Anyone who has ever shopped at a Trader Joe’s has probably been greeted at the checkout by a jovial curbside prophet type and the question, “What fun things do you have going on today?” I think this is the standard question that is scripted in their magical unicorn employee training manual. I appreciate its presumptive positivity. It automatically makes me reframe my day in terms of “fun.” I look forward to it. I count on it. If someone is having an off day (who doesn’t?) and I don’t get that question, I know that person must be having a real crapper of a time. My sympathies go out to them instantly.
My favorite days are the ones when the employee riffs on the question in their own special way. For a time, our TJ’s had one employee who was a former elementary school math teacher who would quiz my young daughters about geometry and draw math diagrams or formulas on the back of our receipt to help them remember. Math was fun those days. There’s also the guy (whose name I think is Garrett) who is from the same part of Chicago that I used to live in. I always look to see if he is working, and then stand in his line even if there is a backup, just so we can talk Chi-town while we bag the frozens. The TJ’s checkout is a little oasis of human connection in a usually hectic day.
A few months ago, my brilliant friend, Dr. Flo the neuroscientist, and I had lost hours together debating the essence of human nature, our evolution as a species, and whether or not the whole planet was bee-lining to extinction by our own bad behaviors. We do this a lot. It’s great fun. We pick one of life’s enormous questions, and see where the logic takes us. There should be a joke about when an anthropologist and a neuroscientist walk into a bar. (I’ll come up with one and post later.)
Not long after this deep, existential conversation, I found myself again at the front of the Trader Joe’s checkout, and the checker dropped his question of the day: “So, what do you think? Are people inherently good or bad?”
I almost felt bad for the guy. The instant twinkle in my eye took him aback. “Funny you should ask,” I said. “I’m an anthropologist, and I’ve been thinking about that question A LOT lately.”
There wasn’t time to delineate my full conversation with Flo and the questions it yielded. I tried to summarize quickly as I shoved produce into brown paper. “We know that human cooperation, the most instinctual motivation for kindness, is the very reason for our success as a species on this planet,” I told him. '“But we are also subject to survival of the fittest, just like all the others. In a world of limited resources, we are competitors as much as we are collaborators. So where is the tipping point where kindness no longer serves us in a competitive world, and where being selfish better serves our survival?”
I realize he was probably looking for a more binary answer than I provided. It was not even an answer. But it was great fun to pull this random guy into my mental dilemma, unwilling as he may have been. I went on my way with no real resolution between us, but the question has stayed with me front-and-center in the living room of my brain for months.
Is there even an answer? Anthropologists have called this question “the paradox of human existence.” What is the true purpose of human kindness when there is obvious cruelty all around us? What is the test of its mettle? Do all humans possess it? Historic evidence would point to the contrary. Have we evolved so far as a species, so as to no longer need kindness as a driver of cooperation? Does power trump kindness after all? Is kindness dying? Yikes.
Let’s start with what we know. In fact, neuroscience tells us that kindness is actually built into our DNA. Our capacity for kindness as a precursor to cooperation and pro-social behaviors lives in our parasympathetic nervous system. Acts of kindness are rewarded with releases of feel-good hormones like serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, and oxytocin to promote further cooperation and the success of our species. Research in the last 12 years or so shows that acts of kindness, resulting in positive connection with others, puts our nervous systems into “rest and digest” mode, as opposed to “fight or flight,” increasing overall health in areas that the vagus nerve regulates, such as heart health, major organ function, inflammation, and emotional regulation. Furthermore, when put to the test as a question of instinct, kindness has shown to be humans’ first response. When given the opportunity, our most innate reaction is to help our fellow humans, or animals, or the world around us, for the betterment of our own experience and that of our communities.
So, in answer to the Trader Joe’s clerk question, the science says we are, by nature, wired for good. Kindness is good for others, good for our bodies, and it comes as a standard feature in everyone. Yay, Us, right?
But if that is the case, why aren’t people kinder all the time? If it is such an automatic and instinctual response, what makes people act selfishly, or even cruelly? Science also shows us that humans have differently-timed responses to inputs that require action. We have the intuitive responses, our first responses which lean toward kindness. And we have the calculated responses, which take longer to arrive at and lean toward everything else. It’s the everything else that gets in the way of being able to mainline kindness to each other all the time. And those are the responses that leave us wondering, “what is it all for?”
Let’s gnaw on the good news for a little while. We can unpack the obstacles and what to do about them next time.
Next week…what makes us mean, and the commodification of kindness. Stay tuned!