"Only a very bad person would hurt a kind old man like Corbyn" Credit: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
It is widely agreed that kindness is lacking. There is simply not enough of it about, and whenever someone mentions it, that absence is implicit. When the politician says “I want a kinder politics”, he means politics is not sufficiently kind. When the actor says “I wanted to get some kindness out there”, he means someone else was being unkind. When the mental health guru tweets “BE KIND TO PEOPLE YOU BASTARDS”, he means the bastards should be kinder.
Kindness is one of those things that seems so obviously good that more must always be better — however much you start with. Telling other people to be kind qualifies as an act of kindness in itself, which a cynical person might point out is convenient, because otherwise being kind seems like a lot of work. (You have to think about what other people want and then do things for them! Exhausting!) But cynicism is itself not kind, which means kindness is hermetically defended against that line of attack.
Setting yourself up as an opponent of kindness would be extravagantly poor taste, especially now the hashtag #bekind is irrevocably associated with suicide prevention. This is unfortunate for me, because I am not a kind person; or at least, I don’t think of kindness as the quality I would like to be defined by or measured against in public life. I’m a critic, which makes it my job to say critical things.
I think that paying attention to things — how they work, what they do, how people respond to them — is the highest sort of respect, even if sometimes you end up saying that the thing is flawed. Also, being mean is pretty funny. I’m very fond of Winnie the Pooh, but I’m even fonder of Dorothy Parker’s review: “And it is that word ‘hummy,’ my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Cornerat which Tonstant Weader Fwowed up.”
So I suppose I must be an enemy of kindness, and that forces me into a position on one of the great and endless battles of the discourse: in the confrontation of snark and smarm, I choose snark every time.
*
The last major snark vs. smarm skirmish took place in 2013, when the blog Gawker published an essay by Tom Scocca called “On Smarm”. “Smarm” was the term Scocca used to summarise a cultural attitude that had been developing since the turn of the century, and which Scocca identified particularly with the literary journal McSweeney’s, founded in 1998 and presided over by author Dave Eggers. “What is smarm, exactly?” asks Scocca, who then answers himself like this:
“Smarm is a kind of performance—an assumption of the forms of seriousness, of virtue, of constructiveness, without the substance. Smarm is concerned with appropriateness and with tone. Smarm disapproves.
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SubscribeIs this a result of the redefinition of tolerance/intolerance? When I grew up (in the 60’s & 70’s – sigh…), tolerance meant “I don’t agree with/approve of/like X, but live and let live, I’m not going to make a fuss”, and intolerance meant “I don’t agree with/approve of/like X, stuff live and let live, I am going to make a fuss”.
Now tolerance seems to mean “I wholeheartedly approve of, endorse and condone X”, and intolerance is anything which falls one iota short of this definition. Have the definitions of kindness and unkindness have gone down a similar path?
Indeed. Tolerance is so yesterday. Today, what is required is affirmative if not open cheerleading. Unless you’re the one doing something The Borg dislikes, in which case it is perfectly reasonable for people to be intolerant toward you. Make sense? If not, I understand; the left is so full of pretzel logic that maintaining sanity can be difficult.
Toleration is not sufficient-you must celebrate…or kneel.
The weakness of many to any perceived “not fitting in” may be a consequence of social media gone amok. It’s much more difficult to withstand the barbs as one doom scrolls as if that small screen really had power. But those who grew up in the screen world have a harder time finding affirmation elsewhere. The teen cliques of old live in adults tied to screens.
We need a return to the pubs of old where people can lament together. After abandoning churches for solace few places are left.
I totally agree with what you write about tolerance/intolerancce. I think there was a move to stopp examining what we were tolerating.
Your question is interesting and I will keep an eye out to observe the answer!
Times change, that’s a truism, but an article about kindness? Do we/you need to be told what it is.
Growing up in the forties and fifties been kind meant not getting a clip round the ear (at least). And a thrashing when you were innocent was considered been ‘cruel to be kind’. Now well…?
Doesn’t tolerance mean ‘put up with’? As such, extremely problematic when applied to race, sexuality, gender, religion or nationality. I tolerate Arsenal fans but, like black people, I don’t think they want, need or appreciate my tolerance.
Yes, ‘old-fashioned’ tolerance can be problematic. It could be patronising and condescending, and the line between it and racism/sexism/etc may not necessarily be clear. However, in its genuine form, it tries at least to live with what it doesn’t like.
This stands in stark contrast to the new-fashioned tolerance, which cannot bear the idea of living with what it doesn’t like, and does what it can to tear down and cancel what it doesn’t like. I’d say that’s way more problematic.
You tolerating Arsenal fans is, I’d say, a recipe for greater social cohesion than you demanding they stop being Arsenal fans.
I’ve had a lot more thoughts about this and most of them are even more incoherent than what I’ve just typed so I’ll leave it here for now.
For centuries people understood that manners were required to be accepted in to society and a number of behaviours were encouraged and accepted by most people. Examples of these include “only speak when spoken to”, “address people formally until you have been introduced”, “treat people as you wish to be treated”, “there is zero tolerance of violence”, “rudeness is an indication of a damaged psyche”, “sticks and stones will break my bones…..”, “innocent until proven guilty” and many more. Social media, and the anonymity it allows, has managed to eradicate all of these within one generation solely for the profit of a very limited number of billionaires who are powerful enough to demand these old manners for themselves. What have we allowed to happen to our hard won polite and safe society?
Well said, although I think the seeds of this illness were sown in the 1960’s.
Sorry about the mixed metaphor.
Pink Floyd said it all in 1979 “We don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control”.
I can never tell whether you are being ironic.
Wasn’t that Pink Floyd piece sung by a bunch of London school kids (Islington or Hackney, I think) who would probably have received education and thought control in line with Roger “Woke” Waters’ view of the world?
Yes by 1979 the damage had already been done by morons like Waters & Co.
However at the time I was struck by the sense of sheer triumphalism that the song gave off, a celebration of joy in stupidity.
Fortunately, as you may recall, Mrs T was about to arrive like an avenging Valkyrie!
Well I’m a Pink Floyd fan but even back as a teenager I wondered about some multi-millionaires encouraging kids to hate school and play truant, of course to their rather obvious longer term detriment! As you say, Roger Waters and the others wouldn’t pay any price for such idiocy.
Whatever back and forth changes there have been in the purely political sphere, lazy leftish ideas have more and more cynically permeated throughout the arts and culture – both by practitioners and critics. This has been a quite cynical exercise. The worship of regressive violence worshipping grime and gangster rap etc, is a similar modern phenomenon to The Wall.
“lazy leftish ideas have more and more cynically permeated throughout the arts and culture”.
Yes indeed, spot on! And the source of this mischief is State/Comprehensive Education which has been chiselling away at our cultural core for nigh on fifty years now, and into which 93% of children are cast without a moments thought.
However, as recent events at Eton College have shown the red tide of Woke is still rising, and even Private Education is not immune from the mayhem of this cultural destruction.
The kids always sounded gloomy and over-tutored to me.
I don’t recall the entry of Mrs T because I never listened to the album or saw the movie (can’t abide Gerald Scarfe). I am familiar with the song in question because I had the misfortune to share workspace with a Pink Floyd fan who played it day after day, week after week. I must have been compelled to listen to it over 200 times.
That must of been torture!
The album was launched in 1979, or Anno Thatcher 1.
The lyrics were written by a posh public school boy, prompting Suggs to write Baggy Trousers in response because he wanted to say what a state school was really like.
The kids chorus in that song just sound like a caricature. You can imagine Waters urging them to sound as working class as possible.
The penalty for bad manners in traditional face-to-face interactions can be a good kicking if your interlocutor is having a particularly bad day. There is no such penalty for Internet rudeness, hence the departure of said manners. Its not the moguls who caused this, its us all. Maybe we need mild shock collars who anyone we talk to online can activate if offended?
Thank you Ms Ditum for your illuminating article: the appeal to ‘kindness’ as a veiled call for compliance to the proclaimer’s political and moral expectations, given that anyone who deviates from or questions them will be accused of being ‘mean’/’unkind’/’immoral’. One should certainly be suspicious of those who claim moral superiority as a shield against all criticism.
With Chu, Grint, and the people attacking Behr, you have pointed to something far worse than unkindness. It is a blatant attempt to dehumanize people, whether that means rhetorically dancing on a woman’s grave or casting aside the person whose work made your life possible. This is not about either snark or smarm; it is straight out of a dystopian novel that seeks to unperson anyone not in line with “the party.”
And locking up asylum seekers or separating migrant parents from their children doesn’t ‘unperson’ people?
Twitter, which I can’t stand, is small beer.
Yes, down with that sort of thing.
As a writer who has spent much of my life reviewing things, I love this article. Certainly humorous criticism is the core of much human interaction. I once posted two identically weighted articles on a travel website. The ten best places in Devon… and the ten worst places in Devon. Over a period of several weeks the ‘worst’ gathered approximately twice as many visits. People don’t want smarm, they crave snark.
Truth is generally kinder to the world than polite lies.
The footballer of the 1950’s and 60’s, Danny Blanchflower, said that enemies are better than friends as “enemies tell you the truth”.
Those tweets about Ashli Babbit are shocking. Doesn’t Chu realise that by calling someone the ‘opposite of a person’ he is himself parroting N*zism? It was the N*zis and their ilk who dismissed vast sections of humanity as sub-human. He should look into the mirror – but I doubt he’ll see anything other than his own well-preened, narcissistic self.
Doesn’t Chu realise that by calling someone the ‘opposite of a person’ he is himself parroting N*zism?
Of course, not; people like him have no self-awareness. They will justify fascist tactics while calling the opposition fascist. And I have little doubt that his tweets were accompanied by widespread approval.
I have many “friends” on social media who constantly post about “love”-between the many posts expressing vicious hate for those who disagree politically.
It’s an rather odd thing to take a death joyfully. I also picture that fearful policeman who shot the woman. She was not armed but in the noise and clamour he acted. He will suffer as well. Can ideology really be that mean-spirited? Even the N*zi reference is beyond the pale, yet cheered by some. Disgusting.
‘When I gently asked my acquaintance about it, the explanation was that, no the book wasn’t great, but it was hard to dismiss another writer’s efforts.’
I more or less stopped buying new novels circa 1996 because I was constantly duped by writers giving ‘kind’ reviews to other writers.
That aside, a very good article with which I agree. We need a lot less ‘kindness’, which is doing a great deal to destroy the West. And often, of course, it is just another word for ‘more taxes’.
Roger Ebert was a great example of a kind critic, reviewing movies based on whether or not they succeeded at what they were trying to do. e.g. is it a good romcom/weepie/action movie. And always an entertaining read…
For example the opening of his review of the ’60s Casino Royale:
At one time or another, “Casino Royale” undoubtedly had a shooting schedule, a script and a plot. If any one of the three ever turns up, it might be the making of a good movie.
-but they had a lot of fun making it!
In that spirit the author had to write a certain number of words to a deadline. She is to be commended for achieving this while avoiding writing anything interesting or memorable.
Great article Sarah, I could’nt agree more, thank you.
I think that another thing that has mightily contributed to all this is the seeming disappearance of the truly witty…Wilde, Churchill…even Yogi Berra. When the New York Yankees unexpectedly lost to another team in the baseball World Series, at a reception one of the wives of a player on the winning team said (with a bit of snark):”you look pretty cool”-Yogi replied -“you don’t look so hot yourself”. We need more wit, and less of the witless…
Well said. Jess Phillips said something similar – she apparently gets a lot of aggressive attention on social media – her experience is that the abusers on the ‘left’ of the labour party were in fact the worst, as they thought they were the good guys so could threaten what they liked without guilt.
When you call yourself kind you can’t be cruel. Anything that might be construed as cruelty is merely next-level kindness, you see. That’s how rationalizationvworks, and that’s why I will always trust self-described a-holes before anyone who self identifies as kind.
Yes, classic ‘nice’ guy syndrome.
Nazis fulfil the role of demons in our secularised society. They are the physical embodiment and personification of evil, without any redeeming qualities. They are the ne pas ultra of badness and are apparently waiting to re-emerge and engulf the world in flames again. It stands to reason that you should be pleased when they are killed.
But Ashli Babbit wasn’t a nazi and neither are most of the people who earn the epithet these days. The word is scattered liberally to describe Qanon cranks and other assorted nationalist types, but retains that singularly extreme meaning.
If you can convince yourself that your enemy is demonically evil then its incredible the depths you can sink to. Ironically, the nazis taught us that.
“It’s the ones who believe their ideology or intentions put them beyond fault that you really have to look out for.”
This is the best insight of the entire article, and describes completely the entire worldview espoused by Woke, who see no problem in claiming, simultaneously, that the principle of diversity and inclusion justifies discrimination against heterosexual white males, and that they are struggling, oh so valiantly, to end double standards.
Great article. Well put. I highly recommend “Against Empathy” by Paul Bloom. It’s a short read but great exploration of why “kindness” and “empathy” (in scare quotes because they are often so poorly defined and mean different things to different people) should not be the north stars that we aim for, as they can be siren songs luring us onto the rocks.
Put bluntly, I recently heard a podcaster sign off with “Be Kind”. She thought for a moment and then qualified it to “Be kind when you can, and when you can’t, be honest”.
Many people (adolescents especially) use an indirect form of criticism as a handy method of one-upmanship ““ a sly way of denigrating friends and aquaintances.
The tactic is to ask a pal what music / films / books / TV they like and, when they list their favourites you respond in a jeering tone “Oh no! You don’t like THAT do you?” following up with hints at your superior taste. An effective way to belittle a person without attacking them directly.
I think you’ve turned the subject into something unnecessarily complicated. There is genera agreement that kindness is lacking. So…why aren’t more people being kind?
Good piece. Thanks.
Excellent! The quote from Arthur Chu was beyond chilling, though.
It just seems weird to me to actually write an article, not a criticism of the journalist, but then, 25 years ago no one had heard of narcissism in the personality disordered context, one of the key indicators being a sense of entitlement. I smile at people I see a lot but don’t know, I’ll hold the door open for the person behind because the only other option is slam it in their face.
I’ve never been one for pretending kindness as I’m a believer in living my moods as it’s only fair to make it very clear I’m in a ‘take no prisoners’ kind of mood and people will never approach me for fear of losing their head after I’ve bitten it off. I know these types so well, the people who fake it, it’s actually quite difficult to feign kindness of a genuine nature so smarm is a good word. Kindness is just part of a number of traits that come naturally to me and mostly it’s effortless. It genuinely works I find. When something has gone wrong, it’s so much harder for a customer advisor to say no to me when I have a complaint and I don’t kick off and make a scene. Politeness is more beneficial then not.
The virtue signalling gets on my t&ts. I don’t need to denigrate a person if I disagree with them by labelling them a ‘phobe’. I might be gay but seeing as the average sexual act lasts 6 minutes I refuse to hang my identity on that when there’s 23 hours 54 minutes left in the day where I do other things completely unrelated to who I theoretically sleep with (I’ve been single by choice for 6 years so ain’t partaking in Shenanigans). The Grint person note how to make the point he completely denigrates the other person by failing to acknowledge her point relating to violence against women, which she has personally experienced. That’s how you get away with it because Grint has 1000s of goslings who will pile in probably ignorant of J K Rowlings full discourse on her concerns surrounding that debate.
Still, it’s never easy to stand up and pit yourself against the tide but I have done and will always do so rather than just join in to what is essentially a bullying campaign, like the former guardian journalist lady who raised concerns about the same subject. What I don’t get is that people are trauma’d by a debate. If there ever was a Third World War our side would be saying you hurt my feelings when you shot me, it’s a hate crime!
The author may be right that women are expected to offer kindness more than men. However, I would contend that the corresponding expectation to men would be that of being a gentleman (in particular, of course, towards women). I agree there should be limits to kindness and I believe there should also be limits to gentleman attitude and behaviour.
There are some interesting sex-related differences here. Being a man, I guess I should give priority now to defending my own sex from being exploited. I will then advise men to check their being gentlemen against the following question: Is the person (often a woman) who benefit from your gentleman attitude and behaviour, grateful? If so, everything is ok. If you suspect not, make a test. Leave out your usual gentleman behaviour for a moment and observe the reaction. If the person (often a woman) reacts with sorrow, she has passed the test. You shall then have to apologise and resume your being a gentleman immediately. The beneficiary of your gentleman attitude and behaviour fails the test if she (he) reacts irritably. Why? Because her reaction shows that you do not (any longer) give her a gift, you just redeem an entitlement.
The most reliable compass, though, for navigating between kindness and real goodness, as well as navigating between useful criticism and malicious self-righteousness, would be love.
It is spelled “Ashli Babbitt”, not Ashley.
Thank you for writing this. It’s been plaguing me for a decade as I’ve lost so many friends to the cult of kindness, which as you’ve illuminated is really just another Orwellian twist of a definition of kindness into meaning “submit and agree” or be dropped, silenced, doxxed and canceled.
I recall the first person who said to me “would you rather be right, or kind.” I was flummoxed. I did not believe, and still do not, that they are mutually exclusive.
I believe honestly is kind, and lying is unkind. I believe tolerance is about allowing others to go their way as long as they don’t crush your boundaries and force you to smile in false kindness as you are made to do as they say to the letter or watch your career and life be destroyed publicly.
The cult of smarm has grown to epidemic proportions. I will breathe a sigh of relief if we ever get to see it retreating.
You are mixing up the underrated virtue of civic kindness, social media, and political knock-about. So I wouldn’t exactly put it in these terms, but you could say that the assault on Jeremy Corbyn by the Westminster press pack, aided and abetted by the right of the Labour Party, was rather unkind. The specific unkindness was to construct a figure who, in your words, ‘believe[s] their ideology or intentions put them beyond fault.’
It seems a lifetime ago but Corbyn wanted, in addition to the violent overthrow of capitalism etc, a well funded health service, universal broadband, and a coordinated education system, all of which might come in handy in the next couple of years. Instead, thanks in large measure to our friends in the press, we have a Labour party styling itself as a management consultancy, tucking itself in behind Johnson and hoping for a lucky break.
Sarah Ditum’s piece perfectly underlines the philosophy a lot of people live by: it is nice to be nice to the nice.
I am a nice guy and if you don’t think so you can f. off!!!!
Thank you for an excellent article, well written, and argued with discipline, insight and intellectual clarity. Around a year ago a much-loved younger friend, in her mid-thirties, wrote to me from her home in New Jersey. She told me that in a recent conversation with a fellow postgraduate student at one of the Ivy League universities, she (my friend) had asked what her companion thought political correctness was. The reply was “kindness”.
My friend found the answer sinister. We had quite a long conversation about why her instinct was accurate. This article explains far more than we were able to. I’ll send it to my friend.
Thank you!
Interesting article but you do not paint an attractive picture of yourself as a critic. In fact, you seem to be channelling Mephisto : “Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint.” When you are telling your readers about something, do you ever simply say “That was good – be sure to see/hear/read/taste/buy it”, or do you just, well, criticise?
You are being unkind to Ms Ditum.
I think you are confusing critique and criticism. Criticism usually means the act of criticising or a remark or comment that expresses disapproval. Critique typically refers to a careful judgment in which someone gives an opinion about something.
Your distinction between critique and criticism is valid, but if you take the trouble to read what I actually wrote, you will see that I am accusing the writer of the article of precisely the failure to make that distiction.
I did read what you wrote and it did come across as accusing the writer of only writing disapproving reviews; whereas, I don’t take that away from her article at all. My reading of it was that she has to be honest in her reviews as she is thinking of the writer’s readers, not the writer’s feelings. She specifically states ” I think that paying attention to things ” how they work, what they do, how people respond to them ” is the highest sort of respect, even if sometimes you end up saying that the thing is flawed. ” I picked up on the ‘sometimes’. Perhaps my interpretation is incorrect.
I got as far as paragraph three and the words “I’m a critic, which makes it my job to say critical things” and that, I’m afraid, rather made me take against the writer; after that I saw little evidence of her saying anything either positive or (dare I say) kind about her victims – sorry, subjects. I remain concerned that what she does is not what I want or expect of a critic.
I thinnk we are going to have to agree to have differing views on Ms Ditum. I genuinely hope, however, that your view is more accurate than mine, for her sake.
And thank you for taking the time to explain your views.