BY STEWART SLATER

Your correspondent is not, he would be the first to admit, one of the world’s natural sportsmen. Scrawny and mal-coordinated, he realised at an early age that his only path to glory would be to play sports which no-one else did. And even then, his achievements were slight. Given this, learning to swim was always likely to be a traumatic process. So it proved.

Dragged to the local pool every day during the school holidays, he was subjected to an hour of torture in what was, at that point, a vain attempt to get his limbs to move in roughly the right order. It was cold, it was smelly, and swimming trunks were, to his childish mind, overly revealing and an affront to his dignity. When his visiting grandmother witnessed one of these sessions, she drew herself up to her full 5’2” and accused his mother of cruelty.

I tell you this, not in an effort, through publicly reliving my “trauma”, to sanctify myself by, as is currently popular, wrapping myself in the mantle of victimhood, for nothing would appal me more than the idea anyone might feel sorry for me. No, the point of the anecdote is to throw light on that other bane of the modern world, its constant imprecations to “Be Kind”.

For while, in the minds of my grandmother and me, my mother was being cruel, in her own, she was being kind. She was making sure that I acquired a skill which would be useful in later life and which I might enjoy. While she was wrong about the latter (swimming still not really floating my boat), she was undoubtedly right about the former. Looking back, I am glad that I eventually learned to swim. It has allowed me to do things a non-swimming version of myself could not and, if I find myself in a rerun of the Titanic, I will survive slightly longer in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic than I otherwise might.

I did not, however, feel this at the time. If I had, in a bout of juvenile precocity, told her to “Be Kind”, I would have been looking for her to unfurl a towel and call the whole thing off. And herein lies the problem, for kindness is in the eye of the beholder, and when we use the phrase, we really mean “Be Kind according to my current definition”. How many of those who use it would be satisfied if their target replied, “I’ve thought about it and I think I am being kind, so I’ll just carry on, thank you very much”?

In doing so, though, we place ourselves at the centre of the moral universe, judge, jury and executioner of what counts as kindness.

The “Be Kind” brigade demands that the world (and other people) work in the way they want or some sin has been committed.

As such, it is less a moral commandment, and more a power move, forcing others to behave in the way they want. As Orwell might have put it, “If you want to know who rules over you, look at to whom you are forced to be kind.”

Analysing events through the lens of power relations brings us dangerously close to the thickets of modern French philosophy (and, as we all know, you never go full French philosopher), but consider the case of Lady Hussey, unpersoned after her persistent questioning of a guest at a Buckingham Palace reception. Ms Fulani seems to have been discomfited by her behaviour, so might reasonably feel herself to be a victim of unkindness. But what of the offender?

She is not in the first flush of youth and grew up in a different time. She may be losing her hearing. All of which, to the charitably-inclined, might excuse, if not justify, her conduct. If we were being kind to her, we might take account of these things and point out her error before giving her a second chance. That was not, of course, what happened. She was hung out to dry by the Royals, condemned in the media and banished from polite society. Lady Hussey had to be kind to Ms Fulani, but no-one had to be kind to her.

But rules which not all have to follow are not moral commandments, they are merely tools of social control. Absent some external, objective standard of right, good will become defined by the feelings and whims of those who have the power to enforce their will. This may, as a friend recently noted, fit well with the zeitgeist, which awards status to those who claim victimhood, and has reclassified emotions from things to be controlled to things to be celebrated but it may not make for a pleasant society.

Scientists long struggled to understand the behaviour of locust swarms until, in a flash of inspiration, one of them realised that one simple condition explained everything. Assuming that each individual locust was seeking its closest source of protein predicted perfectly how the swarm would behave. However, it also implied that the swarm was no longer a swarm, but a chase, for the closest source of protein to any individual locust was the locust in front of it. A society which prizes moral standing, but awards it on the basis of claimed, but unverifiable, emotion, will be like a locust swarm, with other members serving less as fellow members, and more as resources to be chased for the elevation of the individual. It will work for the quick and nimble, but the slow and hide-bound will be eaten.

At roughly the same time as your correspondent was suffering torture by swimming lesson, the world was captivated by a small, leathery alien with a long finger and a penchant for bicycles. Rather than seeking to “Be Kind” let us take a leaf out of E.T’s book and “Be Good”.

Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.