No.3677[Reply]
The flaw of kindness as a moral principal is that it's voluntary and not rooted in a sense of shared obligations or really sharing in anything. You give out of kindness expecting nothing in return, but there is no obligation to be kind. We can analyze impulses to be kind as either externally or internally motivated. An external motivation could be force, fear of punishment or something less darker like wanting to build a reciprocal relationship. An example of an internal motivation would be Mencius' famous parable of the baby falling into the well. Mencius says that any stranger would be emotionally distressed at seeing a baby about to fall into a well and at least want to stop it. This underlines the Confucian principal of innate human goodness. In today's society, there is no real external or internal demand to intervene. So where does our modern kindness draw its moral force? Nowhere? Society's desire to make everything voluntary, even feeling emotions for others, has only increased social cruelty and the number of forgotten outcasts left to rot.
Maybe genuine kindness isn't possible without care? Like a mother caring for her child, the relationship is two way and built on reciprocity, constantly giving and receiving affection, attention, happy moments. We can't all be mothers and treat everyone else as our children, but we can form bonds based on giving and receiving affection and caring for each other. But how can you care for others on an imageboard? Technology makes it truly hard to relate to others.
13 posts and 5 image replies omitted. Click reply to view. No.3805
>>3803Homura was funnily insane. So obsessed with wooing Meduka that she psychologically destroyed herself and put to misery many others, including Meduka, uncountable times. And she's been repeating the process incessantly. Homura was only a thin thread apart from being yandere. I don't understand what's the appeal of it to this day. The only thing I understood and agree to is that being meguka is suffering.
No.3813
>>3805Madoka is the type of person who'd not only spend her one and only wish on saving a dying cat but who'd also do it with the knowledge of needing to risk her life fighting witches from then on until her eventual death. Homura wanted to have the power to protect her because she felt like she owed it to her, and that she deserves better. The motivations aren't that complicated.
No.3817
>>3803I don't mean some Mohist type universal love where you are unrestricted kind to everyone and everything equally. What I mean is that kindness is always interpersonal and involves exchange between persons in a social relationship. This sharing isn't one way, but the other person gives back and the tie that holds you together gets stronger. This is something that has its limits. You can't be universally kind to everyone the same way. But when it comes to killing someone to defend someone you love, that's a complicated can of worms. I'm not sure it involves kindness, but does involve caring for someone so much you are willing to fight and kill to protect them. Under some circumstances, that's not a bad thing.