On Kindness to Detractors: Compassion Beyond Universal Benevolence

In late April, 2025, Richard Slavin, whose Hindu name and title are Radhanath Swami, spoke on the essence of bhukti at the conclusion of the Bhukti Yoga Conference at Harvard University. Ultimately, the concept bhukti, which translates as devotionalism directed to a deity, such as Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita, refers to the nature of the human soul. The immediate context is selfless love, which is directed to a deity, and this context immediately involves extending universal benevolence to other people (and other species), and even to nature (i.e., the environment). After Radhanath’s talk, he walked directly to me. I thanked him for his talk and went on to suggest refinement to compassion being extended universally, as in universal benevolence even to other species. To my great surprise, he touched my head with his, which I learned afterward was his way of blessing people, while he whispered, “I think I want to follow you” or “You make me want to follow you.” A Hindu from Bangladesh later translated the swami’s statement for me. “He was telling you that he considers you to be his equal,” the taxi driver said. I replied that being regarded as that swami’s equal felt a lot better than had he regarded me as his superior, for in my view, we are all spiritually-compromised finite, time-limited beings learning from each other.

Throughout his talk, Radhanath emphasized the innate nature of the soul to love God, whether that be Krishna, Jesus, or Allah. Such love directed to a divine person, rather than an impersonal ultimate (e.g., brahman), should not be for something. Just as God’s love for us is unconditional, so too should a person’s love be so towards God. This is the first of the Ten Commandments, and, the swami, whose parents were Jewish immigrants from Europe to Illinois, charitably said, “Jesus adds a second, like unto it,” that of neighbor-love. Simply put, love your neighbor as you love yourself. Like the giant red-wood trees that survive earthquakes and fires in California by interlocking their roots, we too can reach out and embrace each other, rather than fight over insignificant transient earthly gain. The swami stressed that we simply don’t devote enough love to God and thus act in service to God by being compassionate to one another.

Rather than taking issue with any of that, I suggested to the swami that his teachings could go further, and in a way that would transform the world. “Rather than just universal benevolence spread out like butter on a piece of toast,” I said, “kindness and compassion directed specifically to people that a person doesn’t like or who don’t like the person should be emphasized; if it were to take hold, the world would be transformed. Peace might even break out.” I pointed out that it would be easy for me to be kind to him, but much more difficult, and spiritually richer, for me to feel compassion and act in kindness to the Christian student at Yale’s divinity school who had recently called me a heretic while I was visiting my alma mater to audit a seminar on Jonathan Edwards—an academic seminar and thus not the same as a litany of personal beliefs.

For that seminar on Jonathan Edwards, which was brilliantly taught by the director of Yale’s Jonathan Edwards Center (which is distinct from Jonathan Edwards College at Yale), I had read Samuel Hopkins’ book on Christian holiness. Hopkins was a protégé of Jonathan Edwards in the eighteenth century in New England. Whereas Edwards preached love thy neighbor (i.e., universal benevolence) with an addendum that it is good to return evil with good, Hopkins contends in his book on holiness that the essence of the Kingdom of God is a person’s compassion or kindness to other people whom the person doesn’t like or don’t like the person. Because detractors are emphasized, the flatness of universal benevolence is subordinated. I briefly preached this to Radhanath, who, rather than viewing me as a heretic, told me in his way that he regarded me as his equal in religious terms precisely because I was urging him to go beyond universal benevolence in a way that would be more difficult and more likely to transform the world. For “love thy neighbor” can be glossed over, whereas helping out someone you don’t like or who doesn’t like you is relatively specific and concrete; after all, a person doesn’t need much urging to talk on and on about one’s detractors and other dislikeable folks so we know them and thus do not have to spend much effort determining to whom kindness should be directed.

Being able to dispense religious insight does not require having achieved any sort of sainthood, and indeed grace fuels the urge to preach. Nevertheless, a compliment is a compliment, but much more important than compliments is the difficult, and thus spiritually rich, way in which compassionate service not just overall blandly to everyone, or to the proverbially needy, or so easily to people whom a person likes or like the person, but especially to people whom the person dislikes or dislike the person. Universal benevolence pales in comparison, both in terms of spiritual worth and the possible impact both interpersonally and in terms of peace on earth. I told the swami that it was easy for me to give this helpful message to him because he had been so nice to everyone at Harvard. “So I am giving something to you,” I told him as we waved in parting.  Lest I be a complete hypocrite, I made it a point the next time I saw the young theology student at Yale who had called me a heretic to respond in a kind, generous way should that student speak to me. Rather than ignoring him when he did in fact subsequently approach me on that campus, I responded in kindness and was authentic in sharing knowledge with him. I even admired the value he put on his studies as a graduate student and sought to feed his thirst for knowledge. We did the same during the final day of the seminar, at Jonathan Edwards College at Yale. Crucially, my kindness and generosity did not depend on him apologizing for having decided that I am a religious heretic, and I would not have applied Hopkins’ notion of the Kingdom of God, which of course comes from Jesus in the New Testament, were the student to have continued to insult me. Too often people demand forgiveness and open themselves up to verbal or even physical abuse in turning the other cheek. Returning good for insult inflicted is unconditional and yet it should not put someone at risk of being attacked psychologically or physically. Lest contrition be held to be requisite to kindness and helpfulness to a detractor, Jesus’s famous statement, “They know not what they do” ought not be forgotten.

Both Paul and Augustine wrote that the Christian notion of the divine is love. Such love, as agape, is unlike other kinds of loves that do not instantiate holiness. I contend that a sense of holiness is more salient in returning good for evil done than in universal benevolence because the former turns the ways of the word more upside down more than the latter does. Being compassionate to everyone one meets is laudatory, but a different, one might even say holy, dynamic is in responding to the humanity of a detractor. For one thing, self-love and its interests are out of the picture in love that is inconvenient. I told the Swami that if enough people got a taste for that sort of holy compassion, the world could really change.

Imagine hungry Palestinians voluntarily serving Israeli settlers in compassion for the latter’s humanity as unconditional as God loves us, and homeless Ukrainians volunteering to repair buildings in Russia that have been damaged by Ukrainian drones. Imagine Republican members of Congress volunteering at homeless shelters once a week. Imagine Democratic members of Congress volunteering to bring water to people in line on a hot day to a “town hall” or Republican rally. It does not mean that the residents of Gaza need to become Zionists politically, that Ukrainians would have to support giving up territory to Russia, and that Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. must give up their respective political ideologies; rather, compassion is geared to relieving suffering on a human level, responding to our common humanity, which goes beyond religious, economic, and political differences. In a plane crash, for example, people who can walk do not check for party ID cards in deciding who among the injured to help. Getting into the habit of actually helping people who have been assholes is the point, for the spiritual dynamic that is unleased between the two people turns the world’s ways on their head, and thus is utterly transformative spiritually. To say that the world could benefit were enough people to work to transform themselves by making such instantiations of human kindness a habit would be an understatement.

Deflating Bloated Self-Entitlement in Retail: Barnes and Noble at Yale

Atrocious human-resources management, even regarding in-store employees of a sub-contractor, can easily be understood to detract from repeat customers; a refusal to hold such employees accountable can be a reflection of a sordid managerial attitude towards customers, especially in relation to employees. In cases in which the refusal is explicitly stated to an already-offended customer, the slogan, “adds insult to injury” is applicable, with disastrous effects in terms of repeat business, and thus revenue. That management is in some cases so bad reflects on the primitive condition of the “science” of management in business schools. That a case in point occurred in Yale’s (Barnes and Noble) bookstore, not far from Yale’s School of Management, suggests the sheer distance between the “science” and practice of management.

In early 2025, as I was making my way to the main door of “Yale Bookstore,” which was a Barnes and Noble store, a security guard at a distance from me spoke to me, giving me permission to leave the store. I asked him if there was a security problem. He said no. So I asked him why he had just accosted me. “I’m not used to security guards making statements as I leave stores.” To my astonishment, he laughed at me when I told him that I was going to report him to the store manager. He was even staring at me as I waited for the manager far from the sub-contracted guard. In the vernacular, the guy was a creeper and I felt uncomfortable.

While I waited for a manager so I could report the rude guard, I noticed the creepy stare being directed at me from across the room.

Nevertheless, even after showing my photo of the guard staring at me, the shift-manager said to me that he was not going to do anything about my complaint, as it “is just one complaint.” The manager’s real message was clear: My complaint, and thus I, didn’t matter. That two other employees, who had led me to the manager, said that I had a point regarding the security guard having rudely accosted and then laughed at me, and that the store management has considerable discretion in swapping out security guards. So, I knew that the shift manager could use discretion, and thus that he was refusing to do so.

I contend that the manager, whether unconsciously or not, was communicating to me that as one customer, I don’t matter. The common assumption by managers that a single complaint against an employee doesn’t matter and thus should not be acted upon is undercut by the fact that if an employee’s misbehavior is sufficiently egregious enough, clearly even just one complaint should be acted upon. For example, if a young woman complains about a male security guard having called her a cunt and she has video and audio recorded as evidence, I contend that that guard should be fired on the spot. Even were the guard to have laughed at her in utter disrespect, one complaint should be sufficient for a manager to act, even if just to note the incident in the employee’s (or subcontracted employee’s) file for future reference. In this way, the complaint would be acted upon, likely even in that employee eventually being fired (because bad behavior is likely to be repeated, especially in an atmosphere in which accountability is not valued by management).

That retail management in a major company, such as Barnes and Noble, can in practice be so pathetically at odds with the profit motive is an indictment on not only human resource departments in how managers are hired, but also business schools wherein management is researched and taught. To disprove the bookstore manager’s contention that one complaint doesn’t matter, I went to social media in the hope that my single complaint might indeed have significance not only in itself, but also on the store’s future business. This I did in addition to “voting with my wallet” by immediately returning the book I had just purchased for a refund. The advent of social media, and the ability to put reviews of stores online, bodes well for consumers and not so good for squalid store managements and rude employees whose presumed personal entitlement is overdue to be deflated.  

Related: Skip Worden, On the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietschean Critique of Business Ethics and Management. Available on Amazon. 

Enjoy Your Holiday: On the Weaponization of Kindness

In Europe, the word holiday can refer to what in America is called a vacation, which of course can occur whether or not the vacation falls on a national holiday. Regarding the latter, the official designation of a holiday by a government renders the holiday valid anywhere in the country’s territory. This does not mean that very resident or even citizen is duty-bound to pay any attention to a given national holiday, but deciding not to celebrating a holiday does not thereby mean that it is not legitimate and thus valid. Deliberately acting out from the instinctual urge of passive aggression by refusing even to say the name of a national holiday in public discourse, as if a personal decision not to celebrate a national holiday eviscerates it on the national calendar can be viewed as a case of hyperextended projection from a personal dislike to the personal desire to cancel the national holiday, as if a personal dislike could nullify a national law or proclamation. Behind the passive aggression is none other than selfishness, which implies loving oneself over loving God. Theological (rather than psychological) self-love renders the world as a projection of the self, including its narrowly circumscribed (to private benefits only) interests. Hence, the unrestrained ego leaps from its own dislike to being entitled to unilaterally, as a private actor, nullify an officially designated national holiday as null and void. I contend that Nietzsche’s philosophy can shed some light on this modern phenomenon concerning Christmas, an official U.S. holiday. Kindness as actually passive aggression is tailor-made for Nietzsche’s eviscerating scalpel, which he wielded to expose the power-aggrandizement being exercised under the disguise of the moral injunction of Thou Shalt Not!

Nietzsche, late nineteenth-century European philosopher, theorized that the weak seek to beguile the strong by pressuring the latter to be ashamed of being strong, which includes being self-confident rather than resentful. Whereas the strong designate the weak merely as bad, the weak, who resort even to cruelty as a desperate means of feeling the pleasure of power, the weak label the strong as evil. The asymmetry here leaps off the page! Such seething loathing of the strong is itself an indication of the deplorable weak constitution of the weak, especially those who are too weak to master their intractable urge to dominate. The strong are strong enough to master their most intractable instinctual urge, so any resentment toward the herd animals is mastered such that they are merely bad, rather than evil. With such internal mastery, the strong can bathe in their self-confidence, out of which generosity naturally flows. Even in regarding the resentful weak as merely bad rather than as evil, the strong can be viewed as being generous, for the attitude of the weak toward the strong is indeed sordid and even toxic. Therefore, Nietzsche suggests that the strong maintain a pathos of distance, which can be interpreted both as social distance and emotional distance, from the ill herd lest the strong too become sick. The shift to “happy holiday” instead of “Merry Christmas” had by 2024 become so ubiquitous in public without any official mandate that a herd mentality can be inferred.

It is not enough for the resentful weak to refuse to celebrate a national holiday, such as Christmas or even Thanksgiving (who doesn’t like food?); the weak who seek to dominate the strong, in spite of the obvious point of being weaker both in terms of external and inner power, actively attempt to beguile the strong into being ashamed even for saying the word Christmas in public! The American retail sector has been acting as an enabler for the weak by tacitly refusing to recognize Christmas even though stores are almost all closed on Christmas Day. The retail executives and middle managers who espouse passive-aggression by directing employees not to say, “Merry Christmas” even on the day before Christmas; instead, customers buying Christmas presents are accosted with the inherently passive aggressive, “Enjoy your holiday” as a looping recording blasted out throughout the store, “This holiday, . . .” A national holiday is by definition not your holiday, as the holiday is officially recognized within the territory of the nation.

As if turning on a dime, every year on December 26^th, public discourse suddenly reverts back to being able to say the name of the next holiday, New Year’s Day, without any hint of the previous month of “Happy Holiday” and “Enjoy your holiday.” Making this switch it itself a passive aggressive slap on Santa’s rosy cheeks. As an experiment one year, I turned to “Enjoy your holiday” after Christmas whenever a stranger (including retail employees!) said, “Happy New Year.” More than once, the other person was offended. Imagine if I were to say, “Enjoy your holiday,” to a Black American on Martin Luther King Day in January. Naturally, the person would take offense, as the explicit implication would be that the holiday is only valid for Black people even though it is a national holiday. Were I to apply the phrase to July 4^th, which is Independence Day in the U.S., I would be implying that I am against that nation. Were I to say, “Enjoy your holiday” on Thanksgiving and even go so far in passive aggression to insist that the holiday be called a day of mourning (even though the holiday is based on a peaceful feast in 1620 attended both by American Indians and European settlers in Massachusetts), my resentment would (or should) be quite evident to other people. Were I to inform people in public places, including stores, not only that they cannot say Thanksgiving, but also that they must refer to the holiday as the Day of Mourning, the hearers could legitimately call me out for not only stubbornly refusing to admit that Thanksgiving is a national holiday, but also imposing my own ideology as if everyone else must speak in line with it. One year at a “Holiday Party” at my alma mater, Yale, an employee replied to me, “We can’t say that,” after I had quietly observed that it was really a Christmas party. We can’t? Was a law passed in Connecticut prohibiting people from using the words, “Christmas Party” even at a private university? It is precisely the default of can’t as if its pronouncement were a jurisprudential fact of reason that I wish to expose and eviscerate as not only sordid, but enabling too.

There is a qualitative difference between personal and public holidays. To unilaterally, whether as an individual of a member of a group, implicitly castigate people even for saying the name of a public holiday as if it were a personal holiday, whether of an individual (e.g., a birthday) or a group (e.g., the Solstices, Easter, St. Patrick’s Day, Hanukkah, Devali, and Quanza) is to conflate two different categories. In fact, a third category exists: holidays that are not official national holidays and yet are not limited to a group and thus are de facto (rather than de jure) public in nature (e.g., Halloween and Valentine’s Day, and perhaps St. Patrick’s Day, as drinking green beer is hardly limited to Americans under 40 of Irish ancestry). Were there no difference between private and national (and even de facto public) holidays, then governments would hardly go to the trouble of proclaiming national holidays, which of course are explicitly valid officially valid throughout a country. I turn now to some implications.  

Firstly, that everyone does not celebrate a national (or de facto public) holiday does not nullify that holiday. In fact, it is ridiculous for a person to claim that because one does not like or do anything on a given national holiday, it is therefore not really even a legal holiday. 

Secondly, that a number of private, group-only holidays occur in the same month as a national (and even a public) holiday does not mean that people should not refer in public to the national holiday by name. In the U.S., there is only one national (and public) holiday in the month of December; Americans don’t say “happy holidays” leading up to Halloween even though Veterans Day is not far behind in November.

Thirdly, the fact that a group relishes a certain national (or otherwise public) holiday does not render that holiday only private, and thus devoid of any broader meaning or significance. If the group is religious in nature, this does not necessarily mean that the public holiday is religious. For other religious groups to stubbornly suppose so in utter resentment and jealousy ignores the separation of “church and state” in the U.S. Constitution, which bars Congress from establishing a religion and thus proclaiming a religious interpretation or origin of a public holiday. A secular holiday can be proclaimed as such and thus clear the bar of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution even if a religious group celebrates the holiday in a non-secular way and even if the holiday itself had a distinctly religious origin. Halloween, for example, which admittedly is not a U.S. national holiday but it generally observed nonetheless (rather than being a group holiday) had by the twenty-first century become almost completely secular in America even though it is on the eve of All Saints Day in Christianity. The latter does not negate or nullify the secular holiday of Halloween; children need not accept the Nicene Creed in order to put on costumes and go trick-or-treating for candy. As for Christmas, the distinctly Christian feast of it is not theologically significant as neither the Incarnation or the Resurrection are celebrated on December 25th, for the Incarnation is celebrated on March 25^th—nine months before December 25^th, and the Resurrection is celebrated on Easter in March or April. It is a blunder, therefore, to assume not only that there is no secular holiday (e.g., gift-giving, Santa, and even Frosty the Snowman), but also that that even the religious holiday marks anything distinctly theological (qua  supernatural)!  Jealousy and resentment can indeed be blinding, or at the very least have a distorting effect on a person’s emotions, cognitions and perception.

For an advocate of a group-limited private holiday not only to refuse to admit that a public holiday is such a holiday, but also to insist that other people cannot acknowledge and even say the name of such a holiday in public simply goes too far. Resentful selfishness that resorts to passive aggression is indeed evil, for to insist that other people abide by a social reality that is a projection of the selfish self denies that none of us are deities. That is, self-love over love directed to God is the root sin behind the over-reach here. To counter such evil, I recommend that people in the U.S. say “Happy Holiday” and “Enjoy your holiday” for every holiday except Christmas, even to retail clerks. Even though most people might be confused, others—the more insightful—will get the passive-aggressive message that it is unfair to single out a certain national holiday as non grata and even as forbidden in public discourse. The main point is of course that passive aggression should be rendered transparent so that its beguiling and hateful spite can be weakened, as befitting the weak who tacitly, yet intentionally nonetheless, weaponize the phenomenon of holidays.

That the American retail sector enables this weaponization renders companies as de facto accomplices, and thus hardly as neutral parties. To the extent that American culture reflects the retail culture, including its nomenclature and mannerisms, the responsibility of business not to perpetuate and enforce a specific passive-aggressive ideology whose source is exogenous to business is all the greater. By interiorizing such an ideology, a store (i.e., its employees, including store managers) becomes passive aggressive and thus deserves push-back from resentful customers. The irony is that the store managers and even their executives at company headquarters intend precisely to avoid offending customers. Including the name of all national holidays, rather than substituting this holiday or happy holidays for one such holiday both in the stores and in advertisements, is a legitimate and fair alternative marketing (retail) strategy. That some customers might be offended just by the name of a specific public holiday is no reason for the dog to be led by its tail. Being led by oversensitive ideologically-driven customers is not socially responsible, as it is not fair to all of the strong, self-confident customers who are willing to generously spend in the midst of celebrating a national holiday. For a national, public holiday is a statement that a certain holiday is legitimate and thus valid in a country, even though not every resident necessarily does anything to mark the holiday and some residents, even citizens, may be personally opposed. To be sure, the latter have a protected political right to oppose something based on an ideology, but they do not have the authority to impose that ideology to limit the free speech of other people, not to mention to unilaterally cancel a national holiday. Such a holiday is valid whether its opponents like it or not, and the latter do not have the right to cancel the free-speech of other people who wish to specify even just the specific name of such a holiday. Arrogance looking down on the rest of us from the stilts of false-entitlement is indeed unbecoming of anyone.