Tactical and Strategic Kindness

Clara reports in her Salt Island Diary that she dreams of being in Heaven, a society whose customs and practices she slowly discovers in successive dreams.

In an early dream, Clara wants to know why she has been chosen — what about her made her worthy of entry. The answer is nothing. Worthiness has nothing to do with it. The mere fact that her attention was on Heaven made Heaven possible.

This was a deep psychedelic insight. Attention on a heaven is what a good trip is, with or without drugs.

No one wants to listen to orchestra musicians playing disharmoniously. That is a bad trip. And yet, movie actors acting harmoniously is considered boring. Conflict, violence, and wild emotions are what make a film interesting.

Why is harmonious interaction in drama considered boring, yet in music essential? Whatever the answer, there is at least the observation that some kind of harmonious interaction is pleasurable — even if it is predictable. It is not necessarily boring. It is arguably a matter of cultivation. Music listeners are, after all, quite particular in the types of music they find enjoyable, so harmony is not a sufficient criterion. Experience matters. Who knows? Perhaps, people who had never been exposed to music in childhood would grow up to prefer the sound of clanging trash can lids in adulthood.

In Clara’s dreams, kindness is not a single bell to be rung. Kindness may have tactical and strategic uses; these make up the social fabric of Clara’s heaven. It is not boring; it is, in principle, every bit as interesting as a court intrigue might be; it is just the mirror image.

Ultimately, Clara decides to not stay in the heaven she dreams of. She instead opts to use her struggling family as raw material to create her own. Heaven, she realises, is no reward for a life well-led; it is the act of leading a life well.