ON KINDNESS - by Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor
Kindness is something necessary, something we all need (to receive and to give). We all know this - in some part of us we know it - but life, modern life, is inclined to disable it. This wee book (but really a 'big' book) as well as mapping the history of human kindness, reaffirms the absolute need for kindness in all of us. Even ants can be self-sacrificial, giving their lives to save the colony. It is more natural than we might think. But then cruelty is also natural… and so there is a job for us to do in teaching children (and others) of the virtue of kindness. And to those that argue that being kind is a sort of egoism - well, to quote one philosopher, 'If this is self-love, be it so…' and to quote this book: 'for nothing can be better than this self-love, nothing more generous'.
Worth a read. I bought the hardback edition with a light blue page ribbon… because I was being kind to myself!
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