Learning to Be Mindfully Kind

Undecided Voters and Their Stupidity

I was addicted to YouTube news clips before the election, looking for tea leaves to read, indications, reassurances from smart, in-the-know people that Harris was going to win. 

I was particularly drawn to focus groups of undecided voters. There was one that took place after a question-and-answer forum with Vice President Harris in Pennsylvania. A group of ten or so attendees – all of whom were undecided before the forum — were interviewed by a journalist who listened to them with the utmost respect, like they were oracles or sages. 

Trump’s former Chief of Staff and former Secretary for Homeland Security, John Kelly, had recently been issuing statements to the effect that Trump was “fascist to the core” and “the most flawed human being he’d ever met” and a danger to the country’s security and so on. During the forum, Harris, naturally, had repeatedly cited Kelly’s opinion of Trump. 

One of the focus group participants, a very earnest-seeming, nicely dressed middle-aged woman, proclaimed passionately that when candidates quote negative things other people say about their opponent, that just strikes her as so much kindergarten-ish name calling, and it has nothing to do with anything relevant, and all it does is diminish her respect for the candidate. She declared, with fierce indignation, a little disgust, and even some pride: “I don’t even know who this Kelly person is!”

I watched this and thought: If there’s anything worse than ignorance, it’s RIGHTEOUS ignorance. What a fucking IDIOT!

Yeah, I know. 

That was judgmental. 

More on Ignorance

Shortly after the election, I entered the following post on Facebook:

We need a new word in the English language.

When I was 15 I worked as a busboy in a restaurant. I wasn’t great at my job, nor was I beloved by my workmates, for that among other reasons. One of the cooks in particular — a guy who was 29 years old but had lived kind of a tough life and therefore looked and vibed a lot older — routinely called me ‘ignorant,’ which I thought was ridiculous, because I was pretty sure I was smart and knew some things. But then one evening he invited me over to his apartment after work and we kicked back and shared a joint and spoke to each other in a friendly, relaxed way, and I told him that I was not ignorant, that I probably knew a lot of things he didn’t, just as he knew things I didn’t. 

I can still recall how he hesitated a moment, and squinted at me. ‘That’s not what I mean by ignorant,’ he said. ‘My definition of ignorant is, when you have a brain but you don’t use it.’

That did hit home. I won’t go into detail but he had a point. In fact, I’d even say it was a life-changing moment. It was a very caring thing for him to have told me.

So … I’m thinking the American people by and large are not stupid. But somehow, as a culture, we’ve lost the habit of critical thinking, or reflective thinking, or complex thinking. Maybe the internet has something to do with it, and cell phones too of course. People think in memes these days about their world.

So there needs to be a new word that describes that. Not ‘stupid,’ not ‘ignorant,’ not even ‘thoughtless.’ But a single word that means ‘out of the habit of — or never having been taught to — use your head to cognate thoughtfully and behave accordingly, even when you’ve got all the necessary hardware to do so.’ 

A single word that says all that. There should be one. Because I feel this condition is staggeringly common, like a pandemic afflicting our minds.

So what might that word be? Suggestions, anyone?

I received plenty of suggestions. My favorite one, from my friend Brett in CA, was “unmindful.” The word “mindful,” as I understand it, simply means to bethink oneself, to pay attention to one’s words (before speaking) and deeds (before acting) and thoughts (whilst cogitating) and to question their intent and their truth and their likely effect. And then perhaps choosing differently, from a more “conscious” perspective.

Susan thinks that the whole idea of “mindfulness” smacks of “woo-woo” (or would from the point of view of mainstream culture), but I like it. And “unmindful” is precisely the word I was fishing for. As in: NOT bethinking oneself. NOT questioning one’s reflexive thoughts and opinions, words and actions.

I think that PA focus group lady was probably just being unmindful, not dumb. I have a feeling that she has a strong enough brain to comprehend that finding out who John Kelly is might enable her to have a more informed opinion about just how seriously she should consider his words about Trump. 

So I think she’s just lazy. Unmindful. And maybe feeling a little guilty about it too; hence the scorn. 

I do make a lot of assumptions about people I don’t know. Maybe that’s not mindful either. 

I Spot It, I Got It

Epictetus of ancient Greece said, “When you are offended at any man’s faults, turn to yourself and study your own faults.”

The contemporary (woo-woo) American version of that is “If you spot it, you got it.”

Well. I see other people being unmindful all the time. For example, a friend of mine posted on Facebook that she wanted anyone who voted for Trump to please unfriend her immediately. I deemed this unmindful. So I commented on her thread to the effect that, though I understood her feelings, more division isn’t what we need now. 

In saying that I understood her feelings, I was unmindful, believing my own assumptions uncritically. How on earth was I to know what she was feeling? Honestly, I’ve never even met this person in real life. (Long story.)  But still I simply assumed that, like me, she was feeling rage, and thus her post. 

But no. In her response to me, she explained that she was deeply hurt by what Trump voters had done, and was therefore setting a boundary to help herself feel more safe. Which was a different motivation from what I’d assumed.

If I had bethought myself, perhaps I wouldn’t have been so certain that she was coming from the same emotional space I myself would have been coming from, had I asked all Trump voters to please unfriend me on Facebook.

And, come to think of it, with respect that focus group lady on TV, I should mention that I recently watched a short 60 Minutes piece about why Pennsylvania went for Trump, and it all made sense to me in a new way. It’s not just about meme-think or lack of mindfulness; it’s about a truly miserable economy that bears daily on people’s lives. (I could of course argue that the economy is not Biden’s fault, but for the moment, let’s just let that be.) And though I still feel the woman’s remark about “not even knowing who this Kelly person is” was moronic, well … I guess the least I can concede is that she may have had more pressing matters to think about, which she didn’t hear Kamala speak to.

Lack of Mindfulness Comes in Many Forms

Now I’m thinking of something that occurred when I was in my late teens. My family lived in South Florida, and there was a ballot measure to permit casino gambling on the local beachfront. I voted against it; my stepdad voted for it. When we discussed it, I opined that casino gambling would disfigure the beachfront. There’d be no more open space, and it would be way too crowded. His response was, “Well, who goes to the beach anymore anyway? I was talking to a friend and he said to me, ‘Do you go to the beach ever?’ and I said, ‘No, do you?’ No one even goes to the beach!” 

I don’t remember what exactly I said next, but I recall that I laughed at him. I pointed out that I myself went to the beach often (“still”) and that even were that not the case, to generalize that “no one goes to the beach anymore” just because he and his friends don’t go was really dumb.

Now my stepdad was actually an intelligent and thoughtful man, though perhaps, in the moment he made that statement, he was unmindful. As was I, in my derisive, arrogant response to him. At age 18 or whatever it was, I was seldom mindful. And sadly, I was incurious as to why my dad would think the way he was thinking.

Among other stuff I’ve said on Facebook recently, I wrote: “The least we can do in this frightening time is to cultivate kindness.”

Okay. Good one, Marc. But what does that even mean? Simply remembering to be nice? Keeping kindness in mind as a primary value?

Surely all that. But mindfulness is part of it too. Using my brain in the service of kindness, rather than merely to fulfill my little desires and aspirations, or even to “appear smart.” 

I want to be more than just kind. I want to be mindfully kind too. My heart wants to enlist the services of my brain.

So that’s my commitment. I will work on being mindfully kind from now on. I’ll try not to do unmindful things, like make premature assumptions about people and their motives, or believe my own thoughts when they imply that it’s okay to feel superior to someone.