Are we too benevolent?<

A critical look at one of the star concepts of the pandemic, benevolence.

The French daily Le Monde headlined last month “We are becoming completely nunuche: how benevolence poisons social relations”. But what about it? Should we be more and more benevolent? With family members, children, friends, colleagues and employees? Are we dripping with good feelings or, on the contrary, are we not doing enough?

"It's the return of the pendulum," says Estelle Morin, full professor in the management department of HEC Montreal. “In the 1990s, we were far from being benevolent in companies, we were rather demanding, even intolerant. The latter recalls the definition of benevolence: looking after the good of others.

She believes that for too many years, employees could not express their grievances to their managers, because they feared that it would harm their careers. “The survey results clearly show that benevolence has a good effect on teams. As a teacher, I am benevolent with my students, how not to be? But I correct my students when they make mistakes or don't behave well in class. You have to say things with respect. It's part of the apprenticeship contract to be evaluated! »

Ghislaine Labelle, organizational psychologist and accredited mediator, thinks that on a daily basis, people are not benevolent. "There are so many employees who work in restaurants, for example, who tell me how customers are not respectful, people are on edge," she observes. On the other hand, in business, we have gone from an era where we were focused on results to an era where we are more attentive to others. Employers show that they care about the well-being of their employees, even more so in these times of a pandemic. »

Talking about kindness, listening and empathy goes without saying, underlines Emmanuelle Pays, director of human resources at Extia, a consulting company specializing in the fields of information technology (IT), engineering and digital. According to her, there can never be too much humanity in a company. But that doesn't mean feedback should always be positive. “Wishing the good would mean for a manager to refrain from saying that something is badly done? she wonders. To assume one's share of humanity is to be authentic, and therefore imperfect. By wanting to avoid disagreements and conflicts, can we still be fair? »

We know very well that in psychology, it's good to focus on the positive, but it has become politically incorrect to make adjustments in management.

Emmanuelle Pays, Director of Human Resources, Extia

And what is paradoxical is that there is this injunction of good feelings in several spheres of society and, at the same time, great verbal violence on social networks.

This is the observation made by journalist Judith Lussier, author of the book We can say nothing more. “There is a great desire for more benevolence on social networks, but it is a difficult application, she explains. Everyone agrees that we should be able to talk to each other, that discussions should be more peaceful, but we quickly become aggressive… and even more so since the pandemic. We lack kindness. »

Judith Lussier points out that her generation is criticized for being too sensitive. "I often hear, 'Oh, you millennials, and it's worse for Gen Z, you can't take criticism!' It's not true! We may be hypersensitive, but that doesn't mean we avoid discussion. »

Pay attention to kindness

The psychologist Didier Pleux agrees with the criticisms of the younger generations. He has been denouncing for almost 40 years the overly benevolent education and the excessive permissiveness of parents who do not teach their children the reality. “We are selling them an irrational world,” he remarks. Reality must encompass pleasure, displeasure, frustrations, efforts. However, we are all the time in the benevolence, the sympathetic, the nice, we can not say anything more. If we raise our voice, we will traumatize them! It's good to be positive, to respect the uniqueness of the child, but the parent also has the right to say: enough is enough! There is an injunction to benevolence which becomes counter-productive, because from the first school or relational frustration of the children, it does not work. We lure them. »

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The one who is also author of the book From the child king to the child tyrant believes that it is positive, but not all the time. “I say what I think in an assertive way, but when one is assertive, one is perceived as malicious, he says. It becomes a kind of philosophy, we smile all the time, we no longer dare say in the restaurant that the dish is too salty, that the waiter is unpleasant and that the neighbor is talking too loudly. »

There is no obligation to benevolence in everyday life, underlines the psychologist Cécile Neuville. “Nobody imposes anything! It is rather an invitation to reflection. “We see the benefits it gives us in our personal lives and in our relationships. If you're interested, so much the better,” she says.

The term "benevolence", which has become a fashion, would be used too much, believes Estelle Morin, professor at HEC Montreal. “It is true that we talk about it a lot. It's concerning, because you can trivialize the intention behind it, when you know, humans, to give their best, need to feel safe (in a caring atmosphere). If they are in an environment that is hostile or under pressure, they will give just enough, not more. »

To all the sauces

We talk a lot about kindness. We hear this word everywhere, in all spheres of our lives: education, work, politics, culture, sport, etc. Between January ¹ and June 30, 2019, in the French Canadian media, the word “benevolence” was spoken on the radio, television and written by newspapers and magazines 3485 times. During the same period, in 2021, it is 15,352 times. The use of the word varies: we appeal to benevolence, we eat with benevolence, we take care of our elders with benevolence, there is the school of benevolence, complaints for lack of benevolence, we make comments with kindness, kindness attracts kindness, kindness care, a kindness revolution, an act of kindness, a village filled with kindness, working our kindness, instilling kindness, the culture of kindness. There is even, in a text on the Canadian entitled “Work and benevolence” dating from last February, a sentence which underlines that the hockey players “Brendan Gallagher and Jeff Petry seemed animated by a rare benevolence”.

Justice before benevolence

Yves Michaud is a French philosopher. He has taught philosophy in many universities in France, but also notably at the University of California at Berkeley, as well as in Edinburgh. He is the author of numerous books, including Against Benevolence, where he denounces our society, which is steeped in good feelings and benevolence. Interview.

La Presse: What do you criticize about the concept of benevolence?

Yves Michaud: My book Against Benevolence dates from 2016 and at the time, I was really alone in criticizing it. Basically, I have two criticisms to make about benevolence, and I'm not necessarily a mean person. In politics first, I don't think the mainspring of politics should be benevolence, but justice and efficiency. Very often, the demand for justice, which is sometimes very rigorous, goes against benevolence, and as far as efficiency is concerned, even more so. We often have to take unpleasant measures, pass rigorous laws, and that goes against universal benevolence. The second criticism, given the dripping of benevolence, is that we enter into relationships that are always emotional, that are in affectivity, in emotion, so we lose all objectivity. We compromise on everything, we excuse everything, we then fall into irrationality. I am a rationalist, I consider that the important stages in European and Western humanity have been in the rationality of the Enlightenment, and therefore everything that is a politics of emotions, all that seems to me the ferments of irrationality, and that seems dangerous to me.

We are in the greatest irrationality, in your opinion?

Yes, completely. We must now always understand people, always take into account their particularities, their differences, their history, their past, the misfortunes they may have had, we are really in the emotional and affective. As a result, it produces injustice, since in the end everyone is treated not according to their merit, but according to their affects and the self-pity they manage to arouse.

You talk about the benevolence that attenuates reality. Explain.

Benevolence leads to the generalization of euphemism, it leads to the attenuation of everything, we cannot show crime scenes, photos that are too harsh. At the level of language too, there is this euphemism, they are not terrorists, they are misfits, they are not thieves, they are victims of their social origins, there is a generalized euphemism. You can no longer call a spade a spade.

This concept is also reflected in the world of education…

What we reject in the name of benevolence are the evaluations of performance, work and commitment. I am not a school performance fanatic. For me, what is most important is knowing how to motivate the children. When we systematically refuse evaluations and when we refuse to impose frustrations, we still lose three-quarters of what makes education valuable: transmitting knowledge, but also transmitting limits, taboos and benchmarks. It's a benevolence of blindness, we refuse to see reality, everything is beautiful, everything goes well all the time, everything is excusable, everything is acceptable, it's not true.

Can social relations suffer?

Paradoxically, this weakening of the sense of justice due to benevolence has hardened social relations. As people give themselves to benevolence, as soon as there is an incident, they withdraw and there is a lot of aggression. This is what we see on social networks. People have friends, but suddenly they block them or persecute them. This benevolence is ambiguous, because it promotes aggressive affective relationships in return. There is a lot of intolerance and conflict, alongside or in parallel with good feelings. Emotions are variable, so from the moment we are emotional, we give ourselves to benevolence and then we withdraw it. It is also irrational in one case as in the other.

against benevolence

Yves Michaud

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