The cheer of a favourite four year old expresses some of my glee on coming across the teaser Kindness — the great taboo on the front page of Saturday’s Review Section of The Guardian. What a start to the year...
Turned out this section’s lead story was an extract from the book On Kindness, a joint effort from psychoanalyst, Adam Phillips, and historian, Barbara Taylor.
This against the background of ongoing conflict across the globe, and the increasingly vicious conflicts that dismay and depress.
While a soppy Fifties scene accompanies the story in the print edition, a Fra Angelico fresco of St Lawrence distributing alms accompanies the online edition.
What this, and the story’s headline, the Christianity-associated admonition to Love thy neighbour, could suggest is that kindness is predominantly a Christian value, and I wonder how many atheists, agnostics, and those of other faiths, scanned the headline, dismissed the story, and paged on.
But then, who am I to talk? After all, I eventually felt I had to two words to this blog’s title, hoping this would somehow clarify that it’s not based on some Old Testament rant.
The book itself looks both at the evolution of the concept of kindness over the centuries, going on, from a more psychoanalytical perspective, to examine our ambivalence about kindness . The Guardian's piece gives an overview of attitudes to kindness over the centuries, its appeal to, and dismissal by, the human psyche, concluding with the claim that “it is kindness, fundamentally, that makes life seem worth living; and ... everything that is against kindness is an assault on our hope.” (My italics. My sentiments.)
I recommend this read.
Note: On Kindness is published by Hamish Hamilton. I see that it’s currently going for half the published price on Amazon UK but, re the US, please note that your Amazon indicates the book won’t be released there until late May.
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