Kindness

Kindness is a category of actions rather than a disposition, and the criterion is what the action offers. Shared anima is the key phrase, since sharing is not the same as giving. An offer of shared anima creates or feeds a conduit through which energy moves in both directions, which is what separates kindness from charity, where the transfer runs one way and leaves a debt and a negative image behind. Calling it a collective term also means Marsh is not naming a single virtue but grouping a set of practices that all do the same thing, and her lists of primary anima sources give the contents. Altruism, including time spent with children, elders and animals. Ritual and sharing involving bonded nations and communities. Meeting strangers, which brings fear and danger along with attraction and the possibility of exosocial expansion. Connection rather than sublation or violation. The failure mode is instructive because it is not unkindness. Caregivers who do far more than necessary can raise children with a sense of entitlement simply by ensuring the debt is too great to repay by the time the child is old enough to be aware of it, which produces inverted debt rather than gratitude. So an action is kind by what it does to the balance rather than by how much is given, and giving beyond what can be reciprocated is a different operation with a different result.

Kindness is studied in psychology as prosocial behaviour, with random acts of kindness interventions showing measurable wellbeing effects for the giver, and compassion research after Paul Gilbert distinguishes it from empathy by including the motivation to act. Virtue ethics treats it as a character trait to be cultivated, and effective altruism asks how to maximize the good done. All of these measure kindness by what it produces for the recipient or the giver. Marsh measures it by what happens to the balance between them, which is why an action that helps enormously can fail the test if it cannot be reciprocated, and why she treats the possibility of return as part of what makes an action kind.