Living Well – Wealth or Acts of Kindness?

As success is usually defined in terms of one’s economic wealth, it may come as a surprise to find that, if so, it does not correlate well with happiness. The World Health Organisation has produced some startling statistics about the pervasiveness of clinical depression amongst wealthy western nations, estimating that it is the second biggest cause of disability in the world amongst people aged 15 – 44 years (1).

Money, it would seem, may offer protection from the worst effects of poverty but may not in itself produce happiness. Something else appears to be necessary. A recent book by historian Barbara Taylor and psychoanalyst Adam Phillips (2) identifies precisely what this might be: kindness. Living well, they suggest, is impossible without acts of kindness.

Tracing the word to its root, ‘kin’, Taylor and Phillips suggest that kindness is a deep sense of fellow feeling for (and with) humankind. It appears to be hardwired into the human psyche, leading the authors to talk of a ‘kindness instinct’ – an inbuilt empathy with fellow sentient beings. Perversely, it is the human animal’s most exalted achievement – language – which may distort, bury and even kill this innate aptitude for fellow feeling.