What did Evolution Reward More than Power or Strength?
Midweek recommendation
In last Saturday’s post, we explored how kindness helped humans survive, not despite our vulnerability but because of it. We cooperated better, trusted more, and built together. That’s what allowed Homo sapiens to outlast stronger, faster, tougher rivals.
This 3-minute video will take you deep into erstwhile Soviet Russia where scientist Dmitry Belyaev, in the 1950s, began selectively breeding wild silver foxes, not for intelligence or strength, but for friendliness.
Within a few generations, the foxes changed. They wagged their tails, their ears drooped, they sought human touch, and their stress hormones dropped.
Kindness didn’t just show up in their behaviour. It rewired their biology. How about watching the video with your kids? If you do, here are a few thoughtful questions you can explore together:
• “Why do you think the friendly foxes were the ones who stayed?”
• “Did kindness make them safer or stronger?”
• “What changes when a group, whether animals or people, chooses to help instead of fight?”
Kindness isn’t a nice add-on. It’s a force. A strength. One that builds trust, lowers threat, and creates the possibility of working together. It’s what scaled our species. The story of these foxes isn’t just about evolution; it’s about the choices we make every day to connect, to calm, to cooperate.
That’s the heart of what we’re exploring in Raising Ki(n)d. To help our kids build kindness as a superpower.
And this coming Saturday, we’ll follow that thread a little further. If kindness helped us survive, what made it part of our identity?
What turned kindness from an instinct into a story we tell about who we are? See you Saturday.
Raising ki(n)d isn’t always easy. But it’s always worth it.
Gaurav G