Is Kindness Still Kind If No One Claps?

When kindness hits a system error, we need a new kind of trust.

In the popular Netflix series Squid Game, 456 strangers wake up inside a sealed dormitory. No names. No past. Just numbers. And one goal: survive.

At first, they try to cooperate. They form alliances, share food and a few try to protect the weak. But then the lights go out, and the rules change; the prize money increases.

And suddenly, kindness becomes a liability. The most loyal player, Ali (199), is tricked and eliminated. The most selfless acts become weapons.

That’s when it hits you: The failure wasn’t in the players losing their humanity; It wasn’t kindness that disappeared- the game left no room for it to survive.

Squid Game holds up a brutal mirror to a deeper human dilemma: What happens when kindness outgrows the village? When we no longer know the person we’re helping? When we won’t see them again, and they have no name, only a number?

That’s the moment kindness needs an upgrade.

When memory fails, kindness falters

We have earlier discussed how kindness is an instinct that all babies are born with- it's wired into us; just that the world makes us unlearn kindness, especially if parents do not make conscious efforts to inculcate empathy in children.

Anthropologist Robin Dunbar found something quietly astonishing: Humans can only maintain about 150 meaningful relationships. That’s the number of people you can recognise, remember, and trust enough to cooperate with because you know them, their stories, their face and their pasts.

This ‘Dunbar number’ held true for early human tribes. It still holds true today in things like military units, startup teams, and even those we regularly keep in touch with.

But what happens beyond Dunbar Number 150?

Kindness doesn't get swallowed within groups limited to the Dunbar number; it spreads. If someone cheats you, you remember. If someone helps, others hear. Reputation spreads & trust self-regulates.

But then, as groups become larger and you are no longer familiar with the people in the group, memory breaks down, and word-of-mouth (gossip) fails. You can't remember who owes whom, who can be trusted, or who helped the last time.

And yet we didn’t stop there, did we? We built cities, civilisations, nations and now, online communities. We succeeded in building systems far too big for our emotional hardware, which go way beyond the Dunbar number of 150.

So, how did we scale trust without memory?

We didn’t just grow. We upgraded our software. We invented morality. When faces started to fade in larger groups, we scaled morality.

When trust couldn’t depend on memory anymore, humans turned to something even older than cities; we turned to our old friend: the story.

We began to encode kindness, fairness, and obligation into myths, rituals, taboos, and moral codes. Not just as suggestions, but as binding rules of identity.

Anthropologists call this the shift from relational morality (I’m kind to you because I know you) to normative morality (I’m kind because that’s who we are). Kindness is no longer an instinct or a social glue- it gets coded into our identity- into who we are.

We told stories about gods who punished greed. About heroes who gave, not just fought and about tricksters who broke trust and were banished. These weren’t just bedtime stories. They were moral operating systems- designed to tell us how to live with strangers.

Because when memory fades, stories stay. When faces blur, rituals remain. And that’s how kindness scaled when humans created large civilisations- by creating moral rituals around generosity and kindness.

Raising kids who do right when no one’s watching

We often teach kindness to our kids like it’s a reflex:
“Say thank you.”
“Be polite.”
“Don’t hit.”

This works in small settings like the family, classrooms, and playdates. Kids mirror us, and they know someone’s watching- most likely the parent or teacher.

But the moment their world expands into schools, social media, WhatsApp groups, and anonymous comments on online platforms, those ‘being watched’ cues break down. No one's watching, no one's remembering.

So, if we want kindness to hold, it needs something stronger than reflex or monitoring. It needs internal structure- a guardrail.

As parents, here’s how we can help:

1. Shift from behaviour to belief:

Instead of just saying, “Be nice,” ask:

“What kind of person do you want to be in a group?”
“Why do you think we help others, even if we don’t know them?”

This helps your child see kindness not as a performance, but a pattern.

2. Teach the invisible rules:

Make norms visible. When your child holds the door or lets someone go first, say:

“You just made someone feel seen.”

You’re narrating the why, not just praising the what.

3. Expand the moral circle:

Use books, stories, and even dinner conversations to ask:

“What do you think that character owed the other?”
“Do we treat new kids the same as our old friends?”

That’s how children move from ‘I help people I know’ to ‘I help because that’s what we do.’

Because in today’s world, your child will enter systems where kindness isn’t obvious, and memory doesn’t protect them. What will protect them is a moral story they carry inside.

Our job-Raising kids for a world without faces

Kindness helped us survive in tribes, but norms helped it scale across civilisations. To raise kind kids today, we must raise them with moral clarity, ensuring they are kind, especially when no one’s watching.

Doing so helps tackle one of the most corrosive mental health crises of our digital age- anonymous threats and online abuse, where women, more than anyone else, are left to carry the scars.

Bringing up kind kids with an inbuilt moral compass to be kind when no one is watching will probably reduce the online abuse shrouded in the veil of anonymity.

See you soon with the next issue of Raising Ki(n)d.

Raising kind isn’t always easy, but it’s always worth it.

Gaurav G