killed people.)
Anyway, Ronnie explained that he was Joe’s boyfriend. He told me that what I had done didn’t hurt Joe. He explained that he (Ronnie) was going to have to pay to have the trunk fixed. He appealed to my empathy, but he also treated me like a man. Could/should he have called the cops? Absolutely, but instead he decided to approach me like a man and explain the situation.
After he was done. I told him that I’d have to make payments, but that I’d pay to fix Joes car. Ronnie said that was fine. He invited me over for dinner and said that we’d discuss the terms. I agreed.
I don’t remember how much he said it would be, but I know that I paid him installments until it was paid for. During that time I got to know Ronnie really well. He had a monster truck and collected muscle cars. He had 2 Shih Tzus. He was much older than Joe and I. His previous partner had been someone important with State Farm insurance, but had died back in the 80s (this was mid 90s) and left Ronnie money and a house.
All this happened when my dad and I weren’t getting along. I still remember the first time I called Ronnie and asked if I could stay the night. He said yes without hesitation. I got there and he told me the ground rules. He said that I was always allowed at his house, but personal items like toothbrush, razors, and stuff like that were off limits. He said DO NOT MESS WITH THEM.
I was young not stupid. I had seen the real world. I knew that he was probably HIV positive. It wasn’t long before he and Joe broke up. Ronnie started calling on me. Ronnie lived in the country. I lived between the country and big city. He would call and say hey a couple of my friends are sick and I need to take them some food. Would you ride with me.
Anyway, Ronnie was the first person that I had actually interacted with where I had been forced to face someone that I had been lead to believe was different to me. Ronnie gave me a safe place to be when I wasn’t getting along with my dad. I can remember my “friends” at the time making fun of me for hanging out with a gay dude. I didn’t care.
Ronnie taught me more about being a man than my own father did. When he should have just called the cops he took the time to turn hatred into a teachable moment.
If you’re wondering what happened to Ronnie. I hung out with him fairly regularly until I got on drugs really bad. After my family deserted me. I deserted my friends because I couldn’t live with them hating me for what I had become.
After I got clean I started trying to pick up where I left off. I called all of the good friends I could think of. So, I called Ronnie. A man answered and I asked if Ronnie was there. He quickly asked who I was, and I explained that I was a friend. He said that he was Ronnie’s brother and Ronnie had passed away a few years earlier due to complications from HIV. He said that he got some kind of dementia.
We talked about 2 hours. I told him about how Ronnie had taught me about empathy. He said Ronnie had done the same for him. Ronnie was one of the greatest men I’ve ever known.
Yeah, someone needs to make this into a movie STAT
I’m sure Ronnie would be proud of the person you are today. Thanks for sharing.
I believe that there is at least some learning/cultivation; I’ve seen plenty people becoming nicer over time, and some nice people becoming arseholes. However that is not enough to rule out a potential innate component.
I think there’s also a learned component of being kinder and more respectful to people. Even with the best of intentions, it takes time to learn how to do it effectively and learn how people might want to be treated.
Afterwards the positive feedback can encourage more good actions
Kindness can be learned. The difference between being genuinely kind and just constantly successfully mimicing what a kind person would do is - no difference at all, really.
Ultimately, I think people who started as natural assholes make the best kind people - beacuse we don’t just do what feels kind, but we have to examine the results of our attempts at kindness, and adjust if needed.
I would just say that people are much nicer when their needs (positive and negative) are both being met generally. Until then, one can’t help being selfish and innwardly focused
Kindness is a virtue that we learn to balance. You’ll learn who deserves your kindness with time. It is innate but requires cultivation and practice through social interactions.
We learn that being kind to rude people will usually not make things better, but we also learn that being kind to those who need to be shown kindness can help tons. And as with all things, there are extremes.
People who become helpless and reject the notion of being nice.
“I went through the pain, why shouldn’t you?”
And people who become pushovers and reject the notion of the fact that they’re being taken advantage of.
“I can take the pain for everyone.”
And as with life, it’s never black and white. You’ll meet all sorts of people. Some really nice. Some dickheads. Some annoying ones. And some evil ones.
All of this is just my personal opinion, but it helps me realize that it’s all okay. It’s part of the balance.
I would say that kindness is an expression (not the only one) of empathy. Some degree of empathy is present in the overwhelming majority of people - barring extreme sociopathic conditions and an absence of mirror neurones. So for most people I would say that it is innate to some extent.
Even in cases where empathy is not present, kindness can be simulated or faked and some people with strong sociopathic conditions have proven to be very good at this when it suits their purposes - so I certainly say something with the appearance of kindness can be learned in one form or another.
It can definitely be cultivated - and I would say that this is one of the major qualities in the whole “two wolves” metaphor or, in classical Greek terms, a virtue to be developed.
It can be learned but it’s hard.
Basically if you suffer through an event it gives you the ability to empathize with similar people.
Kindness can absolutely be cultivated. Mindfulness and Metta meditation can help, but also just doing to work on yourself.
I also would like to urge you to think of kindness as a quality of actions, not people. It’s what we do that matters more than our intentions.
ETA: kindness isn’t always seen as nice. A parent letting their kid suffer the consequences of their actions can be seen by the kid as unkind, but if it helps the kid become more resilient it has kindness.
I’ll go against the grain here not because I disagree, but for sake of discussion. I think it’s mostly innate. Why? Well my father is a clinically diagnosed sociopath currently running from country to country after he’s done something reprehensible. Growing up with that man, there is no fucking way you can teach or cultivate kindness in him.
And no sociopathy is not something that should be romanticized like it has in podcasts, he has destroyed and harmed so many people it’s unbelievable that people like him can stand to look in a mirror. Anyways mostly innate lol
Kindness is a behavior, and therefore it can be cultivated and practiced.
IMHO what is innate is a person’s capacity for empathy (the ability to understand that others have different feelings and to temporarily take their perspective for the purpose of understanding).
Empathy – is a type of intelligence
Sympathy – is an emotion
Compassion – is a behavior (based on an emotion)Whether a person actually expresses the empathy they have capacity for depends on things like whether or not they’ve been the victim of abuse. For example, the character Scrooge is what I’d call a person with large capacity for empathy but had no sympathy (the sharing of feelings with others) and thus acted without compassion. He lacked empathy for some reason, in some versions due to childhood abuse (never read the actual Dickens version so idk). The ghosts that visited him showed him why he should have empathy and because he had the capacity to, he changed.
I don’t believe that every human has the same biological capacity for empathy. As a silly example, I don’t think that the former pres. of the U.S. could possibly become a compassionate person due to being visited by the ghosts of Christmas past/present/future.
This concept of capacity applies elsewhere too, for example, my brain has a certain biological capacity to understand mathematics, but due to lack of motivation and interest, I am not likely expressing my full potential mathematical prowess.
Note that I’m using kind of reversed definitions of sympathy and empathy vs some definitions I’ve seen online. My way makes more sense to me, since the word “sympathy” is used outside of psychology the way I use it.
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I see you have neither learned or been born with kindness.
