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Loneliness causes misery. Prolonged loneliness causes harm. To prevent loneliness, seek friendly touch, honest emotional conversation, and second opinions on choices large and small.

A nation is a territory within which a body of law applies. A stable nation must delegate to its agents the power to maintain its territory and enforce its law. Nations that do not maintain their territory tend to be annexed by other nations; nations that do not enforce their law tend to be replaced from within. National instability is therefore usually a temporary condition, but periods of it can still cause harm to subjects of the nation.

"Territory" here means the area which the nation in fact controls. A government in exile does not have territory and is therefore not a nation until it returns or gains territory elsewhere. Areas where people can live are controlled by one nation or another almost without exception.

"Law," similarly, means the law which the nation in fact makes apply. A so-called law that the officials of a government do nothing to enforce is merely a piece of paper. Conversely, a policy that the nation does actual work to enact is effectively law regardless of its origin. A nation's law may be totally unrelated to its written legal code, or have very little overlap.

A "subject" of a nation is a person whom the nation is capable of acting upon. This includes residents, passers-through, and legal citizens living or traveling abroad. This also includes people in territories that the nation is seriously contesting, anyone whom the nation has imprisoned for any reason, and anyone who is liable to be extradited to the nation. Nations have certain natural responsibilities toward their subjects.

An "agent" of a nation is a person through whom the nation acts. As a rule of thumb, if someone could say that the government did this or that, but the material components of the action were completed by people acting as authorized by national law, those people are agents of the nation. Agents operate by the sufferance of the nation and an agent who breaks the law is likely to lose their license.

To a significant extent, these concepts as they are actually enacted do line up with national documents. However, changing the document does not necessarily change the reality. It's more common for documents to describe the workings of a nation than for the workings of the nation to exist as an expression of particular documents.

Government follow-up on criminal activity should involve uncovering and spreading verifiable information on the details of the crime, protecting and supporting any victims, and addressing the crime with the criminal, if a criminal can be identified. Interaction with the criminal should not take the form of punishment, as hurting people for the sake of those people being hurt is not kind. Rather, such interaction should be directed to other ends, including:

  • Discouragement of the commission of crime for benefit, such as requiring the return of stolen property.
  • Prevention of recidivism from a position of power, such as barring a medical practitioner convicted of fraud from practice for a period of time.
  • Limited longer-term monitoring, such as mandatory meetings with a parole official.
  • Opportunities to develop alternatives to criminal activity, such as an opt-out assignment to group counseling for anger management.

Criminals should under no circumstances be subjected to torture or other inhumane treatment. Nonconsensual restrictions on former criminals should be proportionate to the significance of the crime, limited in scope to affect only potentially criminal actions, and respectful of human dignity.

Stable nations are capable of great kindness and destabilizing them is almost never more kind than leaving them alone.

The enforcement of national law is an integral aspect of the stability of a nation, both because people who are not protected from crime are more likely to revolt and because people who are not prevented from enacting regime change are more likely to do so. Sometimes, it is kind to allow people to break a law; intervention would cause more harm than it would prevent. Other times, a victim can defend themself, or a bystander can step in. Occasionally, a law-breaker will submit to intervention voluntarily, enforcing in retrospect the law they broke. However, there are cases where the government itself should proactively attempt to stop law-breakers.

The first is, if a person requests that the government intervene in a suspected crime in progress against them. The government acts to prevent this person from organizing their own police patrol; therefore the government owes this person reasonable access to the government's police patrol.

The second is, if a crime has already been committed. The government acts to prevent vigilantism; therefore the government must take responsibility for following up on criminal events.

The third is, if a crime is being committed at a scale such that individuals cannot control the situation. Effectively opposing an organization requires an organization, and for efficiency and stability the intervening organization should be governmental.

The fourth is, if a guardian is suspected of committing a crime against their ward. Guardians are responsible for either taking care of their wards or transferring that duty to someone who can and will discharge it; accordingly, a guardian who is provably abusing their ward should have the transfer done for them. (The central example of a guardian-ward relationship is parents to their minor children.)

In these cases, a government tasking its agents with going out into the world and enforcing national law can be a kindness, and the agents’ obedience a parallel kindness. These cases still aren't always improved by intervention, and there are other cases that can be improved by intervention. But these, I believe, are some of the safer bets, to a government trying to be kind and unsure as to which crimes to react to.

Let us take violence to mean "physical force used on another person without the other person's consent," and police to mean "agents of a national government authorized by that government to use violence on behalf of the nation."


Violence is a problem because it hinders the victims' attempts to be kind to themselves, and it leaves the perpetrators in need of redemption. However, it is the case that people intentionally act to hurt each other under certain circumstances that cannot be reliably avoided. Therefore, violence will continue to recur at some level for the foreseeable future.

Reducing the problem of violence is important work for humanity. It is work that has been done for thousands of years: there is much from the past to draw on. In nearly every area, there are societal structures created with the purpose of lowering the amount of violence that occurs. 


In areas that are stably controlled by a nation, one major structure filling this niche is national police forces. Police forces typically act to reduce violence by separating violent acts into criminal and non-criminal categories and taking various measures to prevent the criminal ones. Police forces use violence, among other tactics, in an attempt to reduce violent crime. The intended effect is that the violence used by police causes less total damage than the violence the police prevent.

There are two major ways in which policing can fail. One is that the police can be too markedly active. They are a group that is authorized to use violence on behalf of a nation; they can use too much violence, or the wrong kind at the wrong time, and thus cause damage that is not directly related to a larger preventative effect, i.e. excessive force.

The other is that the police can be too markedly passive. They are the only group that is authorized to use violence on behalf of a nation. To the extent that they disrupt the formation of a new national government with the police powers that the people of the nation demand, they take on the responsibility of being the police powers that the people of the nation demand.

The first failure mode is one that every person is vulnerable to. Anyone could use violence in an attempt to reduce violence and end up causing more problems than they solved. It's a significantly stronger risk for people who are already committed to the use of violence to reduce violence, but it's not a special problem; it's the usual rules, just applied to people who by the nature of their role have to skirt the edge of said rules.

The second failure mode is not universal, and is specific to police. Most people don't have the mark of "person who stops communities from defending themselves" and thus don't require the counter-mark of "person who is obligated to defend communities they have made helpless." In effect, police are a special case of guardian-ward rules.


I am aware of the grim aspects of the history and present of policing in my country, the United States. I am aware, at least in a general way, of such things as institutional prejudices and unjust laws and abuses of power and the places where internal policy holds out over even the courts. I do not hold myself responsible for it, but when I am called to patriotism, I make sure to remember also our national shame.

I do not think policing is avoidable. I think that I have an inkling of what happens when everyone knows whatever disorganized response the people involved can muster is the only power demanding accountability from anyone who attempts violence. I think that the system of authorizing government agents to use violence in ways preapproved by people who are not in the heat of the moment prevents countless atrocities, and that it cannot be safely dismantled for the indefinite future.

In any case, disbanding the police force all at once through some trickery would do nothing but ensure that it returned after a tumultuous period in which many people's lives were disrupted for no benefit. The process of isolating the interventions which are productive to the cause of reducing violence is slow. Humanity's current knowledge of the phenomenon holds that a competitively efficient set of methods must include a special category of people who are authorized to use violence to implement policies under some circumstances.

Given the harms done by violence (both intervention violence and the violence being intervened in, combined into a single entity), I want to find out more about that phenomenon. I want to know what the most efficient intervention set is so I can tell my nation to direct its police to enact them and no others. I want to let my patriot's heart make a nation I can be proud of more readily, with fewer reservations. And I want to spread the information humanity reveals, so that the people of every nation have the tools they need to be kind to each other, and to encourage each other to be kind.

2019

Dec. 26th, 2018 11:08 am

To any one who consents to being addressed:
I turn my attention to you.

By my reckoning
(yours may differ)
you exist as a series of experiences and choices.

In every year, and in the coming year;
in every moment, and in the present moment;
this is what I wish for you:

May your past choices lie light on you;
may you be open to forgiving yourself.
May your present choices be easy,
and easily revoked.
May your future choices be multifold and
painless.

May your memories be laid out
in the order in which you prefer they appear:
may your text-books' contents linger
and your ghosts be laid to rest
and your precious pictures preserved
in lockets.

May your present existence be under your control
and of the sort that encourages you
to be the person you strive to be.

May your future self be influenced by you
(the you for whom this was created)
yet not bound by your limitations.

May you be be surrounded
by people who are kind.
May you have the freedom to choose kindness yourself.

Let it be so, or let it be better than I have said; or let me try again.

(Inspired by this poem by [personal profile] radiantfracture.)

Kindness theory holds that among the ethical stances of any given moral agent, there are some that are necessary, some that are beneficial, and some that are merely nice.

A necessary ethical stance is one such that, if a moral agent fails to uphold it, other moral agents are justified in interfering against that agent. For instance, "I refuse to own slaves" is a necessary ethical stance, and accordingly, raids on slave-owners to free their slaves and destroy their slave-driving equipment are morally justified.

A beneficial ethical stance is one that has clear benefits such that all moral agents should take it, but, if a moral agent chooses not to, their peers are not justified in coercing them. "I should not spit on the sidewalk" is a beneficial ethical stance. Is it kind to spit on the sidewalk? No. Would it be kind to get in someone's face and say "you clean that up right now, or else"? Also no.

A nice ethical stance is one that a particular moral agent values, but does not believe every moral agent should value. I, personally, make an effort to avoid using the words "good" and "bad" in ethical discussions. This is my choice, and I make it for moral reasons, but I don't believe those reasons apply to everyone else.

This three-tier system is a method of summarizing a key concept in kindness theory: that of proportionate response.

Necessary ethical stances can ethically be mandated with some level of force, though only cautiously. Beneficial ethical stances cannot, but can be promoted by other means, such as education, social marketing, and structural design. The nature of nice ethical stances is such that directly encouraging their formation in others is not desired; however, they may be spread through discussion to similar moral agents.

Memorizing this entire essay for application would be impractical. That's why there is also a much shorter formulation of this structure, focusing on evaluating a particular action.

  1. Me: Do I have a moral right to take the action?
  2. People: Do people have a moral right to take the action?
  3. Enforcement: Do people have a moral right to stop others from taking the action?

Often, when I apply these three questions to actions I'm repulsed by, I find that I have strong or weak arguments against the action (not my right and perhaps not people's right) but conclude that they don't justify force (no right of enforcement). Answering the first two questions validates the instinctive feeling that the action is wrong, and once I've done that, it's easier for me to answer the third in a considered, level-headed fashion.

"Kindness theory" is the name I've come up with for the foundation on which I build my ethical views.

Kindness: describing an entity that is generous, considerate, and humane. Theory: the abstract study of a phenomenon. Kindness theory is thus a discipline that seeks to formulate best practices for being generous, considerate, and humane.

Although I invented the term, and although my essays on the subject are for the moment the primary body of work in the field, I have no intention of claiming a monopoly on kindness theory going forward. To the extent that I own it, I bequeath it to humanity as a whole. Other people's interpretations of kindness theory are just as valid as mine, and other people's writings on kindness theory are just as authoritative as mine.

That said, kindness theory in its current form is closely connected to my own experiences and values. I would be more than human if my writing did not to some degree reflect my personal biases and priorities. I hope to ameliorate this effect by welcoming dialogue and offering a platform for other people's contributions, while recognizing that my platform is not the only one on which the work of kindness theory may be organized.

Speaking of which, I enthusiastically consent to receiving comments. There is no response too short or long, no question too obvious or difficult, no reply too presumptuous or retiring. I may write in the sort of English one might find in a textbook, but I don't expect that of my readers. You can also expect that I'll read and reply to all comments unless either my popularity explodes or I disappear entirely.

So: that's the origin of kindness theory, and a broad description of its goals. How it approaches those goals will have to wait for another posting.

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