Awaken kindness

(Baonghean) - The Institute for Socio-Economic and Environmental Research (iSEE) is carrying out a project, or more accurately, a campaign, called "Living Decently".

The project's name itself is quite appealing, as it touches upon a rather pressing issue in our society today: the tendency for people to treat each other less kindly.

The purpose and idea were clear, but when the project team started implementing it, they realized there were countless difficulties. The first difficulty was defining what kindness is, and then guiding each person towards the kind of kindness they envisioned,” said a member of the project team.

Finally, in the face of adversity, creativity emerges. The project immediately leveraged the advantages of the Internet, creating a website to solicit opinions on the concept of kindness with the opening line "Kindness is...". This led to countless definitions. Some defined kindness grandly, such as: Kindness is loving oneself and loving others. Others offered a simpler, more practical definition: Kindness is being attentive at the right time, contributing your efforts in the right place, and not blindly following the crowd.

After a week of activities such as seminars and exhibitions, the project has finally figured out the path it needs to take. Instead of forcing people to conform to the project's concept of kindness, it has guided each individual towards personal kindness. "We live and act kindly for the sake of our own dignity. If an action contradicts our values ​​and dignity, we will not do it; that is what it means to live kindly," said Mr. Le Quang Binh, Director of the iSEE Institute.

Simply put, the project aims to awaken the inherent kindness within each individual, so that it has the strength to resist other unkind behaviors.

Actually, this isn't new. Director Tran Van Thuy (director of the documentary "A Story of Kindness"), the film that suggested iSEE undertake this project, also expressed this in the film's commentary: "Kindness is inherent in every person, every family, every lineage, every nation. Let's persistently awaken kindness, place it on the ancestral altar or on the national stage, because without it, a community, no matter how strenuous its efforts and how lofty its aspirations, will only amount to nonsense."

So why is it that kindness, which is inherently present in every person, is becoming increasingly rare in today's society? A thorough explanation would require extensive and meticulous social research. However, it can be explained by the following phenomenon: the influence of the social environment on behavior.

A singer, when fined by traffic police for not wearing a helmet, reacted by saying, "Why aren't other people also not wearing helmets and getting caught?" While this statement is completely wrong in terms of logic, it reveals a societal perspective related to kindness. Faced with a situation requiring individual kindness (such as helping someone in distress or protecting the vulnerable), people often think: Why should I do it when so many others are witnessing the same thing and not them?

That thought gradually became ingrained in our subconscious, then became the default standard of behavior. Clearly, if we reversed the perspective, viewing kindness as a personal responsibility, the voice of conscience, instead of placing it within a social context, comparing it to other members of society, perhaps life would have more acts of kindness?!

Ho Viet Thinh

Hanoi