NOVEMBER 11, 2019 | Justin N. Poythress

Just be kind. It’s more than a phrase. It’s a movement. The slogan began with some kids in Central Indiana selling signs, T-shirts, and key chains, and now its influence is spreading throughout the world. The principle is basic, and its supporters insist the maxim would benefit us all.

The supporting phrase is just as pithy: “It’s easy.” In other words, maybe the problems, the stress, the conflict, and the pain in our world actually aren’t an irreducibly complex tangle of divergent opinions, identities, and values. Maybe the solution is easier and closer than you think.

Presumably what’s easy is the idea itself, not the actions required to carry out the solution. Admittedly, it’s hard to dialogue meaningfully with a slogan, but taken at its best, the people who wear those shirts or hoist those signs wouldn’t be so naive to think a lifestyle of perpetual kindness is an easy task with black-and-white applications.

Every civilization has asked, “What is our greatest good?” Philosophers have sought to lay out one concise maxim we can all appropriate and live by. Socrates claimed the pathway to happiness is virtue. Immanuel Kant boiled it down to the categorical imperative: “I ought never to act in such a way that I couldn’t also will that the maxim on which I act should be a universal law.” Kant merely put a fancy philosophical spin on the golden rule: “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them” (Matt. 7:12).

The problem isn’t with a condensed imperative like “be kind.” The problem—on two levels—is with the word “just.”

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