George Saunders

figure out what she needs and not... And meanwhile, I've got a call in 10 minutes.

So, I mean, it's pervasive.

I'm not sure.

I mean, I'm aware of this kind of riff about kindness.

But really, I mean, in my experience, it came from one speech that I gave.

Yeah.

But then, so then that you have made this...

this claim that it would be good for us all to be more kind.

And then after that, you go on a tour and you get to dig into that bit and go, huh, okay, so what does it actually mean?

Well, it's not nice.

Niceness is not the same thing.

And you can kind of reason your way to see that kindness has something to do with awareness.

In other words, if kindness is

being of benefit to people within your sphere, okay, well, how do you know if you're being of benefit or not?

So it was an interesting, that talk was an interesting way for me to realize that maybe I had equated kindness and niceness in too easy of a way, disconnect those, and then it gets to be a real lifelong connection

But I think now what I think is that kindness, so-called, has so much to do with your ability to be in a moment without a whole lot of monkey mind going on.

Because then you're more likely to be able to posit what could be helpful in that situation and make the decision.

Well, I want to push back on your framing because I think even the worst hurt on the planet, if you fall down in front of him, he's going to help you up in general.

I actually think that's true as a kind of working hypothesis.

So then we get to a different statement of your question is why does a person who in his own life does value kindness and does love his parents, love his kids, why does he hit the switch on whatever harmful thing he's doing?