The Tyranny of Kindness, Pathocracy and Narcissism

[ArthurbellaScott]

https://unherd.com/2023/10/the-tyranny-of-pathological-kindness/

Interesting article and interview:

https://twitter.com/andrewdoyle_com/status/1726646891205824970

The article mentions several instances involving feminists and/or trans activists.

I don’t think that making someone feel bad is positioned as a blanket sin. It’s highly selective. The #bekind narrative is very much about hoping to ‘shame’ the people in the ‘wrong’ category. The aim is that they should feel bad because they’re not ‘kind’ (as defined by the ‘right side of history’ crowd).

Yes, certainly - I had in mind here the way that 'be kind' is taught in schools, sorry! Should have clarified.

I liked the quotes from the two Polish experts in the piece, particularly "under communist rule, Lobaczewski witnessed such people, riven with mediocrity and oblivious to their incompetence, become leading members of the party." I worked in Eastern Europe about 10 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and find Soviet era social history fascinating. I see clear parallels with the gender movement in terms of enforced language, groupthink and weaponising of bureaucracy. And how quite talentless people acquire astonishing power.

A vision of the whole Scottish government appeared in front of me as I read those bits.

I saw some quite interesting tik toks of young Americans starting to recognise that they’ve been sold a lie in the dominant cultural narrative around the nation being founded by poor, kind pilgrims fleeing religious persecution in nasty old England.

The thing about it is that the false victimhood at the heart of the myth making around the American character and the American dream continues to shape so much of contemporary politics in the USA. You see it in the TRA position and in the gun lobby and all over the place.

Not that the people posting tik toks about how the story of the puritans as victims is a pernicious lie are likely to make any links to the TRA narrative of victimhood and the contemporary use of kindness to prevent opposition to their position. They are much more likely to recognise it in the gun lobby’s claims of righteous victimhood because those people fall into their definition of ‘the wrong side of history’.

But it is interesting that so much of transactivism is derived from the cultural
politics of victimhood in the USA. It’s equally fascinating how those politics and debates are then exported in a weirdly culturally imperialist fashion by ‘progressive’ activists in the USA - all while claiming that they’re against ‘colonisers’.

It’s a big old ideological mess, centuries in the making.

It’s very hard to overcome a long history of female socialisation that positions women as the custodians of everyone’s feelings. Censure because your tone or approach wasn’t ‘kind’ enough gets folded into it all and women are effectively forced to shut up and put up with things no one would expect from men.

So bloody depressing. Especially as embracing the nasty, unkind witch positioning only makes you even easier to dismiss. You are too easily positioned as a cautionary tale for young women, who must embrace the Maoist approach to the past in the name of progress. So those young women become especially enthusiastic #bekinders, always having to distinguish themselves from the witches and demonstrate that they can be worthy of love.

Yes, I think this is key.

My youngest dc is in 6th form. At a family discussion recently, that started getting heated, I flummoxed the lot of them by asking "Have I ever told you to be kind?"

Tumbleweed.

"Erm, no...you told us to treat others the way we want to be treated."

Telling children to be kind is toxic. IMO. What does 'kind' mean? Do they even know? Does anyone actually explain it? IMO opinion being kind means treating others the way you would wish to be treated. But unless you explicitly teach this, being kind seems to mean not upsetting people. And how do you know that someone is upset? Because they shout or cry. So Being Kind ends up meaning Pacify the Loudest People.

Telling children to be kind is toxic. IMO. What does 'kind' mean? Do they even know? Does anyone actually explain it?

Completely agree.

I asked my DD (primary school age) what they are taught in school about being kind.

'They tell us to be kind and let others play with you if they ask to join in'

Further questioning reveals she thinks if you don't want to play with that person, you can 'withdraw from that game and go and play a different game'.

Further questioning reveals that I have taught her about playing with other people:
'only if you want to'.

Girls need boundaries, ffs.

That whole exchange is an object lesson in consent, imo.

Yes. Teaching children that, if they don’t want to let everyone who wants to join their games, then they must leave their own game so that the other child can be involved is just awful.

There are often good reasons why children exclude others. Back in the early 90s Vivian Paley wrote a book showing how problematic a ‘you can’t say you can’t play’ rule is in kindergarten classrooms in the USA. But it seems schools have totally embraced this you just always accommodate or miss out yourself model of ‘kindness’.

'let others play with you if they ask'

This sounds to me like social engineering at the expense of girls' wellbeing.

And how this is squared with attempts to teach bodily consent, I don't know.

That looks really interesting, thanks.

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674965904

I always post this on the "be kind" thing, so apologies if you have read it, but it's about how it basically means "feel kindly" rather than actually acting with genuine kindness.

https://kathleenstock.substack.com/p/the-pity-party-on-the-left?utm_source=%2Fprofile%2F13247565-kathleen-stock&utm_medium=reader2

As pp says: this is about 'pacify the ones who are most difficult/will kick off the hardest'.

This is all about separating society into the givers, who must have no wishes or needs or feelings of their own, must be selflessly masochistic in their service of others, and never have boundaries unless they're certain another person won't be restricted or saddened by hearing 'no'. And the 'takers' who have no restrictions or responsibilities of any kind and just let it all hang out without conscience.

I refuse to raise children to be in either group. It's a fantastically unhealthy thing to be aspiring to, and the 'givers' will last only a certain amount of time before they get pissed off and start saying 'I no longer care how sad you are, STOP IT'.

And then they'll join MN.

Yes, absolutely, Frood. And that is coincidentally a very sexed division, isn't it? We know who are expected to be the former group and who the latter.

I listened to the podcast excerpt linked on this page and it seems to be uncritically endorsing the “you can’t say you can’t play” rule. I guess the book must be more nuanced, but it doesn’t seem like the nuances were part of how it was marketed. I think it must have made a big contribution to spreading this policy into schools.

Reminded of the Kate Scottow case. Judges reasons for convicting

Ms Scottow’s comments were “merely personal comments aimed at Ms Hayden”, which contravened the “rule” that adults teach children, and should follow themselves: “to be kind to each other and not call each other names”:

Overturned on appeal

The book is full of concrete examples
of where it’s a bloody problem. I suspect the overall story fails to properly address it.

I read it about 20 years ago so I can only half remember it. But, regardless what the official line is, I came away from it thinking ‘maybe we should stop telling kids they must always include everyone’.

The whole think is that she was a teacher who armed with a dictaphone tried to reflect on stuff that happened in her classrooms and experiment a bit with it.

But in amongst any rhetoric or lessons are examples that show the very good reasons children have for not wanting to play with some others.

There’s also the simple fact that paley’s magpie solution is quite manipulative. I think the children were not entirely convinced regardless.

Yes even the short excerpt on the podcast suggested some issues were brushed over - one of the kids who was excluding others said “what if they hit me?”

But she got immediately fobbed off with “we have rules against hitting.”

Exactly.

Whether Paley intended it to or not, it definitely demonstrates how problematic the approach is.

That sounds familiar.

Encouraging children to override their instincts and boundaries, which are probably often quite acute and sensitive/responsive to many layers of a social situation, in order to 'be nice'.

A balance, I suppose. Children need to learn how to socialise. But as far as I understand it, they largely learn this through modelling, watching adult behaviour, rather than applying blanket rules handed out as directives, which I am guessing are more likely to trigger bluntly applied maladaptive shame-based behaviours.

Why should a child want to play with someone who hits them?

Why should women want to get undressed in a room with men who threaten, deride and behave inappropriately towards them?

The whole 'if you get hurt (and can prove it, and we believe you), we'll putter about muttering around kind hands' is fundamentally disempowering. No one is entitled to enabling from another, and personal responsibility is a thing. If you're unpleasant to people they won't like you and they will walk away from you.

In adult terms, it's only incel rhetoric that goes into 'I want to be provided by blond bombshell for sex and house cleaning and she's not allowed to expect me to wash and not hit her'.

It's moving through extremely unhealthy and out into the realms of lunacy.

I like clicking links! Have ended up on some fascinating rabbit holes...:)