The Karma of Kindness: Unattributable and Inexplicable Generosity vs. Reciprocity

A recent Seattle Times article reported how Warm Acts of Kindness Catch On, highlighting a number of instances where unknown people treated others to coffee, dinner or cold bottles of water on the beach.  Everyone involved in these acts feels good: the givers, the receivers and the people in between (e.g., baristas, restaurateurs and even people simply observing the acts).  These random acts of kindness sometimes create a contagion effect, where the receivers or witnesses are motivated to become givers [of] themselves (other studies have also noted that kindness is contagious).

The article raised a number of interesting issues with respect to giving and receiving.  William Talbott, a UW Philosophy professor, noted that many interactions and relationships are contractual in nature, revolving around reciprocal benefits.  In my judgment, anything involving reciprocity diminishes the sense of generosity; anything I give with an expectation of some kind of return is not a really a gift but an investment or a loan, with some kind of tacit term sheet or scorecard.

This notion of score is pervasive in our hyper-competitive society, where nearly everything is seen as a game with winners and losers.  James Carse, in his book Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility, distinguishes between finite games, where there are fixed rules, winners and losers, and infinite games, where there are variable rules and the whole purpose of the game is to continue play, and so there are no winners and no losers ... and thus no notion of scoring.

Dan Gilbert, in his book Stumbling on Happiness, recounted two experiments relating to random acts of kindness.  One demonstrated that people who are given random gifts enjoy them less if there is an explanation associated with the gift (without a given explanation, receivers are free to enjoy speculating on possible explanations of their own).  Another showed that people enjoy the attention of unknown admirers more than attention from people whose identities are revealed to them (again, due to the joy of ongoing speculation of possibilities).

I suspect that the greater joy felt in receiving gifts that lack attribution and/or explanation also increases the likelihood that receivers, or witnesses, will be motivated to practice their own random acts of senseless kindness, thus perpetuating the karma of kindness.  I further believe that whatever, whenever and however we give, we thereby open up to receive, and so by being generous, we open ourselves up to receive the generosity of others ... perhaps through simply recognizing that generosity is possible in a broader range of situations.

Of course, as recent developments in the Middle East highlight, unkindness can also be contagious.  First-hand witnesses to violence are more likely to perpetrate violence on others, and the notion of retaliation is closely related to that of reciprocity (you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours; you scratch my eye out, I'll scratch out yours) ... and keeping score is closely related to settling scores.  While the karma of kindness can create heaven on earth, the karma of violence spirals down into a living hell. 

In his book, Carse notes that

Evil is never intended as evil. Indeed, the contradiction inherent in all evil is that it originates in the desire to eliminate evil. "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."

Substitute "Jew" or "Hezbollah" for "Indian", and the stage is set for another cycle of violence ... broaden the target to include an entire axis of evil, and one can set the stage for many cycles of violence ... perhaps even an eternal war.

The Seattle Times article ends with a story Stephen Jay Gould told about his experience of the kindness of people shortly after the 9/11 attacks (which was shortly before his death), in which he mused "if only we can learn to harness this wellspring of unstinting goodness in all of us".  I'm reminded of the expression "If you don't have anything nice to say about somebody, don't say anything at all" ... the world would be a kinder place if we were to adopt a practice of "If you don't have anything nice to do for someone, don't do anything at all".