I have always loved family photographs, especially old ones. They allow you to wander freely through the stories of times and lives that are little known yet also familiar.
One quiet winter’s evening, I was leafing through old photographs with my sister’s little boy, who was on a short holiday in Romania with us. We were trying to figure out his family ties to people he didn’t know. There are three decades between Levi and me, so there are many stories and memories he will never know unless we tell him. Among the stories and images, I came across a weathered photograph of a beautiful woman whose piercing eyes I had never seen before, yet knew so well.
The story of the woman in the photograph was too sad to burden a child with. All I could tell Levi was that the woman in the photograph—my husband’s mother—had been gone for a long time and that we were already older than she had ever been. I expected all sorts of questions from a five-year-old, but not the one that immediately sprang to mind when he looked at the yellowed photograph: “Was she a good woman?”
I wouldn’t have thought that children sort people according to how good they are, and I didn’t realise that I think in the same simple patterns myself.
Weeks later, I was sorting through a pile of photographs with my grandmother’s last surviving sister. There are more than four decades between us, and she carries a wealth of stories about our family that I don’t know, and which will disappear with her. As the evening passed, we unravelled forgotten stories that had outlived their characters, just as they will outlive the storyteller. She told the stories; I listened and sometimes asked questions. Only at the end did I realise that I, too, had used Levi’s question, “Was he a good man?”, albeit in different words. The question and the answer met for a moment, suspended above the pictures of those no longer with us. Summarising an entire human life in a few words, the memory was reduced to a single virtue: goodness.
People are born, they live, and they leave—sometimes so abruptly that there is no time for a farewell hug. Memories of them linger, then fade—like the details of a conscientiously learned subject, which begin to blur after the first exam and fade away with the passing years. But the essence of a person’s life, which remains without any painful effort of memory, can be summed up in a short sentence: He was a good man. Or maybe not.
A need that takes the form of kindness
Our society has lost the instinct of kindness, writes Julia Unwin, of the UK’s Joseph Rowntree Foundation. We find it increasingly difficult to lend a helping hand to others, either because we worry about how our gesture will be received, or because we have become accustomed to only helping those close to us.
For various reasons, the notion of kindness has become increasingly difficult to find in modern society. We do not feel entirely comfortable with this, Unwin points out. She refers to a “severe social recession”, the effects of which are more serious than those of any economic crisis.
The foundation’s work shows that there is a hunger for kindness in society, as well as a desire to recreate “a world in which the stranger is welcomed, the weak are supported and the dispossessed are empowered,” she concludes.
A lack of kindness has become so commonplace that we no longer notice it; rather, we are surprised by the small acts of kindness we encounter every day, notes journalist Kendall Wood.
Wood argues that it is clear we have become a “rude and cruel” society. This is because of our inability to empathise with others, or fully realise how powerful our words and gestures can be.
Without kindness, nothing makes sense, says Dr Brian Goldman, author of The Power of Kindness: Why Empathy Is Essential in Everyday Life.
Goldman shows that when we don’t treat each other kindly, our bodies respond negatively: our heart rate and blood pressure increase, and more stress hormones are released. The same thing happens to patients who are not treated kindly by medical staff, which makes them less likely to cooperate with their doctor and properly follow their treatment plan. In Goldman’s words, “Lack of kindness is like death by a thousand cuts.”
Goldman’s interest in studying kindness began with an incident that made him doubt his own kindness as a doctor, despite his professionalism in treating patients for three decades. He had always believed he was very caring towards his patients—at least until he came into conflict with the family of a patient with a neurodegenerative disease in the final stages of the condition. Medically speaking, she should not have been admitted, but her family had exhausted all their physical and emotional resources caring for her and wanted the doctors to take over. Ultimately, the doctor admitted her, irritated by the family’s persistence.
A few months later, after the woman’s death, her husband wanted to meet the doctor again to tell him that, although he had done the right thing, he had not treated the patient or her family kindly. This struck a chord with Goldman. If a doctor is accused of incompetence by a patient, the patient is most likely wrong.
But when you are told that you did not behave like a good person, the accusation hurts, because anyone can recognise kindness, or the lack of it.
Goldman embarked on a two-year journey from Japan to Canada, interviewing specialists, consulting studies, and undergoing psychological tests to assess his level of kindness. He has concluded that kindness is more necessary than ever, including in the healthcare system. He considers the system to be sick as long as it does not consider the patient’s state of mind in addition to purely medical symptoms.
He admits that, in his research, studies mattered less than the stories of people who stood out for their kindness. He says that if he wanted to become a better person, he had to learn from examples of kindness by learning people’s stories.
What kindness looks like in work clothes
When asked about the people who particularly impressed him in his quest to study the drivers of kindness, Dr Goldman recalled Naomi Feil, founder of the Validation Training Institute.
Feil is a social worker who developed validation therapy between 1963 and 1980. This therapy provides a way of approaching elderly adults affected by Alzheimer’s or dementia, helping them to better manage their behaviour by identifying and empathetically addressing the emotions behind the confusing behaviours they exhibit as a result of their condition.
Goldman recounts that he first heard Naomi Feil say that people in the final stages of dementia are agitated and repeat themselves because they feel things they don’t know how to express. She said that they can free themselves from these feelings if those around them help them by validating their feelings.
From that moment on, the doctor says he began to love people with dementia—including his father-in-law—for who they are, rather than for what they remember or don’t remember.
This is what kindness looks like in work clothes: restoring, appreciating, lifting, and encouraging even the “bruised reed”; not because the recipient is deserving, but because they need it.
If it is true that the litmus test of kindness is leaning towards those who can never repay the good they receive, then the scope of its application is vast.
One person who deserves to be remembered in a book of acts of kindness is Alex Bobeș from Timișoara. He already knows how much hope can be given by driving a taxi in Bucharest to take sick and helpless people to hospital, or bring them home, free of charge.
Alex is an IT specialist with a one-year-old child, as well as a desire to help those rejected by society because they are too sick, too old, or too poor.
“There have been cases when they couldn’t even believe that something like this exists, because we have this idea that nothing is free. Especially when it comes to taxis. Everything has to be paid for, one way or another. No, Taxi Gratis really is free,” says the young man.
He started the project with a friend in 2013, but he is now the only one investing money, time, and energy in helping those who have become invisible to society. One of the reasons he doesn’t want to leave the country is that people with serious health and financial problems would be left without any solutions again. They would be on their own.
Alex Bobeș dreams of having a handful of people by his side to help with the project he runs alone, even if that means promising to transport someone in need once a month.
The value of the young man’s efforts was recognised by those who arrived at the hospital in the back seat of his car, as well as by those who called Taxi Gratis in vain while his car was in the garage for serious repairs.
Falling behind in kindness
In the opinion of Bobeș, doing good is easy; you just have to want to do it. In practice, however, the reality seems to be less positive than the noble intentions we often lose track of.
In an article, cognitive neuroscientist Christian Barret lists the bad news about human nature that psychology brings.
One such negative tendency is to view minorities and vulnerable people as less human. Researchers Lasana Harris and Susan Fiske conducted a study on the dehumanisation of people from disadvantaged social groups, scanning the brains of ten Princeton University students.
While images of athletes or businesspeople triggered activity in the medial prefrontal cortex—a region of the brain associated with thoughts about people—photographs of homeless or drug-addicted individuals triggered activity only in areas associated with disgust.
A second study confirmed these results, showing that images of disadvantaged people triggered no activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, similar to what happens when images of various inanimate objects are seen.
“If replicated and extended, this kind of evidence could begin to help explain the all-too-human ability to commit atrocities such as hate crimes, prisoner abuse, and genocide against people who are dehumanised,” concluded the researchers.
Other studies have shown that young people attribute characteristics that denote a somewhat lesser humanity to older people, and that men and women tend to dehumanise intoxicated women (although this does not apply to intoxicated men).
Barret notes that we do not just view people who are different to us through a lens that diminishes them, but we also tend to be vain and overly confident in ourselves. This tendency to overestimate one’s own abilities is known as the “Lake Wobegon effect”, named after the fictional town in Garrison Keillor’s film, “A Prairie Home Companion” where “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average”.
A study conducted by psychologist Jessica Salvatore in Minnesota showed that most respondents believed they had above-average driving skills. In fact, 77.4% believed they were better drivers than average, 74.9% believed they paid more attention while driving than the average driver, and 65.8% believed they were better at parking.
However, the most pronounced overestimation occurs in the field of morality: we tend to believe that we are more honest and virtuous than the average person, as a recent study by researchers at the University of London has shown. The authors reviewed several studies which indicate that subjects believed they were more honest or credible than they were intelligent, modest, friendly, determined, or independent, or that although certain traits will vary throughout life, moral traits will always be present.
Resurrecting the Good Samaritan
In novels, the classic scenario is good triumphing over evil, and altruism over selfishness and hypocrisy, as psychologist Serge Moscovici notes.
In reality, however, things are quite different. Examples include drivers who do not stop to administer first aid to someone they have injured, neighbours who listen impassively to screams coming from a neighbouring apartment, and passers-by who ignore an elderly person who has collapsed on the ground.
Psychologist Daniel Batson decided to stage a scenario akin to the parable of the Good Samaritan. He hypothesised that indifference to the fate of a fellow human being in need can be attributed to haste and the perception of a lack of time. Batson invited students from Princeton Theological Seminary to a conference on the Good Samaritan. Some were told that they had time before the conference began, while others were told to hurry because they were late. En route to the conference room, all the students encountered a man who had collapsed. Two thirds of those who did not think they were in a hurry stopped to help, while only a tenth of those who thought they were late did so.
Regardless of the reasons behind their behaviour, ranging from indifference to urgency, the advocates of the Good Samaritan model proved to be a prime example of evil, as Moscovici points out.
The psychologist distinguishes between altruistic people and altruistic behaviour: only 10% of seminar participants who stopped to help someone in need were Good Samaritans because the parable speaks of good deeds done at a cost, not only in favourable circumstances.
Following this line of reasoning, it is possible to do good without necessarily being a good person.
When it comes to business ethics, Professor Jim Heskett lists a series of statements and perceptions from his readers about “what is good”. The common idea that emerges is that ethics differ from one environment to another; ethics are elastic. However, one reader warned that the most noble behaviour a leader can expect is closely related to the least dignified behaviour the leader exhibits.
Are people truly good if they help their sick neighbours get to hospital but mistreat and humiliate their life partners? Are they good when they donate to a noble cause but slack in their work when no one is looking?
On the one hand, there are the advocates of flexible morality. There is no principle that should never be broken, argues David Pizarro, a Cornell University professor, who believes that we live in a complicated world full of grey areas.
On the other hand, there are those who believe that things are either black or white. However, they also stray into grey areas, allowing morality a moment of controlled relaxation.
Even good people cheat, says Daniel Effron, a psychologist who teaches at the London Business School. They just make sure that their image as virtuous people remains intact, even in their own minds.
Thus, Effron’s research concluded that people often cheat a little less than they can get away with, because they “don’t want to feel like a terrible human being”. On the other hand, after building a track record of good deeds, some feel they have a “moral licence” to engage in morally ambiguous behaviour.
Effron believes that the tendency to stray from what is right can be counteracted by feeding the mind with ethical principles. A London Business School study has shown that people are more honest when filling out forms if they sign at the top of the page promising to tell the truth than if they sign at the end confirming that they have answered truthfully. This, the psychologist points out, is because it gets people to think about what is right or wrong before engaging in an action.
“To be a better person” was the most popular New Year’s resolution for 2018, according to a Marist Poll survey. We don’t know how many of those polled achieved their goal. If, as Thomas Merton said, a good man is one who lives God’s goodness, then that is a lifelong goal.
We know that one day our lives—with all their ups and downs—will come to an end, and many of the things that seem important today will prove to be insignificant. As the well-known lyrics say, it doesn’t take much snow to cover our footprints. However, while many of our joys, sorrows, failures, and achievements will fade from the memory of those left behind, they will always be able to answer a child’s question, “Were they good people?”