I believe that there is at least some learning/cultivation; I’ve seen plenty people becoming nicer over time, and some nice people becoming arseholes. However that is not enough to rule out a potential innate component.
I think there’s also a learned component of being kinder and more respectful to people. Even with the best of intentions, it takes time to learn how to do it effectively and learn how people might want to be treated.
Afterwards the positive feedback can encourage more good actions
Kindness can be learned. The difference between being genuinely kind and just constantly successfully mimicing what a kind person would do is - no difference at all, really.
Ultimately, I think people who started as natural assholes make the best kind people - beacuse we don’t just do what feels kind, but we have to examine the results of our attempts at kindness, and adjust if needed.
I would just say that people are much nicer when their needs (positive and negative) are both being met generally. Until then, one can’t help being selfish and innwardly focused
Kindness is a virtue that we learn to balance. You’ll learn who deserves your kindness with time. It is innate but requires cultivation and practice through social interactions.
We learn that being kind to rude people will usually not make things better, but we also learn that being kind to those who need to be shown kindness can help tons. And as with all things, there are extremes.
People who become helpless and reject the notion of being nice.
“I went through the pain, why shouldn’t you?”
And people who become pushovers and reject the notion of the fact that they’re being taken advantage of.
“I can take the pain for everyone.”
And as with life, it’s never black and white. You’ll meet all sorts of people. Some really nice. Some dickheads. Some annoying ones. And some evil ones.
All of this is just my personal opinion, but it helps me realize that it’s all okay. It’s part of the balance.
I would say that kindness is an expression (not the only one) of empathy. Some degree of empathy is present in the overwhelming majority of people - barring extreme sociopathic conditions and an absence of mirror neurones. So for most people I would say that it is innate to some extent.
Even in cases where empathy is not present, kindness can be simulated or faked and some people with strong sociopathic conditions have proven to be very good at this when it suits their purposes - so I certainly say something with the appearance of kindness can be learned in one form or another.
It can definitely be cultivated - and I would say that this is one of the major qualities in the whole “two wolves” metaphor or, in classical Greek terms, a virtue to be developed.
It can be learned but it’s hard.
Basically if you suffer through an event it gives you the ability to empathize with similar people.
Kindness can absolutely be cultivated. Mindfulness and Metta meditation can help, but also just doing to work on yourself.
I also would like to urge you to think of kindness as a quality of actions, not people. It’s what we do that matters more than our intentions.
ETA: kindness isn’t always seen as nice. A parent letting their kid suffer the consequences of their actions can be seen by the kid as unkind, but if it helps the kid become more resilient it has kindness.
I’ll go against the grain here not because I disagree, but for sake of discussion. I think it’s mostly innate. Why? Well my father is a clinically diagnosed sociopath currently running from country to country after he’s done something reprehensible. Growing up with that man, there is no fucking way you can teach or cultivate kindness in him.
And no sociopathy is not something that should be romanticized like it has in podcasts, he has destroyed and harmed so many people it’s unbelievable that people like him can stand to look in a mirror. Anyways mostly innate lol
Kindness is a behavior, and therefore it can be cultivated and practiced.
IMHO what is innate is a person’s capacity for empathy (the ability to understand that others have different feelings and to temporarily take their perspective for the purpose of understanding).
Empathy – is a type of intelligence
Sympathy – is an emotion
Compassion – is a behavior (based on an emotion)Whether a person actually expresses the empathy they have capacity for depends on things like whether or not they’ve been the victim of abuse. For example, the character Scrooge is what I’d call a person with large capacity for empathy but had no sympathy (the sharing of feelings with others) and thus acted without compassion. He lacked empathy for some reason, in some versions due to childhood abuse (never read the actual Dickens version so idk). The ghosts that visited him showed him why he should have empathy and because he had the capacity to, he changed.
I don’t believe that every human has the same biological capacity for empathy. As a silly example, I don’t think that the former pres. of the U.S. could possibly become a compassionate person due to being visited by the ghosts of Christmas past/present/future.
This concept of capacity applies elsewhere too, for example, my brain has a certain biological capacity to understand mathematics, but due to lack of motivation and interest, I am not likely expressing my full potential mathematical prowess.
Note that I’m using kind of reversed definitions of sympathy and empathy vs some definitions I’ve seen online. My way makes more sense to me, since the word “sympathy” is used outside of psychology the way I use it.
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I see you have neither learned or been born with kindness.
