Goddammit, you’ve got to be kind

As you well know, it is the height of hypocrisy to be against poverty without forcing yourself into a position of penury and degradation.

Kindness is belittled and mocked.

Kindness and concern are the milksop hobbies of the “luvvie”.

Venality, aggression, parochialism and paranoia are to be revered.

Disgust is also to be celebrated on the carnival float of modern sensibilities.

Look at the speed with which it was deemed correct, even fashionable, to attack Brendan Cox, widow of Jo Cox, a woman brutally murdered by a fascist.

A widower bringing up two young children, a victim of the ease with which paranoid language is bandied about, must be knocked down for daring to suggest kindness or thoughtfulness in the way we behave as humans.

There is a desire to bully you away from goodwill.

Dare to do something for a charity that looks after donkeys and someone will pop up to complain that such action merely demonstrates your failure to help children in war zones.

Doing a fun run to help provide relief for children in war zones and someone will remark that this merely shows that you do not care about Old Age Pensioners in your own country.

To avoid being hypocrites, we are browbeaten into doing nothing, apart from a purchase of charity Christmas cards and sponsoring a child to play hopscotch for 72 hours.

Just as I am typing this, I checked twitter and saw that someone commented on the benefit bill to raise money for cancer treatment care is full of hypocrites.

“I’d rather cut my nuts off with a rusty razor then watch this bunch of hypocrites” being his precise words. I will be starting the crowdfunding for castration page very soon. What a noble gesture, and useful too as it will reduce the number of children he can spawn and indoctrinate with his mean-mindedness. (And it is only since it was pointed out that he see he wishes to watch us first, and then cut off his testicles.)

We are all hypocrites. It is almost impossible to live in this civilisation without not being.

You campaign against child labour and then find out that the soles of your shoes are glued on by five year olds in a sweat shop. You buy apples from a supermarket that turns out to treat its farmer suppliers unethically.

You can chip away at your hypocrisy, but it not easy to overturn in one fell swoop without moving to a cave and living off bear urine and blackberries.

Doing something is better than doing nothing even if it does lead to a greater number of conflicts.

In the words of Josie Long, “trying is good”.

This is one of the themes of my new show. I am at Norwich on 20th October. Then I have a break for a few weeks as I go around Australia and New Zealand with Prof Cox, then back on the road alone. 

Daniel Kitson and Alexei Sayle have joined an already stellar bill for CLIC Sargent cancer charity and Helen Lysen this Monday.