đ§”Spotted on Market Day in Aotearoa New Zealand:
A vibrant woman (80s?) wearing a bright woolly jumper and neon blue glasses tells a friend: "I'm jumping out of a plane at two today! Skydiving for charity. My friend said to me, don't go to heaven yet Jan and if you do, come back quickly!" (1)— George Penney (@georgepenney.bsky.social) May 23, 2025 at 9:22 PM
Any typos spotted in this post are skydiving exclamation points. If spotted, please give them a bite of cheese to quell any pre-plane-jumping jitters.
— George Penney (@georgepenney.bsky.social) May 23, 2025 at 9:22 PM
George Penney’s BlueSky feed is one of my favorite reliable on-line respites…
đ§”I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about kindness since I've moved here to Aotearoa New Zealand and would like to share some thoughts. (Please bear with me!):
1. Kindness is learned. It's not innate. People are taught kindness by other people. We are creatures that learn by example.— George Penney (@georgepenney.bsky.social) May 22, 2025 at 3:14 AM
2. Kindness is not a weakness. To thank people, to acknowledge they’re human, to perform small acts that barely cost the individual anything, but mean a lot to others, makes for a much stronger community.
3. Kindness is a long term investment. It doesn’t come with the quick thrill of a throw-away cruelty or snark. There’s no fire in the belly or roaring fuel-like rage. It’s quiet, its payoff is gentle. You sometimes never see the impact, or even feel it, but its tiny ripples can have large effects.
4. Kindness builds bridges between different groups, creating infrastructure for push-back and positive change. A society that values kindness is less accepting of the everyday casual–and calculated–cruelties the larger world throws around. A kind society resists normalising monstrousness.
5. Kindness is every day. On a micro level. It isn’t grand gestures. If performed by everyone around you, it can even become invisible because it’s taken for granted as a base-level standard for human behaviour. It only becomes visible when an outsider views it and can see it more clearly.
6. Kindness is about understanding that we’re human and we’re going to get it wrong. We can all be unkind at times but a sincere apology and a willingness to learn goes a long way, as can a gracious acceptance of that apology (if it is, indeed sincere.)
It took recently moving to a place that has a wealth of small kindnesses on show every day to really think about this, and to really see how I’m becoming a kinder person, just by being around people who are kind to me. And it’s wonderful.a`
Great thread, George. Kindness is one of the bedrocks of civil society, but these days it's often replaced by niceness. Niceness is a gilded act while kindness is gold all the way through.
I immigrated to Aotearoa "for 5 years" over 15 years ago. We stay because it's kind in an unkind world.— Steve Barr (@barrsteve.bsky.social) May 22, 2025 at 4:20 AM
I have a friend who is unfailingly kind. She will do what needs to be done to see that you have what you need no matter the inconvenience to her. She is not, however, nice. She will not coddle you, she will not refrain from speaking her mind, and she will not tolerate bullshit to âget alongâ. Weâve
— Jessica Atchison (@bowenknits.bsky.social) May 22, 2025 at 7:33 AM
Been friends for 40+ years because, although she is not an easy person, I much prefer the company of kindness in the absence of niceness to the ease of niceness in the absence of kindness.
— Jessica Atchison (@bowenknits.bsky.social) May 22, 2025 at 7:33 AM
bbleh
Great thread. Â And I’ll add a few other points.
(1) Kindness is not always easy. Â It can take an effort to be kind in some situations (and a REAL effort in some and/or with, ahem, some people).
(2) Kindness is not always — indeed rarely immediately — reciprocated. Â Often when it’s most needed is when it’s least likely to be reciprocated or even acknowledged. Â Don’t expect a cookie.
(3) Therefore, kindness MUST be — and fortunately often is — its own reward.
I’ll disagree with one of his points: I think in most people kindness IS innate. Â Look at how (most) little children treat even bugs, not to mention, say, a wounded bird. Â And children are almost uniformly distressed when they see adults around them who are in distress (and they tend to be very sensitive emotionally). Â So it’s not about inculcating it; it’s about encouraging and cultivating it, and not just in children but every day and in everyone.
Baud
These days, most people think kindness is about only caring about one’s kind.
bbleh
I guess given current circumstances I’ll add one more:
(4) There’s a limit. Â Kindness does not mean being — in the words of Lisa Simpson, reverend and wise — a “good-natured doormat.”
Eolirin
This is everything. It’s the core conceptual thread of almost everything important I’ve tried to say here.
@bbleh: Yeah that’s not even about there being limits, it’s similar to the situation with niceness. It isn’t kind to let people take advantage of you. It robs them of growth and promotes negative qualities in them. Setting appropriate boundaries is part of being kind.
sab
So kindness with our neighbor. She threatened to sue us last fall about the property line, now she is very nice about our new house color and my obnoxious dog (nice dog but but extremely barky.)
Turns out our !2 neighbor and I have similar jobs. Also she welcomes our new house color, and also me replacing the collapsing fence that we all thought was hers and it turns out is ours. So negotiating on the fence gate.
Kindness or sensible neighbor relations. I am all for amity. I hate stupid neighborhood fighting. What part of neighbor do you not understand? They are next door! They will always be there.
Betty
One of my dearest friends was the queen of kindness. And like Jessica Atchison’s friend, that did not mean niceness. She would take care of any and everybody’s needs but barked at what she saw as stupidity and cruelty. A favorite line was, “Don’t tell me to have a nice day. I’ll have whatever kind of day I want.” That meaningless form of niceness really irritated her.
MobiusKlein
Kindness is an attempt at probabilistic Karma – by increasing the livability for others, it ever so slightly increases the odds that kindess will be returned to you some day.
Steve LaBonne
Kindness absolutely is its own reward. On the cusp of old age I understand this much better than I did when I was younger.
kindness
Kindness as a virtue does not exist in MAGA or Trump. I’m so glad when I see it here and elsewhere in life. Expressing kindness is good. Living it is better (and a lot harder).
Steve LaBonne
@Betty: “And nice is different than good.” – Red Riding Hood
sab
@sab: I think she is actually a nice but embattled woman ( aren’t we all) trying to defend her home turf. Not just her job but her home. I can agree with that. Now we know where the legal line is so negotiations are much more sensible. This is yours. That is mine. That is yours.
Where is the venn diagrams of where we both agree? My guess is very close to a hundred percent my side unless I make her pay for her gate that she cannot afford. We both want the fence. She agrees with my design. Only difference is the gate, and possibly new fence posts.
H.E.Wolf
@Steve LaBonne: â Thank you for that quote from your namesake: one of the other Steves. :)â
lowtechcyclist
Obligatory: Glen Campbell, Try a Little Kindness
Steve LaBonne
@H.E.Wolf: And he spelled Stephen correctly. ;)
zhena gogolia
@bbleh: Very good comment.
This is a timely thread for me. I cannot, cannot, focus on Fuckhead and all his disgusting utterances and deeds. I’m keeping my focus on the people around me and trying to do what I can for them day by day. We just had Commencement yesterday. In the final week, I had lunch with students four times. I have never done that before. I’m just trying to do what I can for people when I can do it — tiny things, tiny things, but I feel it’s all I can handle. I can’t follow politics, I can’t go out on the corner of Main St. with a sign and stand there for two hours (more power to those who do), but I’m trying to be conscious of the needs around me. (While still on a monthly donation to ACLU and Razom and the DNC.)
ETA: This seems small, but I would treat them for lunch and encourage them to order more than they could eat so they could take it home, because their meal plan was no longer in effect the final week. That made me feel so good! I know it’s ridiculous.
mvr
FWIW, it can be easier to be kind if one makes it a small thing – a tie-breaker in making decisions or whatever.
Steve LaBonne
@zhena gogolia:Â In the great scheme of things every act of kindness and of caring for others matters, and never more than now. An edit in response to your edit: the furthest thing from ridiculous. Imagine how much better the world could be if everyone were committed to seemingly small acts of thoughtfulness like that.
Glidwrith
@zhena gogolia: Iâve told my kids that itâs seldom given to us to know if weâve made a difference, but a bit of kindness or sincere thanks could make a huge difference to that person.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
They’re lucky to have you.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Oh, I shouldn’t have been bragging. I’m lucky to have them! I just feel so bad for them. The speeches yesterday were all kind of, “Well, we’ve f–ed up the world, so you go out and save it!”
sab
Typical, not of spouse but of life.
Memorial Day, spouse didn’t want me to cook. Suggested pizza. I love pizza. (I can make pizza.)
But it is Memorial Day. They are closed. We had good leftovers. No pizza.
M!aybe I can leverage this to pizza tommorow?
sab
@sab: My pizza is superior. Theirs is just slightly above average, and that is a stretch.
Suzanne
Absolutely correct. This describes quite a few people in my life, and that is why I keep them around.
I have found, broadly speaking, that I agree with this map.
Eolirin
@zhena gogolia: It’s not ridiculous. And it’s more important than most of the grand gestures and big attempts at showing resistance will end up being.
What you’re describing is the real work. It’s what we all need to commit ourselves to. Doing so in the face of the mass indifference, cruelty, and awfulness we’re being exposed to is damn hard. It is all too easy to let the current moment in its insanity harden the heart. The most vital form of resistance is to say fuck that and to be kind anyway.
Dorothy A. Winsor
The older I get, the more I appreciate kindness as a virtue. I used to think it was sort of routine, like politeness. But no. Kindness is hard. In a family, sometimes it’s downright heroic.
Steve LaBonne
@Suzanne: Well bless your heart. ;)
zhena gogolia
@Eolirin: It is. It’s hard not to feel hopeless and to communicate that to others.
Suzanne
@Steve LaBonne: I avoid the South. LOL.
Matt McIrvin
I wonder. Consider John’s talk with Prof. Harrington the other day: it sounds as if Denmark as she describes it is a very kind society to Danes but relatively cruel to outsiders, and that these things go hand in hand–they can have an extremely generous welfare state only because they’re assured that the benefit will only go to people much like themselves. Maybe there are limits to kindness because, for most people, it can only extend as far as what they consider the tribe, and beyond that, it gets used up.
Eolirin
@zhena gogolia: Yeah. Celebrate the wins.
Eolirin
@Matt McIrvin: There’s a reason why the solution to that has always been to try to expand the definition of tribe. And it works to the degree that the attempt is successful; people really do become kinder to more people if they start viewing them as part of their community, and if they start viewing their community as being bigger it does the same thing.
It isn’t so easy to get that to happen, but.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
The Denmark thing was shocking in how far they go with their xenophobia, but I think generally there’s a limit to how much you can link kindness to public policy. No public policy will ever be infinitely kind.
Eolirin
@Baud: Public policy is fundamentally an engineering problem, and subsequently has issues with trade offs. You can’t make a perfect policy that doesn’t negatively affect someone. The most you can hope for is policy that punches up instead of down.
Baud
@Eolirin:
Agreed. But even punching up has an engineering limit. At some point, up is no longer up.
Not that we’ve ever come close to that limit in the US, despite what the up people think.
narya
For several years, when confronted with the question of what to do, I try to figure out what the kind thing is, and I try to do that. I do NOT always succeed in remembering to go through this path or fully enacting it, but the framing itself often takes the snit out of my response. I fuck up; this simple tool helps me fuck up less and forgive others who fuck up. Sometimes. Partway. I hope every step helps.
BlueGuitarist
interesting (long) article today about WWII Baseball vs racism
https://paydayreport.com/the-1945-gi-world-series-in-hitlers-nuremberg-stadium-baseballs-double-victory-against-segregation-at-home-and-abroad/
Jay
@Matt McIrvin:
Back in the day I worked closely with a Danish-Canadian coworker. When she became pregnant, they (Her Canadian husband and her), moved to Denmark for family and the benefits.
The whole of the EU used to be very generous to economic migrants and refugee’s. They are still are compared to some countries, (cough, cough).
Putin however weaponized the global refugee crisis, facilitating their movement into the EU via free transit to ruZZia, Belarus and Serbia and smuggling them into the EU in a massive flood. It got so bad that many EU countries have closed off their borders with ruZZia.
Putin also flooded the zone with propaganda, disinfo and paid vatnicks to blame everything “bad” on the migrants and still does. He also funded “Nationalist” parties, academics, talking heads to trash immigrants.
Hybrid war works.
Rusty
We are called to love each other, but what does that mean, and how. I think of kindness as a corollary of love, along with thoughtfulness, patience, and more. It’s by doing these for others we show love.
Eric S.
@Glidwrith: I’ve made it a point since my promotion into leadership to genuinely thank my employees for a job well done and occasionally, just for doing the everyday things. It’s a tangent to this thread but knowing your efforts are recognized and appreciated matter to people.
geg6
Ha! Â In a crazy coincidence, I had a student about 7 or so years ago who told me the same thing, that I was good hearted but not nice. Â He meant that I would do what was in my power to help all students and really go balls to the wall for students in desperate financial straights. Â However, I never beat around the bush or tried to sugarcoat anything. Â I was always honest to them, never talked down to them and, when needed, could be tough and hold them accountable. Â He appreciated me being that way. Â I sometimes was told by my bosses that I should be more accommodating in my manner, but I never changed. Â My argument back was that a part of my job as financial aid administrator was to teach them responsibility with their finances, both educational and personal. Â And that it canât be all warm fuzzies when you are trying to make sure they donât end up tens of thousands of dollars in debt with no degree to show for it.
Jackie
@lowtechcyclist:
This song is sooo meaningful in so many ways. It made me cry, because it seems so bygone in todayâs world – where hatred and cruelty is the point and the goal by way too many.
Glen Campbell was so wise.
bbleh
@Eric S.: excellent point! Â And I would add to this (as might have contributed eventually to my being JE’d), show them loyalty. Â “Kiss down, punch up.” Â That is rarely not noticed, and it’s important.
Ruckus
I’ve been to many parts of this world, have stood on Antartica – on the ice not on the ground, but all of Antartica is covered in ice so that’s as close as one gets, and have been a lot miles above the Arctic Circle to the northern tip of Norway, in winter, during 3 cruises of the Atlantic while in the USN, and many of the countries in between including Cuba 3 times.
And this leads to the discussion of kindness. On one of those trips to Norway we were tied up at a small port in the middle of Norway and a buddy and I walked a ways to a very tall bridge over a large river because we thought we could see where to go from there, because where the ship tied up seemed in the middle of nowhere. And we could see for miles and miles. And the only thing we could see that made sense was a large supermarket – which we went to but the only person working there was a 16 yr old or so girl who didn’t speak english. Or at least acted like she didn’t. So we went to the post office across the street, hoping to find someone who spoke english. We did. The lady behind the counter and a customer who also spoke english (better than we did…) and he gave us a ride into town, where we found a nice restaurant to get some actually eatable food. I have a buddy that enlisted in the US Marines and spent a nice year in Vietnam – as a company clerk. He claims the food wasn’t as good.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Baud: you are thinking perhaps of Dennis Moore? “He steals from the poor and gives to the rich …” [ Blimey, this redistribution of wealth is complicated.]
Jay
In the aftermath of Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Syria, etc, the EU took in 21.8 million refugees.
The US took in 3.6 million.
Eric S.
Jackie
@BlueGuitarist: Thank you for this article. I forwarded to my baseball loving family, who have followed the history of the Negro Baseball League along with women in WWII baseball history.
narya
@Eric S.: and recognize that someone may never be able to do THIS, but they do THAT really well, and deploy them to do THAT, and recognize them for a job well done.
MobiusKlein
@Eric S.: thanks for that reminder.
Will do more kindness tomorrow
narya
@Eric S.: exactly! I always tell my bosses that my job is to make their job easier, but Iâve mostly had good bosses.
RevRick
Some dude once said “Blessed are the meek/humble, for they shall inherit the earth.” Kindness is essentially an act of humility, a surrendering of our claims over them.
Eric S.
@narya:
So true! To the extent possible, give them the work they are good at and enjoy and help them with the tasks they find harder to do. Patience is a a type of kindness.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … Shypixel says we should be more like a big old ball of bees:
Click on over to read the rest. It’s worth it.
Then come back!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Eolirin: Even then: part of the reason Americans settled on racism as we know it was that it allowed putting together a multicultural society of sorts that still had official underclasses and unpersons it could shit on and kill. They expanded the tribe but just drew a bigger socially constructed line around “white”.
Eric S.
@narya: I’ve mostly had good bosses as well. Mostly. They’ve informed my leadership style although maybe my bad bosses have influenced me more. I try to learn from mistakes. My own and others. I have failed at that many times but try to consciously keep it in mind.
RevRick
@Rusty: There was this dude who wrote a letter to a struggling community that “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. ”
They’re all connected.
Suzanne
@RevRick: That patience one is a real bastard.
randy khan
Relatedly, I was reading about research on happiness lately, and the gist is that social interaction makes people happy. Â (Social media less so than in person or other direct contact like phone calls.) Â And it’s not just with friends and relatives – social interaction with people you don’t know well, like saying hello to the guy in the parking garage or at the guard desk is just as good for your emotional state.
I think that seeing people and letting them know they’re seen has to be part of kindness.
dnfree
@narya: That was key in my career. Â I was not the fastest programmer, but I was very thorough and my code was solid and thorough (handled error conditions instead of just blowing up, well documented). Â I had jobs where the boss tried to make me faster and less âpickyâ and tried to make the âquick and dirtyâ programmers more like me. Â Then I got a boss who assigned the projects based on our differing skill sets. Â What a revelation! Â Let people do what theyâre good at!
narya
@dnfree: and support them when they take a tiny step outside their comfort zone. And my tiny step might be someone elseâs big leap, soâŠ
admittedly I am less tolerant of folks who keep saying no I am not willing to learn anything but I still try to be kind, as best I can. Some days I fail.
narya
@Suzanne: oof. With you on that.
RevRick
@Suzanne: Iâm part of an institution that has struggled to get it right for 2000 years now. We can only just keep plugging at it, because, alas, we have to work with people (sheesh).
Rusty
@RevRick: He was an insightful guy, I like his letters too. A couple of thousand years later and still relevant and needed.  I agree, they in many ways aspects of each other, and reinforce each other.
Eric S.
@BlueGuitarist: Thank you.for posting this! I’m sharing it widely.
Msb
Thanks for a timely reminder.
Ruckus
@randy khan:
There are times that social interaction is the most important.Â
I’m an example of that. I was the youngest in my immediate family and now I’m the only one left. One of my younger cousins has also been gone for 3-4 years. I have friends where I live but the closest cousin is a lot of miles away and I’m old enough that driving is not a great idea, which is why I’m selling my car. Now public transit in SoCal is actually pretty decent these days and rather cheap, so it’s not a big deal but it is somewhat limiting. My point is that living often has a cost that is not measured monetarily. And keeping on doing it often takes awareness, admission and change. And not forgetting that we often have to depend on others to do the right thing as well as doing so ourselves.
Miss Bianca
@zhena gogolia: I’m with you. I can’t even with the BS in the air in this country these days, so rather than rail against it I’m trying now to go out of my way to curb my wicked temper and worse tongue and exercise patience and kindness and small acts of charity towards my “fellow travelers to the grave”, as Dickens so memorably put it.
Not only for them, but for myself.
Nelson
My wife and I visited New Zealand back in the 80’s – all of the folks we met there were exceedingly kind and nice. We always recommend a visit to NZ to our friends.