December 30th, 2025
The mixed media drawings of the previous post were part of a quadriptych, so I’m reposting all four parts together.
Warm wishes
Today’s post is about the history of kindness, and even more specifically, it concerns two books that I’ve been reading over the last few weeks: On Kindness, a treatise by Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor [psychoananlyst and historian respectively], and a much longer book Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman [historian]. I’ve also included three recent pieces of artwork.
In brief,
Rutger Bregman engages in a multidisciplinary study of historical events, of scientific studies, especially, in the area of social psychology, and philosophical argumentation, and he draws on economics, psychology, biology, anthropology and archeological findings. He also expands on the old and always salient nature debate between Jean Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes, and argues that humans are fundamentally decent and that ignoring this fact does not benefit humanity, as holding negative expectations of people leads to more people embracing cynicism. Bregman offers a different perspective, turning to different sources, in order to unchain us from a dogmatically cynical, and to some extent distorted views of human nature. He deconstructs bad scientific studies, unethical experiments (Zimbardo, Milgram, Muzafer Sherif, etc) and misinterpreted findings, biased or sensational reportage, and misrepresented historical events. The book certainly makes us reflect on what we take for granted and how much information we absorb unquestioningly, and it makes us question things, which one can assume was the writer’s intention. Overall, his book is a powerful argument for innate human decency and human virtue.
In their essays, On Kindness, Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor present an analysis of kindness in history, in life and the contemporary world. They ask why our faith in kindness has been shaken and why we are so easily convinced that antagonism has replaced it, why kindness feels threatening, and why despite our longing for it we deny the pleasure of kindness and are weary of receiving it. Philips and Taylor discuss how kindness is the foundation of the world’s great religions and philosophies and they examine the pleasures and perils of kindness. Drawing on history, literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and contemporary social theory, they explore why we have been taught to perceive ourselves as fundamentally antagonistic and bad, and how and why we have chosen loneliness over connection. They argue that a life lived in instinctive, sympathetic identification with others is the one we long for and should allow ourselves to live.
Hopefully, I will write more about the books and kindness in the next post. Meanwhile, I will include two extracts from their books.
In the fisrt part of his book Rutger Bregman writes:
“This is a book about a radical idea. An idea that’s long been known to make rulers nervous. An idea denied by religions and ideologies, ignored by the news media and erased from the annals of world history. At the same time, it’s an idea that’s legitimised by virtually every branch of science. One that’s corroborated by evolution and confirmed by everyday life. An idea so intrinsic to human nature that it goes unnoticed and gets overlooked. If only we had the courage to take it more seriously, it’s an idea that might just start a revolution. Turn society on its head. Because once you grasp what it really means, it’s nothing less than a mind-bending drug that ensures you’ll never look at the world the same again So what is this radical idea? That most people, deep down, are pretty decent………..
I want to share three warnings. First, to stand up for human goodness is to stand up against a hydra – that mythological seven-headed monster that grew back two heads for every one Hercules lopped off. Cynicism works a lot like that. For every misanthropic argument you deflate, two more will pop up in its place. Veneer theory is a zombie that just keeps coming back. Second, to stand up for human goodness is to take a stand against the powers that be. For the powerful, a hopeful view of human nature is downright threatening. Subversive. Seditious. It implies that we’re not selfish beasts that need to be reined in, restrained and regulated. It implies that we need a different kind of leadership. A company with intrinsically motivated employees has no need of managers; a democracy with engaged citizens has no need of career politicians. Third, to stand up for human goodness means weathering a storm of ridicule. You’ll be called naive. Obtuse…….. Basically, it’s easier to be a cynic.”
On Kindness by Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor
“Kindness, one could say, complicates one’s relations with others in peculiarly subtle and satisfying ways; and for a very simple reason. Acts of kindness demonstrate, in the clearest possible way, that we are vulnerable and dependent animals who have no better resource than each other. If kindness previously had to be legitimized by a God or gods, or located in women and children, it is because it has had to be delegated; and it has had to be delegated and sanctioned, and sacralized, and idealized, and sentimentalized because it comes from the part of ourselves that we are most disturbed by, the part that knows how much assurance and (genuine) reassurance is required to sustain our sense of viability. Our resistance to kindness is our resistance to encountering what kindness meets in us, and what we meet in other people by being kind to them. And, of course, our resistance to seeing the limits of what kindness can do for us…..
So the pleasures of kindness advocated in this book could never be the pleasures of moral superiority, or domineering beneficence, or the protection racket of good feelings. Nor are acts of kindness to be seen as acts of will, or effort, or moral resolution. Kindness comes from what Freud called – in a different context – ‘after – education, that is, a revived awareness of something that is already felt and known.’ And this after-education, of which this book perhaps is a part, entails the recognition of kindness as a continual temptation in everyday life that we resist. Not a temptation to sacrifice ourselves, but to include ourselves with others. Not a temptation to renounce or ignore the aggressive aspects of ourselves, but to see kindness as being in solidarity with human need, and with the very paradoxical sense of powerlessness and power that human need induces. Acts of kindness involve us in different kinds of conversations; our resistance to these conversations suggests that we may be more interested in them, may in fact want much more from them, than we let ourselves know.”
December, 2025
“The young woman in front of me, with her little girl in the stroller, raises her head, smiles. She bends over towards the child. Look at the lights, my love!” Annie Ernaux
Today I’m posting something I started writing a little while ago, while I was reading the book presented below, but managed to finish today. The post is shorter than usual, but I’ve been doing things like having blood tests, dentist visits that I had neglected, and things around the house before the end of this year. The book I have written about is by French writer Annie Ernaux, Look at the Lights, My Love / Regarde les lumières, mon amour, and it’s about the hypermarket or supermarket, a space that Marc Augé defined as a “non-place.” The book is in the form of a diary, in which the writer records her thoughts, experiences and observations during her visits to her neighborhood Auchan store between November 2012 and October 2013.
The subject of her study is a “non-place” such as the supermarket, which the author transforms into a lens through which she examines and analyzes modern life, class and gender differences, social identities, consumerism, cheap labour in developing countries, and other realities and issues.The term “non-place” coined by the French anthropologist, Marc Augé, refers to spaces of transience where people remain anonymous, and that do not hold enough significance to be regarded as “places” in their anthropological definition. Examples of non-places would be airports, motorways, shopping malls, supermarkets, waiting rooms, etc. According to Augé, the concept of non-place, where people remain anonymous, differs from the notion of “anthropological place,” where they can meet other people with whom they share social references, and which offers people a space that empowers their identity.
In this book, as in her other books, Ernaux is courageous, insightful, questioning, and always connecting the personal with the political. Her narrative seems to repeat itself, perhaps reflecting the cyclical and repetitive nature of buying and seasons. She does not simply describe, but gives us a testimony of a specific context within a specific time. She records, interprets and analyzes. She tells us that perhaps the spirit of the times decides what is worth remembering, and that only recently have supermarkets been considered spaces worthy of representation in art, even though “…. there is no other space, public or private, where so many people so different in age, income, culture, geographical and ethnic origin, look, move and mingle.”
The book consists of diary entries in which the author records her observations about customers, employees, cashiers, who stand and scan products endlessly like a kind of production belt, the display cases, the products: food, toys, clothes, electronics, books and detergents, prices, commercial traffic during various periods of the year, but also issues related to downsizing and unemployment, the ethnic groups and immigrants she encounters, the organization of the aisles, advertisements, discounts, promotional products, the transformation of holidays into commercial functions, and the small daily human dramas.
For Ernaux, this anonymous space reveals issues of economy, power, gender, desire, and workplace hierarchies. She writes: “The supermarket is indeed crossed by History……. Sociocultural history of taste and fashion, of technology. Geopolitical history of migrations….” She does not only observe others, but situates herself in her narrative, analyzing her purchases, checkout choices, and the brands she chooses. In doing so, she reflects on class, ethnicity, and gender identity. She knows that the supermarket is also a gendered space, where women are often responsible for household or family shopping. Ernaux analyzes the class dimensions of the context she investigates, describing how the contents of the trolleys or baskets reveal social and financial status, and ethnic identity, and how some products signify deprivation and others prestige. She observes how the stalls with discounts and offers attract specific social groups.
She also describes the waiting time at the checkout, where we are very close to each other, observed and observing. The items we leave on the conveyor belt reveal not only our income, but also our eating habits, the structure of our family or household, whether we have pets or not, our interests and habits, our agility or our clumsiness, our kindness and concern for others or our indifference. And when an unknown woman recognizes her, then she feels herself becoming an object of observation and curiosity, as each product in her basket reveals elements of her habits and preferences, her own way of life. The supermarket thus becomes a place where we are all potentially exposed to the gaze of others.
Towards the end of her narrative, Ernaux also talks about the charm of these large shopping spaces and the collective life that unfolds in them, and which may in the future be lost with the spread of online ordering and delivery to the customer’s door. And perhaps today’s children, as adults, will miss Saturday shopping at the super market, just as those over a certain age miss the grocery stores of their old neighborhood. Ernaux’s parents owned a small grocery store and this was a significant part of her childhood and adolescence.