Does modern society suffer from a deficit of kindness? In a recent book Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor argue that it is an unfashionable, endangered virtue. They attribute this to the ascendancy of free-market individualism and the lack of trust it engenders, which creates "a life of overwork, anxiety and isolation".
Kindness is rarely invoked in public rhetoric. The voguish word for our straitened times is "fairness". When everyone must bear their "fair share" of economic pain, kindness is likely to be regarded as a luxury, perhaps even as a form of sanctimony or concealed self-interest. Kindness tends to be outsourced to specific groups, such as care workers delivering "care packages", or reduced to the scripted concern of the customer-server relationship: "Is there anything else I can help you with today?"
But in our daily lives, there is no evidence that kindness is in decline. Each era creates its own types of kindness. Children, who consume more of their parents' lives than ever before, generate networks of kindness as adults share chauffeuring, sleepover and cooking duties. The internet's interactivity inspires random acts of kindness among strangers: the lovebombing of Keanu Reeves, after he was photographed looking fed up on a park bench, is an example. Kindness is spontaneous and can't be legislated for. If, as philosophers from the Greek Stoics to Rousseau have insisted, we have a natural empathy with our fellow human beings, then kindness will surely survive the temporary setback of hard times.
Joe Moran is the author of On Roads: A Hidden History (Profile, £8.99). Visit theschooloflife.com