Are we being unkind?

(From Guardian Unlimited)

We are naturally kind. Or are we?

Few questions are as guaranteed to raise the hackles as this old chestnut. The debate has been raging for centuries -- conducted, as often as not, in a manner sufficiently unkind as to suggest the answer all by itself.

In one sense, though, before you even start weighing playground cruelty against samaritan compassion, the very term "kindness" itself provides its own, affirmative, response. For it is natural not only to women and men, but also to birds, bees and, for all I know, vegetables, not only to be of a kind but to recognise kinship where it appears within their sphere of awareness. And through this perception of kinship, though again the vegetable point shall have to remain moot, it is natural to feel that what is in one's own interest is also in theirs. To the extent that kinship is natural -- something which is beyond debate -- kindness is also natural.

So what has gone wrong?

This is the question posed by the historian Barbara Taylor and the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips in their new book, On Kindness . Promoted as a "defence of kindness in a selfish age", the admirably short volume argues that our instinctual kindness has been eroded by the exclusively competitive spirit of modern society. Competitiveness has become enshrined as the master value, extending its control over not only our economic and political sphere, but over our moral sphere as well. Kindness, in consequence, argue the authors, has come to be perceived as a sign of weakness, "a virtue for losers".

It struck me as an amusing instance of the way competition can eat away at our better instincts that you would never have guessed from the high-profile discussion of the book on Start the Week this month that it had two authors. From Phillips's discussion of "my intention" and "my book", not once did he credit his co-author, despite the fact that it was clear that the larger part of the interest of his fellow guests was directed toward the historical sections of the book -- penned, presumably, in greater part by the absent Taylor. How kind is that? Still, in the cut-throat world of literary promotion and broadcasting, who could be surprised?