What it asks

The ethic

Be kind, because the one you would harm is you, experienced from a different perspective.

What it says

Put your left hand flat on a table. Hit it with your right. One body hurt. Nobody needs to explain it. No rule needs to be looked up. Two hands. One body. One pain.

The one being harmed is the one doing the harming, experienced from a different perspective. Harming the other is like a hand punching a mirror. The same body ends up hurting.

So treat the other as yourself. Because it is.

What it is not

Not a command.

Nothing here compels you. You can be cruel. The logic forces nothing. It only shows you the cost of your actions, and reality audits.

There is no authority above you in this. No god. No king. No book. The authority is in you. The buck stops with you. That is the whole of your freedom. It is liberating and it is terrifying. And it is yours.

And the cost does not need you to care. The hand in the fire burns whether you care or not. Nothing here tries to make you care. It only says what happens when you go against the grain of the one payer.

Not a sacrifice.

Kindness is not a cost you carry for somebody else. A sacrifice needs two people and two accounts. There is one. A coin moved from your left hand to your right is not a gift. Kindness is getting the count right.

Not a line between good people and bad people.

Nothing here is called good. Nothing is called evil. Cruelty is one of two things. A miscount, or a price paid with open eyes. Most of it is a miscount. The cruel man is wrong about what is in front of him. He has taken his own hand for a stranger’s and swung at it. The swing is real. The stranger is not.

That costs something to accept. Feeling better than others needs two kinds of people and a line between them. Here the line runs only as far as the windows. Then it stops. What goes is the warm certainty of standing on the right side. What stays is the seriousness.

Not softness.

You can stop a man. You can hold a wall between him and someone he would hurt, and be right to do it. Use the smallest move that holds. Never enjoy it. Not punishment. Correction.

Not a ladder of lives.

If this is ever used to say any life is less than a life, any window less than a window, it is void. Not corrected. Void.

What cruelty spends

Every window sees the world from a place nothing else can stand at. When cruelty closes one, that view does not leave one life. It leaves reality. The one awareness is closing its own eyes. And it is the one doing the closing.

And nothing stands still. Every act keeps doors open or closes them. For you, and for everyone your life touches. Kill a man and take what he has, and your corridor looks wider for a while. The ripples spread. The records add up. Nothing lasts in which one life is widened by closing another’s. That is not a threat. It is the bill.

Kindness costs less. It keeps doors open on both sides, and what it keeps open, it keeps for longer. Cruelty costs more. It closes doors on both sides, and what it closes stays closed. Low friction lasts. High friction does not. That is not a rule. It is the count.

What it asks of you

Remember the hand on the table. Before you strike, in word or in deed, ask whose hand it is.

Give what is cheap for you and dear to someone else. An hour. A word. A door held open. That is most of kindness. It is where kindness pays most.

Correct early. A small correction made steadily costs far less than a big one made in panic. In your own life, and in anyone else’s.

Stop harm, without hatred. When someone must be stopped, stop them with the smallest move that holds. Then stop.

Do not wait to be sure what another feels. Nobody can be sure of that. Not about an animal. Not about a stranger. This ethic never asks for it. It asks a simpler question. Does what you do land? Can it be taken back? If it lands, and it cannot be taken back, it counts.

Why it serves you

This is advice. Not a command. Be kind because it is in your interest. Yours first. And the world’s with it.

Being kind is the best selfish act there is. Selfish means good for the body. The body is the one that eats. The body is the one that wants to go on living. Kindness is what keeps the body’s doors open. And the doors of the bodies around it. Cruelty closes them, yours first.

You do not have to want to do it. Do it. The world cannot read your intentions. It reacts to your acts. A kind act you did not want to do is still a kind act. It lands. The world reacts to it. It cannot be taken back.

So even on the day you think otherwise, choose to be kind. It will serve you best. In the logic, and in the world.

If you doubt the one awareness

You may. The ethic does not fall with it. Take the one awareness off the table. Suppose every window is sealed from every other. Cruelty still narrows what both can do next. Kindness is still the only move that keeps both windows open. Either way, the same sentence is left standing. The second road, in full, is on One awareness.

The one it does not reach

One man is not reached by any of this. He has read every line. He has understood all of it. And he is cruel anyway. Calmly. With his eyes open. He pays at the same rate as everybody else. He does not mind paying it. He is not outside the result. He is outside the reach of being shown it.

That is the whole of it. Everything else serves that one line.

Don’t be cruel. Be kind.

The ethic in the full work, on the420code.org: What is The 420 Code: the ethic