The strength of kindness

That's men for you: Kindness is a strength, Jermaine Jackson said as he left the Big Brother house.

That's men for you:Kindness is a strength, Jermaine Jackson said as he left the Big Brother house.

Huge numbers of viewers agreed, as they paid to keep him in the house until only he and Shilpa remained.

This support for the concept of kindness was fascinating in what seems to be an increasingly hard world. As the actress Lily Tomlin puts it: "No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up."

Now, if everybody in the show had been going around being kind we would, in all probability, have switched channels. We human beings like to see conflict. We like a little blood on the floor.

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The fact remains, though, that the prize did not go to the most aggressive person on the show - who happened to be a woman.

For once, the adage that "nice guys finish last" was overturned.

Yet, we hesitate to use the word "kind" about men. That hesitation is a reflection, perhaps, of the traditional tough-guy roles we have been shoe-horned into whether they suit us or not.

If we want to say that the man is kind we are more likely, in Ireland at any rate, to say that he is "decent".

Even that word might be too much for Macho Man who, as he struts the stage with his number one haircut and his beer belly, would be highly offended to hear himself described as "a decent skin".

But kindness doesn't always come naturally.

Many experiments in social psychology suggest that the more money we have, the less kind we will be.

If you set up a game in which the players win varying amounts of money and then arrange for another person to walk through the room and "accidentally" drop whatever they are carrying on the floor, those who have won the most will be least likely to help.

This suggests that the person who is able to remain kind even when they are doing very well is, indeed, "decent".

Social psychologists, cynics that they are, argue that kindness exists only because it has benefits for those who are being kind.

When you get into trouble yourself you can hope that at least some of those to whom you were kind will come to your help. This is known as "reciprocal altruism": you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.

Actually, I think kindness, as we use the term, goes deeper than this. It's a quality which a person has or cultivates and which does not always depend on the expectation of getting something out of it.

Sometimes, though, kindness gets in the way and must be left behind.

Consider the everyday horrors committed in Iraq. To kidnap a group of workers, take them to a car park, pronounce a sentence of death on them and slaughter them is an act devoid of kindness. Among those who die in these crimes there must be many who, in their own lives, are kind. And among those who do the killing there must be some who in other situations are kind but who have suppressed that kindness to be able do the things they do.

Indeed,I have read of one case in which a man taking part in a mass killing spared the life of another by telling him to pretend he was dead - an example of kindness in hell.

As we know, you do not have to go to Iraq for the suppression of kindness in the service of wrongdoing. Little kindness was shown by their killers to the many thousands who died in Northern Ireland. And where is the kindness in those thugs who traumatise men, women and children in so-called Tiger kidnappings?

But kindness really ought to be championed as a strength. A macho world without kindness is hardly one worth living in. I truly hope that women will not become a bunch of Jade Goodys as they gradually become the main leaders in various professions. If we men do not want them to behave like that, then we had better be willing to exemplify the belief that kindness is a strength.

• Padraig O'Morain's blog on men's issues, Just Like A Man, is at  http://justlikeaman.blogspot.com/