A Free Market of Kindness

Stop me if you've heard this one.

"Okay, Mr./Ms. Left-wing Freedom-of-Speech Nut. So you claim to honor and value the first amendment, and yet when someone offering different views prepares to speak on a college campus, you protest and riot and whine and scream and get their appearance canceled. How very progressive of you."

Or this one.

"I see...so you can decide you don't want alt-right customers in your store, but when someone else refuses to bake a cake for a person they disagree with on moral grounds, it's suddenly not okay? Can you say, 'hypocrisy'?"

Or this one.

"A comic can use all kinds of awful vulgarity, can insult and slander politicians, can get away with just about anything...but God forbid someone tell an off-color joke about race. Wow...people just cannot take a joke anymore."

You should have stopped me. Because, dollars to donuts, you've heard all three.

And you've also heard these terms: PC police. Social justice warrior. Snowflake. Terms used by the right to point out how ridiculous it is that others want to change language. Quiet or censor certain types of speech. Remove words from the common vernacular. Make some things off limits, even in the name of comedy.

This labeling—and these conversations—annoy me to no end. I'm sure I'm not alone. But I'm not going to argue that the name-calling perpetrators should give up and subscribe to my way of thinking. I'm not going to beg that they look within themselves, or try to put themselves in someone else's shoes. It doesn't work. That type of appeal simply doesn't connect with the users of conservative lingo which is designed to antagonize.

So I'm going to try a different tack. I'll attempt to speak a language they can understand.

There should be a free market of kindness.

In fact, there is a free market of kindness. What do I mean by that? Well, notice that in each of the above examples, no one is clamoring for purveyors of hate speech to be locked up. No one is suggesting that a homophobic baker should get 40-to-life. Tellers of racist or xenophobic jokes should not be subjected to lethal injection.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

There it is. The first amendment. "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech." Correct. We're all on board. Even among us crazy liberals, none of us believe that assholes of any stripe should be arrested or convicted simply for being assholes. When we try to silence someone who is being hateful, it isn't because we are weak, or have sensitive ears, or are raging hypocrites. None of those things is true. We simply believe the world would be a better place with a significant decrease in dickishness (and we're right).

We believe—even if we don't put it quite this way—in a free market of kindness. Do you want to say something rude or insulting about someone who is undeserving of contempt? Go ahead. Piss off your family. Drain your pool of Facebook friends. If it's worth it to you to get off your chest whatever vileness resides there...then go for it. But you can't cry foul when your audience reacts as they see fit—as serves their own right to free expression.

Many people—mostly on the right—feel that being mercilessly direct, even when something has little basis in fact or does not need to be stated aloud, is the right way to be, as long as it is the means to a desired end (often to make the recipient of their abuse feel...abused). They feel that being needlessly boorish and mean is a way of standing up for their God-given right of free speech (God actually wasn't a contributing writer of the Constitution, but that's a conversation for another day). They think that they should be able to say whatever's on their mind without repercussions, and that anyone who reacts adversely simply needs to suck it up.

That's fine. Please continue. Because while you are miring yourself in gratuitous cruelty, the rest of us are going to respond in kind. We're going to stop voting you into public office. We're going to stop hiring and promoting you. We're going to stop dating you, marrying you, and helping to produce your (often equally vile) offspring. You're going to die out. Because the more educated and civilized we become as a species (and it is happening, even if it doesn't feel that way at times), the more we realize that there is great value in engaging in a society of friendly neighbors. Kindness, although it might strike you as a word spoken only by your hippie cousin, is a valuable security, traded at high volumes by those who see its promise as a future commodity.

What should you do if you want to transact in this hot new form of currency?

Listen when someone tells you that they are personally offended by a word or joke. Take them seriously. You may be an absolute rock—that's great for you. Not everyone is the same, and no two people have a perfectly shared history.

Call them what they want to be called. It won't kill you. And it will make them feel inestimably better.

Be accepting of people who are different than you. Not only "accepting"—applaud those differences. They're what make us great.

Don't promote hate speech, or odious rhetoric.

Speak up for victims of oppression or any of the phobias. Defend them. Make it uncomfortable for other assholes to keep being assholes.

Consider other people's feelings. It's not all about you. In fact, very, very little of it is about you.

Don't feel like making any changes to who you are? Not interested in doing any of the above? Then...don't. No one is forcing you to be kind. No one is ready to slap handcuffs on you for being a graceless piece of shit.

Just remember that those who insist on letting machismo and/or ignorance dictate their actions are going to be left behind. Your own, precious quality of life will suffer.

But it is your choice, of course. Act how you wish, and we'll see what the market will bear.