There was a time, the old-timers still remember, between lunch vouchers and educational smacks, when kindness simply meant lending a hand to someone who stumbled, telling the truth even when it stung, protecting the weak without pretending to be an angel. In short, it was a blend of human warmth and courage. But that was before. Before the emotional startup nation seized the word and turned it into tasteless, sugarless managerial chewing gum—a sort of affective Tylenol in biodegradable packaging that gets distributed for every occasion to calm tensions without ever resolving them.
Today, kindness has become a double-edged weapon.
First edge: a synonym for polite cowardice. It allows the cop to bust you while smiling, the teacher to turn a blind eye to a botched essay, the neighbor to let their screaming kids turn your ceiling into a snare drum. It’s no longer indifference—it’s respecting autonomous decision-making processes within an empathetic framework. Translation: we do nothing, but we say it with big words, kind of like those IKEA manuals where they explain that if the wardrobe collapses, it’s because you didn’t properly explore the potential of the flathead screwdriver.
Second edge, and not the least: kindness as a means of coercion. Because if you’re not kind, then you’re automatically a fascist, a conspiracy theorist, or worse—a Facebook user without a profile picture. We no longer discuss, exchange, or oppose: we whip out the malicious stamp like a nuclear weapon. You dare suggest that Kevin, 25, should maybe consider something other than collecting kitten videos in Pikachu pajamas? You’re instantly classified as a toxic oppressor, a destroyer of intrinsic creativity, an enemy of self-determined fulfillment. Our era has invented a soft dictatorship where anyone who refuses to smile becomes immediately suspect of crimes against emotional humanity.
And what might pass for theoretical exaggeration materializes daily in ordinary life scenes, where pseudo-kind veneer serves as justification for total abdication. We no longer have overwhelmed parents, but enlightened pedagogues in “non-violent education.” We no longer have undisciplined students, but “explorers of alternative trajectories.” In short, cowardice disguises itself as virtue, and reality becomes a parody.
The other day, I witnessed a scene worthy of a comedy sketch. On the subway, an 8-year-old was using his seat as a trampoline while screaming the national anthem death-metal style, while his little sister redecorated the windows with her boogers arranged in artistic patterns.
The parents, zen like Buddhas on Xanax, explained to disgruntled passengers:
We are accompanying our children in their process of sensory exploration of the urban environment, fostering free expression of their spontaneous creativity within a framework of non-violent education. We favor a holistic approach to behavioral development that respects their fundamental needs for spatial and sonic experimentation, while cultivating their decision-making autonomy in an ecosystem of generalized trust.
Translation: We’ve given up educating our kids but we have a minister’s vocabulary.
All this borders on the absurd. Soon, a teacher, faced with a blank page or illegible garbage, will explain that they value the student’s non-conventional creative expression in a logic of encouraging alternative pedagogical exploration, and slap on an A+ to avoid hurting feelings, and especially to avoid looking bad to their hierarchy—you never know, it might block their promotion. So we no longer correct, we coddle. We no longer grade, we applaud stupidity. And we end up confusing indulgence with truth, as if giving a good grade to conceptual nothingness could transform emptiness into talent.
That’s our era: a massive theater where cowardice has become the norm and constraint has dressed itself up as gentleness. A permanent carnival of sugary words covering the worst surrenders, all boosted by an army of cardboard coaches spouting styrofoam mantras, recycling the same hollow phrases like serving freeze-dried coffee in biodegradable cups. I saw one recently who charged $1,300 a day to explain to exhausted executives that their inner authenticity needed an agile business plan and that vulnerability was a transferable skill on LinkedIn. At that rate, kindness becomes a strategic budget line and cowardice becomes a certified competency.
And the best part? Everyone applauds, afraid of being the next one labeled toxic!
Stand Up straight, Damn It!
Real kindness—the kind from before emotional bullshit and cardboard coaches—wasn’t lukewarm soup served in pastel mugs. It was intelligent generosity. It was demanding, courageous, clear-sighted. It knew how to say NO. It educated, it judged, it took a stand. Sometimes it disturbed, but always for the other person’s good. Because being kind doesn’t mean stroking everyone the right way—it sometimes means being severe, cutting, brutally honest.
And above all, true kindness has nothing to do with the cowardice we coat in pastel varnish. Let’s be clear: systematically giving in, turning a blind eye, swallowing insults while smiling—THAT’S NOT BEING KIND. THAT’S BEING A COWARD. Period.
It’s choosing the comfort of silence over the dignity of speech. It’s confusing complacency with kindness, fear with respect, indifference with generosity.
But that takes effort. And effort is so last century in today’s world. Now we prefer to optimize our energy resources in a logic of personal sustainability.
So enough already. It’s time to stop wrapping everything in a kind framework to mask our cowardice. It’s time to call a spade a spade and tell little Kevin he’s acting like a wild animal, instead of pretending we’re accompanying him in his process of integrating social codes.
Giving in isn’t loving. Loving means having the guts to tell your kids when they screw up. It’s setting boundaries, confronting them with frustration, reminding them that the world isn’t a giant daycare with smiley faces on every door. Loving isn’t closing your eyes in zen mode—it’s saying NO when necessary, even if it means playing the bad guy.
No, a 10-year-old has no business on TikTok or Instagram. No, it’s not “expressing freedom” to let them wolf down four burgers or two liters of soda per meal. And no, it’s not an “enriching nocturnal experience” to go to bed at 2 AM when there’s school the next day.
Real kindness isn’t that pastel varnish that camouflages abdication. It’s the lucidity that protects, it’s the courage to assume the role of parent, teacher, colleague, citizen.
It’s the firmness that builds. And if that disturbs people, good: that’s how we grow, become strong, become worthy. Because by constantly confusing softness with goodness, we’re manufacturing generations of spineless people incapable of facing the slightest setback.
So yes, it hurts to hear a clear, firm NO. But it’s that NO that gives you a backbone, not PowerPoint hugs.