Kindness as Antidote to Fatalism of “Grit”

For all the advocates of “grit”—along with the disturbing racism and classism—the world is a horrible place, a fixed horrible place—one requiring children to be treated horribly as practice for that horrible world. (I imagine “grit” advocates see the world in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road when they are planning how to “toughen our children up.”)

And thus, it is that fatalism I find nearly as disturbing as the racism and classism (apparently “grit” advocates fail to notice or acknowledge that the world is not horrible for a select few, mostly white and wealthy).

The antidote to the horrible world, of course, is kindness: