BECOMING STUPID: KINDNESS VIDEOS, BLINKIST, DUANJU

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(Picture: a still from A Millionaire Fires His Maid for Stealing Small Pieces of Food, But When He Follows Her to Her Home, He Bursts into Tears…)

Surfing the web to distract myself from tiredness, I stumbled upon one of the so-called “kindness videos”: short, 10–20-minute narratives with real actors depicting random acts of kindness. I looked at some more—the titles tell it all: A Single Father Went to Repair His Neighbour’s Fence, Unaware That She Owned Half the Town… / Single Dad Veteran Gave Up 1st-Class Seat for Burned Woman—Next Day Marine One Landed at His Cabin / Paralysed CEO’s Daughter Sat Alone on Her Birthday—Then a Single Dad Walked Over / My Boss Caught Me on a Blind Date. And She Said, “Why Didn’t You Try Asking Me Out on a Date?” / “Sir, can we eat the leftovers?” a poor girl asks, not knowing he’s a millionaire / A Millionaire Fires His Maid for Stealing Small Pieces of Food, But When He Follows Her to Her Home, He Bursts into Tears…

I must confess that, after seeing a kindness video, I myself—a hardened cynic—felt a deep emotional satisfaction in such a depiction of a small victory of good-heartedness in an otherwise brutal world: sexual and economic exploitation, the pursuit of profit, and everyday violence remain, but their efficiency is suspended for a short moment. We find ourselves in a world where individuals talk and interact as persons, heart to heart, while fully retaining their privileged or underprivileged social status. If the term “ideology” has any meaning today, this is ideology at its purest: kindness videos quite literally make us dumb, since their sentimental effect compels us to ignore the hierarchical social background—or, even worse, to take it as something natural.