What Makes People Kind?

I found the meme here interesting, but I disagree.  Speaking for myself, I think most people who know me would say that I’m a kind person, but it’s not because I’ve been wronged; in fact, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times in 65+ years that I’ve been wronged in any significant way.

I believe that most kind people simply have a healthy awareness of and regard for the well-being of others.  Perhaps we’re simply wired that way. 

This, of course, is what lies at the core of environmentalists and other folks that think of themselves as progressives.  There’s a lot of suffering out there, regardless of whether or not we’re experiencing it ourselves, and we simply want it to cease, to whatever degree we are able to make that happen.

I would argue that kindness is a necessary condition to sustainability.  To the degree to which greed and indifference to others’ pain prevails in a society, a sustainable way of life becomes impossible, because people hog resources that others and future generations need in order to live decent lives.