Curiosity, Courage, and Kindness

I’ve been writing a series on how technology might help us resist tyranny — but today I want to take a little detour and talk about something more personal.

Elon Musk recently said, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” Thinking that empathy is a sign of weakness is practically the textbook definition of a psychopath.

Some people cheer this on. The book Against Empathy, which is very popular in silicon valley, argues that feelings get in the way of rational decisions — that compassion should be “calculated.”

I don’t think the problem is limited to a lack of empathy. It’s likely that people who routinely cheat at golf or video games might believe that most people cheat, on (for example) medicaid or social security. People like to think that their flaws are normal, and in fact often believe (due to Fundamental Attribution Error) that they have good reasons for theirs, while other people are just bad.

I’ve been thinking about values - and in particular, the values that resonate most with me.

Curiosity. Courage. Kindness.

These aren’t buzzwords. They’re not branding. They’re just the values I keep coming back to as the ones that are most important to me. I’m sure everyone has their own list, and I don’t mean to say mine are better.

Curiosity

Curiosity asks, “What’s really going on here?”

It doesn’t rush to blame. It doesn’t assume the worst. It wants to know — not to win an argument, but to understand.

That kind of curiosity seems increasingly rare. We’ve seen sweeping decisions made — aid programs slashed, public servants fired, entire populations accused of “taking advantage” — all without evidence. Just a confident-sounding assertion, repeated often enough to seem true.

Curiosity makes me want to understand how things work, why people believe what they do, and where I myself am wrong.

But the people making those claims about government institutions and people and policies don’t seem very interested in learning how things work or why, or what people actually do. They just assume they are right. They’re not curious. And that lack of curiosity is harmful.

The Stoics warned us to “examine your impressions.” The Buddhists teach “beginner’s mind” — a gentle way of saying: don’t be so sure you’re right.

Courage

Courage isn’t always loud.

Sure, it’s the courage to speak up — to risk your job, your reputation, maybe worse. But it’s also the quieter kind: the courage to stay in a difficult conversation. The courage to say, “I don’t know.” The courage to admit you might be wrong — and to keep learning anyway.

In a society that rewards certainty and punishes vulnerability, that kind of courage feels rare too.

But I think we need it. Not the movie-hero version of courage. Just the everyday kind. The kind that says: I’m scared, and this is really inconvenient, but I’ll show up anyway because it’s important.

Kindness

Kindness is foundational, to me.

Empathy, sympathy, compassion - those are great, but they’re just feelings and thoughts.

Kindness is action, or behavior.

First, do no harm.

People who hurt others - by firing someone who is doing a good job, or by eliminating a program that families depend on, or by abducting someone illegally and sending them to a foreign concentration camp - are not being responsible, they’re being evil. Hurting people is bad.

Kindness isn’t weakness. It’s just the belief that you shouldn’t hurt people on purpose, even if you think they “deserve” it. Even if you’re sure you’re right. You might not be right.

We need to have the curiosity to learn, the courage to say we don’t know, and the kindness to treat other humans the way we would like them to treat us.

Golden rule type stuff.

One Last Thing

These three values — curiosity, courage, and kindness — aren’t slogans. They’re an important part of being human, even when the system doesn’t reward it. Even when it’s hard, or uncomfortable, or even dangerous.

You might have your own list. Maybe yours includes honesty, creativity, faith, humility. What matters is that we’re choosing values, instead of just reacting to fear or feeding off outrage.

Media has a slogan “if it bleeds it leads”. Small acts of kindness are boring, while outrage and anger and fear and hate make the headlines.

They might shrug it off and say “it’s just business.”

It’s not just business. It’s life.

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