Jordan Auer
Jan 11, 2025
“Kindness is the beginning of cruelty.” Is this cruel statement true?
The quote, “Kindness is the beginning of cruelty,” attributed to Frank Herbert, raises a thought-provoking question about the nature of kindness and its potential consequences. Does this statement suggest that acts of kindness can lead to cruel outcomes? How should we interpret this paradoxical idea within the context of human behavior and ethics? I invite you to explore whether there is truth in Herbert's assertion and to consider examples from literature, history, or personal experiences that either support or challenge this claim.
5 Answers
When cruelty follows kindness it hurts more, is the point what Mr Frank Herbert has tried to bring home in his statement. The statement in fact is a kind of generalisation of what is merely one possible way a kindness can turn. It is common to understand that it is not cruelty that kindness is always a means of, kindness in its true form is not always for the purposed of being cruel latter, but most of time just to be good and decent to someone. In its true form kindness is an attribute of the good and strong. But then for the point the Mr Herbert is making, is strength not also needed to commit cruelty?
In any case, there is a link between kindness and cruelty, just as there is between love and hatred, the only difference being that when love turns into hatred, hatred cannot be turned back into love, but kindness and cruelty can go hand in hand, intertwined in the behaviour of the sickly and twisted for instance, causing greater hurtfulness and harm and by being just cruel or unkindly.
The second point is that sometimes one needs to be cruel to be kind – ‘I must be cruel to be kind’ Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4, Lines 173-179. For what form a kindness should assume for the ones who do not understand the language of kindness, the message therein, the one who needs to be cured before being fed? Then the ends are in the purposes and not in the means. One might be kind only to cause more harm, as for instance when one’s kindness would encourage a bad behaviour, then one has no choice but to be resolute and firm. But question is not about resolution and firmness, but about the interesting situation they can arise out of the metal confusion that is caused when the mind suddenly turn cruel.
Feb 04, 2025
If you desire to perceive that every must have balance. Therefore, if you first have kindness (which we will consider the beginning) then eventually you must have cruelty (balance). As a result, kindness would be the beginning to cruelty.
It can sometimes
be so;
example; repeatedly forgiving someone`s
self-controllable unacceptable behaviour may well
result in its` becoming a close-to-uncontrollable trait.
I`m sure you can think of more examples.
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