>>3677
i think kindness comes from empathy. if i see someone get hurt, i'd feel bad for that person. and if everyone did some kind acts, then the world would be a nicer place to live in, wouldn't it?

My experience with kindness is that it largely isn't consciously mediated. I'm not a kind person at all, but even I will find myself helping strangers when I'm out in public without even thinking about it. This is because I come from a long line of pack animals who needed to behave in prosocial ways to survive and pass on their genes. Instinct is our obligation. Nothing is actually voluntary. Everything about us was determined before we were born.

Kindness is aiding and contributing to the emotional and physical well-being of something. I think the reasons for why people are kind is too varied to list out, but personally I hope to help others be kinder humans.

>>3677
I think you can see when one is truly kind when they are faced with hostility
You have no obligation to be kind to a negative person and most people would be at best neutral and at worst hostile back since majority believe in eye for an eye.
It is tough sometimes especially when negative people are affecting the workplace but why attack hostility with hostility? It would cause more anger and some people with ill will will stop at nothing to see you suffer

Kindness is more voluntary than something like eating or sleeping, in the sense that you will not rapidly die if you fail to be kind. It's easier to be kind to the cells that make up your hand because of their utility and intimate familiarity, although only because when they're combined they form up your hand. Individually, very few care.
If someone were to die in an accident in front of you, you can realistically accept that it's something that didn't involve you at all. Despite both of you having hands, and despite that person having a body and a mind, since you're not familiar with each other, don't share experience with each other, and existed unaware of each other, you can realistically think you can continue to exist without him. For you, he became an unpleasant memory and nothing else.

For the most part I think the reason people are kind either stems from an empathetic awareness of other people or because they have utility to you. At least when it comes to intention, planned out and mindful kindness. Other times people can be spontaneously kind, in the same way a soft breeze could be kind. It stems from a person's natural inclination towards kindness, or it only helps someone else by chance. I don't think reciprocity is necessary to start being kind but it nurtures it, definitely.
The kindest people I've met were those who were hurting inside and found strength in being nice. Maybe it stems from a deep understanding of suffering.

I don't understand the idea of drawing moral force. Specifically, its connection to morality. It's drawn from species-wide habits and social inertia. It would stop happening if it really hurt the chances of a species' success. I think I don't understand morality.
I sense an idea that forcing kindness is an urgent issue in your post. I don't understand that either.
>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
>So where does our modern kindness draw its moral force
>This underlines the Confucian principal of innate human goodness
The way humans are makes them kind.

>Society's desire to make everything voluntary, even feeling emotions for others, has only increased social cruelty
In most countries it is not allowed to kill strangers for pleasure so I don't know what you mean by that.
>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
Why exactly is it a flaw?
>You give out of kindness expecting nothing in return, but there is no obligation to be kind
There is no obligation to be unkind either.

The key flaw of a Western society, or a society that like Japan has become Westernized, is we see people entirely as individuals. A free, autonomous, independent individual, an inner self untouched by social life. What an individual does with his body is entirely voluntary and by choice. The relationship between two individuals is contractual, we mutually agree to exchange something. In such a culture, being kind to others is like donating money to a homeless person. You can choose to do it. It isn't obligatory. There is also no obligation to reciprocate and because its a choice, people don't bother doing it. The result of individualism is that human relationships are weak but also turned into simple instruments for one's own benefit. People become disposable playthings.

>>3754
>Why exactly is it a flaw?
Its very clear to us that this individualistic choice-based approach to ethics hasn't lead to a happier and more fulfilled society. And if you make caring for others optional and a matter of individual choice and responsibility, then society's weakest will suffer or people in authority will get away with doing cruel and callous things. Euthanasia is a good example. We say that healthcare, mental health etc. are a matter of personal responsibility. Its a person's own individual responsibility to get treated and if others help him with emotional suffering, being a cripple or medical bills is also entirely their own individual choice, since people are selfish and bills aren't cheap they usually don't choose to support others. On this same basis, many people now want to make euthanasia an option, allowing you to end your life for depression, since they argue that living is also a choice. We essentially deprive people of help and give them the option of suicide, then we all wonder why society is fucked up and depressing.

I spent some time in a rural peasant community, a very deprived area. Whenever one of the villagers became ill, the entire village came together to put up funds to send him to hospital. Neighbors volunteered to help his wife look after the children and look after his plot while he was away. When he came back. he was obligated to help others in return for what they had done for him, often helping them out in little ways like lending tools or fixing their stuff for free. There was a constant giving and receiving of gifts that strengthened the bonds between people. Kindness here isn't a charity, giving away something for free, but sharing in the same social network through giving and receiving which is involuntary and you are obliged to do. Obviously, we don't live in this kind of society in developed countries. Technology and urbanization create anonymity but the ideology of individualism undermines us too. It atomized us and has undermined our ability to be genuinely kind and genuinely care for others, reducing it to putting money in a donation box if you feel like it.

>>3754
voluntary kindness' flawed if you think kindness as purely good. then there wouldn't be enough acts of kindness if kindness is voluntary.
>>3767
>choice
i'm not sure if there's a better way of going about this. i think it's rarely the case that other people would know more about a person than the person knows about themselves. it's more likely the case that the person knows themselves best, so why not give them the choice of killing themselves to end their pain if no one's willing to help?

>>3779
>depressed girl
Being meguka is suffering.

It’s strange how weird moral discussions have become these days. Everything presumes a liberal base, that is foundational individualism and trolley question thinking, which is deeply flawed. Instead, we should see the human self as relational, formed by the social ties that make it up. There is no ghost in the shell, no inner self autistically aloof from the world. A single person is a son, a boyfriend, a father, a colleague, a friend, even a stranger. These are all relationships that involve care. Kindness is something intimate. It’s something that happens in the relation between one person and another.

When we say someone is kind what does it involve? That they are considerate towards others, that they are concerned about how others feel, that they are caring towards others, that they are gentle. To be kind always involves doing something to another person or animal simply for the sake of doing it or because their happiness also makes you happy. Then that relationship is strengthened and reciprocated and the other person responds in kind.

This is as bad of a can of worms as what is justice. I think being self-serving at least precludes you from being kind.

>>3783
My only assumption is that people dislike suffering.

>>3783
that's a neat way of viewing kindness. i can think of a situation where your thinking falls apart, though. what if someone ends up shooting and killing someone else so they can save someone close to them, like a lover?
>>3781
homura had it worse…

>>3803
Homura 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.

>>3805
Madoka 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.

>>3805
I feel like you misunderstood what Homura's motivations are, it's not yandere, it's doing everything over and over again for decades until she gets the perfect run where Madoka is saved from both the burden of being a witch and from dying due to Walpurgisnacht. That was Madoka's dying wish, and Homura will absolutely see it through at any cost.

>>3803
I 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.

>>3817
i'm not sure if you can say this to be a good thing either… i think killing should be an absolute last resort.