The Essence of being Human Part 2 – Kindness cannot Kill

The Essence of being Human Part 2 – Kindness cannot Kill – by P.K. Odendaal – February 2019.

Be kind and exercise kindness. Contrary to what the adage says, kindness cannot kill. Kindness lets us live and inspires us to reach heights unknown to the unkind.

In the previous part I postulated that kindness and compassion are all we need to become human again. Of course the corollary to that is that we need compassion to be kind. The first is the thought and the second the acts which flow from it.

Compassion cannot easily be taught and must preferably flow from our hearts. How that happens, I can only surmise, is that it is generated inside of us by the presence of God in our lives, but it can also be learned from examples of others. If it is not there and you have not been brought up with a compassion for mankind, be the cold soul who would probably spend many or long stints in jail. These articles are not for those.

I have never given myself out as an expert on human therapy, but I do laud those who are in that ungrateful and complex business. After studying philosophy and psychology for years, it still appears to me like a black cat in a dark room which is not there.

Despite our meteoric advances in science and technology, we have barely skimmed the technology of the soul and the mind. We have somehow stagnated at Freud and Jung and Descartes' adage: I think therefore I am. I am leaning more to contemporary thinking with has changed its tune to: I am, therefore I think - what an immense progress!

Back to kindness.

Before you speak, ask yourself if what you are going to say is true, is kind, is necessary and is helpful. If the answer is no, maybe what you are about to say should be left unsaid. Bernard Meltzer.

The human psyche, the human spirit and our subconscious minds are limitless in their quest for the essence of Man and Humanity.

We may feel that our minds and bodies are in control of our lives, and that might be true for most cases and most times, but just try to breach that limit and you will quickly find your subconscious mind, your spirit and your emotions taking control of you and pushing you into good or evil situations which you never thought were possible. Psychiatric wards, churches, jails and cemeteries are full of such.

What is necessary is that we learn some basic life skills, and that we can learn from bedtime stories, fables and fairy tales - as strange as that may sound. We also learn from our parents and educators and this process may even at times become violent, but we have to learn it.

I think being human is one of the most simplistic, basic and difficult careers and lifestyles one can imagine. That is all it is about. Shedding all that is superficial about us and owning up to our basic values.

The things which we as humans most often do, is to do something inhuman and in the process we become less human. It is like an honest person committing fraud, thereby losing his or her classification as honest forever. That cannot be undone.

So who are the frauds in all this? I can think of zillions of people with pretence and attitudes that make us less human, including me.

So let us start at pretence. It is very, very poisonous stuff. It makes us think that we should be more than what we are, whilst we should in fact be much less. Modesty never killed anybody and humility becomes us.

The second most disastrous thing that can come over us is when we run for or are in higher office. There is nothing wrong with high office as it is commendable, but the problem is with us who cannot handle the power and prestige of high office. Power, money and prestige are lethal to a human being. It corrupts us totally and a human should be never corrupt. Corruption makes us inhuman.

Next in line is impatience and not being considerate.

Each of us is social animals living in a world where we always have neighbours and strangers sharing our space. How do we protect and defend our space and what space do we give to our neighbours and strangers around us? How violently do we react when someone intrudes on what we regard as our own space and our human right?

Do you want to know a secret? Human rights are a legal fiction. It does not exist in reality, although we wish to think and to hope that it does. We only have a human responsibility and a human obligation, mainly to treat humans humanely. And we almost never do. This article is not about religion or philosophy, so I will not labour the point, except to say that we are inspired only if we inspire someone else. We only grow when we tend to or nurture someone else. We are only cured from psychological ills when we interact with people around us.

You can read my article: It is madness to treat mad people. They are only cured by interaction with us who are subtly mad and named humans. We have enough humanity in us to let them become human again. But ... this is not a sermon. You can consult thousands of books for that and hear millions of sermons every Sunday.

I need to address the question: what characteristics make us human? What are basic human values? What is the essence of being human?

It is not rocket science. We need to respect and consider other human beings.
We need to support humans in need. We need to act with honesty, responsibility and integrity.

What is so difficult about that? It takes no exertion to attain that and cost nothing.

What happens when we do things which are inhuman? Of course the evil fairy will curse us and we will become a beast.

How can we become human again? Of course, all we need is to experience love from a human person.

These are two very short and fantastical answers. But that is the truth given to you in the form of a fairy tale.

Yes, I believe in fairy tales. Not the far-fetched type of books which scientists dish up for us like the Darwinian Delusion or by misinformed people who write books that God is not great, but they are. It is rather the type of books children read. That is how easy it is. Those fairy tales were written for us by people who wanted to illustrate human values to us.

I need to borrow from G.K. Chesterton’s work on this:

The idea of Beauty and the Beast illustrates that inhuman values make beasts of us and we can only be human when we overcome prejudice with love.

Red Riding Hood teaches us that we should not trust people with big mouths even when they are clothed like grannies.

Jack and the Beanstalk teach us to launch an assault against pride.

Cinderella teaches us to embrace humility.

In “The Frog Prince,” the king makes the princess reject her selfish behaviour and keep her word.

These moral lessons are fundamental to learning to live honourably and compassionately towards others.

Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed.

There are, in Chesterton’s view, necessary ethical lessons to be learned by children and adults from fairy tales. This is in stark contrast to scientific fatalism. It is a sort of realistic and fairy tale optimism boggling the human mind.

The fairy tale frees us from the law-based, unchangeable world of scientific fatalism, where explanations are everywhere but wonder is lost. Sometimes we soothe our consciences by giving a few bucks to someone begging at the roadside, knowing full well they will be running to the nearest liquor store to buy a new supply to sooth their consciences. That is not the essence of being human, and yet we cannot resist that temptation.