When Kindness Fails: A Reflection on Humanity’s Darker Side

In a world where we cling to hope and belief in human goodness, it's unsettling to encounter behavior that defies kindness and empathy.

From the personal betrayals that sting to the shocking events that make headlines, these moments challenge our faith in humanity.

Recently, I have read about and encountered a series of incidents that I simply do not understand. All my work in education and trauma still doesn’t answer some questions and concerns I have about human behavior (perhaps better labeled human misbehavior). Perhaps some readers have had similar recent experiences. Perhaps some readers can provide explanations that escape my purview.

Of course, one possibility is that I do not want to understand or accept unpleasant realities about human nature. My own mother was mean and incapable of loving, at least loving me; I get she had mental illness but what happened to her mother genes? As soon as my son was born, if not before, I felt like I had a second heart beating in another.

Let me share a couple examples. Some are taken from the news and some are reflective of real incidents (disguised to protect the guilty). They are not all of equal magnitude but they are all reflective of “badness.” Badness has degrees I think.

How is it that Matthew Perry’s assistant kept injecting him on the day of his death with Ketamine? Was Perry aware of what was happening? Was he a willing recipient or was his assistant trying to kill him or return him to (assuming he was in recovery) a state of addiction? I don’t get it. I am sure we are missing facts but still.

I just finished Kristin Hannah’s remarkable book Nightingale. In it, she describes inhuman behavior the Nazis and French (among others) inflicted on men, women and children during WWII. I have asked in the past and I ask yet again: How could humans even perform those horrors on other humans? Where does decency and honor and humanity go? How does it disappear? Current wars raise similar questions.

How do people who seem perfectly healthy just die or become seriously ill at a relatively young age? One day they are living and one day they are dead or near dead? How is it that we have no warnings (at least not ones we recognize) that death is imminent?

How is it that we have rules that make zero sense and there seems to be no way to override them. What happened to understanding that rules don’t always work and need to be adapted? Seriously. My bank has such rules and each time I encounter them and pause and wonder: what were the rule makers thinking? A recent example was the bank’s refusal to allow me to deposit a check from the US government made payable to me and my late-husband. It took years to get the check. It was not as if he could endorse the check; he died 4 years ago this month and the check had a July 2024 date. Talk about stoking memories …. and it reflects institutional failure to find a pathway forward that made sense; they wanted the estate appointment documents recertified by a court. What court?

Then, how is it that folks can’t own their bad behavior and instead double down? Consider someone I know who committed criminal acts and then blames these behaviors on the victim (whom I also know) for inciting the criminal decades ago. Really? Foisting one’s own badness on another as if that will eliminate guilt? What about free will?

I don’t understand wanting to win so so badly that one steps on the toes of the rightful winner. Wouldn’t it feel awful to win when one didn’t actually win? Think Olympics and bronze medal in gymnastics. Then think of the cross country runner who redirected the winner who was turning the wrong way to cross the finish line and enabled his misdirected runner to win rightfully? A bravo moment in the midst of many dissimilar behaviors.

In a recent dating relationship that thankfully I ended quickly, a man refused to “withdraw” a question I thought was rude and disrespectful and non-empathic in a text. I gave him two chances to self-correct. Instead, he refused and became intransigent. Come on. Did he lose his empathy engines? Were his mirror neurons missing? The answer to the last two questions: yes.

Notice I have not mentioned politics. There is plenty wrong there. Don’t get me going on banned books and limitations made by men on women’s freedom to choose in many contexts. Don’t get me started on the denial of civil liberties. Don’t get me started on corporal punishment in schools.

So, while I try to focus on hope and belief in humankind and kindness and I believe in the power of the possible and I believe that “service is the rent we pay to live on this earth (a phrase attributed to many),” I am repeatedly stumped by some behavior of some humans. Is it inherent meanness? Is it societal? What is it? Give me a hint please.

I welcome your thoughts. I both want and need them…and might it be worth considering if we can do something — anything — to restore civility and decency and thoughtful compromise.