Conversations On Kindness by Bernadette Russell

I had no idea what I was
letting myself in for.
I’m not sure if I’d known
what was coming, I would
have started it so impulsively.

We live in a world where the leader of a major political party (I had to check this was actually true, as I’ve been ill and was concerned I’d had a fever dream where I’d imagined she was a senior politician) describes diversity initiatives as a “poison”, and the presumptive leader of the “free world” (apologies for the liberal use of parentheses, but I’m struggling to overcome deep skepticism about the cultural and political structures which we tend to take for granted and feel powerless to alter for the benefit of us all – i.e. those whose labour is exploited by capital [more on this later]) can call the teaching staff at Harvard “woke” and blame the first tragic air disaster in more than 20 years on disabled staff at air traffic control.

These are facts, I checked!

It’s worth interjecting at this point with a quick definition of woke, as expressed in a meme by @realchrisrufo which he injected into the swampy veins of TWITTER (I can dead-name things too, Elmo) in the hope that there is still an immune response to fetid mendacity and misanthropy which can be triggered by truth:

Woke is shorthand for Wokeness or Wokeism.
Wokism is the belief that: 

1. All of society is currently and intentionally structured to oppress
2. All gaps in performance between large groups illustrate this, and 
3. The solution is ‘equity’ - proportional representation without regard to performance

Meh, good enough, although in typing that out I began to consider it lacking in something important. Thinking back to a conversation I had with a senior civil servant, I recall she mentioned that all workplace training can be boiled down to one simple phrase. Unconscious bias training? Don’t be a dick. Restorative practice circles? Don’t be a dick. Dementia awareness training? Etc. And that seems to be the point to me, and the counterpoint to the current populist trend of being a world class dick. Punching down is another way to describe the actions of populist political figures. And it sucks.

Bernadette Russell lives in this world too. In 2011, in response to all the shenanigans in London – fighting, rioting, looting and arson – she decided to make a stand and pay forward some kindness, a woke idea if ever there was. So, she made a rash public oath to do one small act of kindness every day for a year (and a day) and documented it on her socials. It sounds like it went rather well, and it opened up to her a space to consider kindness as a concept, a latent trait of humankind, an area worthy of scientific study, and a way of life. At a time of my life where I’m seriously considering some sort of ascetic existence as an alternative to the grind of conspicuous consumption and exploitation, this sort of wokeism speaks to me, and in that sense, it is a very timeous book.

Russell explains her rationale clearly and gives examples of what she did over those 366 days, but the larger part of this book is, as literally as the title implies, conversations with people whose lives are devoted either to the practice or study of kindness. It’s an enlightening book, I imagine, for those of us who are only just stumbling onto the idea of kindness as a radical tool of dissent and revolt, but for me it illustrates clearly that there is a burgeoning body of evidence that shows that, in general, people are inherently kind, and that unkindness, or anti-wokeism, is the exception to the rule. Her conversations show how kindness can make the giver feel better, how kindness ripples out (it pays forward to remember a trend in self-help/popular psychology books from the dim and distant past when I was a bookseller), and how it can build communities and create equity for people who might otherwise be disenfranchised*. And she does it with a whimsical grace, a lightness of tone which belies some of the harder hitting truths of her own personal upbringing, for which she gives a trigger warning early on.

To conclude, I was delighted to have bought and read this book (as I am delighted to have completed a review of a book which is still “above the fold” on this blog), and I have immediately given it to an important person in my life to whom it will also hold great meaning and provide comfort. In direct contrast to the first UK review on the website of a global marketplace monopoly, this book is worthwhile, it has great value, and at the risk of repeating myself, I really enjoyed reading it. If you want to be inspired to make small changes in your life which have big consequences, I can’t recommend this highly enough.


*Okay, at this point I am concerned that reading this book at the same time as Grace Blakeley’s superb Vulture Capitalism might have caused some crossover in my response to what are linked ideas expressed discretely.

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