The Difference Between Kindness and Complicity
I write often about kindness, about compassion, about the quiet work of trying to understand people. But it feels necessary to acknowledge that kindness is not always possible. There are people — thankfully a very small minority — whose patterns of behavior can end up causing real harm to those around them. I’m not speaking about “bad people,” but about behaviors that, when left unexamined, have real consequences. And I can explain what I mean by using the example of my mother.
I am not a psychologist or a psychiatrist. I cannot diagnose her with a particular disorder, nor do I want to. I prefer to speak about behavior rather than labels. I use my mother as an example not to judge her as a person, but to describe the dynamics I grew up with. I can only speak from my own experience, and I do so with an awareness of her complexity and her humanity. And her behavior, as I experienced it, could be deeply wounding. There were moments when she bent rules or ignored them altogether, often in ways that left others — including me — feeling unsettled or dismissed. At the same time, she could be warm, generous, and outwardly altruistic. Sometimes her generosity came with expectations that weren’t spoken aloud. What looked like kindness could carry an emotional cost, even if she didn’t intend it that way.
And yet, I also know she did not wake up in the morning intending to harm. She was shaped by her own history, her own fears, her own unexamined wounds. Her charm was real, and so was her pain. But the coexistence of those truths does not erase the impact of her actions.
Because we saw her charm, we — the people around her — often enabled her to move through life as if none of the harmful things ever happened. She could openly share stories about disregarding rules at school or at work, and no one ever stopped her to say, “You know that was wrong, right?” Instead, the room laughed, or nodded, or let the moment pass. And in that silence, the behavior continued.
There were so many moments like that. She would sometimes make comments about my appearance in front of others — remarks she saw as harmless or humorous, but that left me feeling exposed. “Milica prefers natural beauty,” she’d say, mocking the fact that I didn’t pluck my eyebrows to her taste — and somehow feeling entitled to express her dissatisfaction publicly. The room would chuckle politely, not out of malice, but because no one quite knew how to respond. I would shrink, and she would walk away untouched. It was a pattern so familiar that it almost felt normal. And I know she didn’t see it as cruelty; she saw it as humor, as honesty, as a way of relating. She was also repeating the kinds of sexist expectations she herself had absorbed — ideas about how a girl should look, how a woman should present herself, what counts as “acceptable” femininity. But intention, even when shaped by culture, does not cancel impact.
What makes these moments so insidious is not their individual sting, but the way they accumulate into a social logic. A single “joke” can be dismissed. A handful can be excused. But when they repeat over years, across families, workplaces, and communities, they begin to form a worldview — not only for the person making them, but for everyone who witnesses them.
These jokes teach a lesson: that harm can be softened with a smile, that cruelty can be disguised as humor, that the discomfort of the target is less important than the comfort of the room. And when the room laughs, or stays silent, or politely looks away, it sends a message even more powerful than the joke itself: This behavior is acceptable here.
Patterns like these often persist not because anyone approves of them, but because people don’t know how to interrupt them. Silence becomes the default, even when no one intends to endorse the behavior. And this is precisely why it matters to stop enabling them. Not out of punishment, but out of clarity. Out of the recognition that kindness is not the same as permissiveness, and compassion does not require surrendering one’s judgment. When harmful behavior is left unchallenged, it becomes normalized. It becomes part of the air everyone breathes. It becomes the unspoken rule: This is just how things are.
But it doesn’t have to be.
I have seen this pattern outside my family as well. A colleague of mine behaved in ways I found quietly corrosive: a steady drip of small critiques directed at me, each one minor enough to dismiss on its own, yet cumulatively heavy. What made it more troubling was the complete absence of self‑reflection on his part, as though his perspective were the default and mine an inconvenience. When I finally addressed what I considered inappropriate, he didn’t respond with curiosity or accountability. Instead, his first instinct was to suggest that I had “misunderstood.” I recognized this not as an attempt to explore our different perspectives, but as a way of closing the conversation before it became uncomfortable.
Knowing that several perspectives of the same moment can coexist, I wasn’t even challenging the event itself. I was simply sharing how his behavior made me feel, offering him the smallest possible invitation to see himself through someone else’s eyes. And when I named that maneuver for what it was, he didn’t engage, didn’t reflect, didn’t even defend himself. He simply withdrew and began ignoring me, as though silence could erase the discomfort of being seen.
It was a clear illustration of the same dynamic I have encountered elsewhere: harm delivered in small doses, protected by plausible deniability, and followed by disappearance the moment it is confronted. A minor example, perhaps, but revealing in its clarity. I’ve seen similar dynamics in other settings too — situations where people move through the world without much encouragement to reflect on how their behavior lands with others. It’s not about blaming individuals, but about noticing the conditions that allow certain patterns to flourish.
Naming the behavior breaks the spell. Refusing to laugh breaks the pattern. Setting boundaries interrupts the worldview that has been allowed to grow unchecked. And when the majority stops enabling the minority, the balance shifts. The room changes. The silence no longer protects the harm; it protects the people who have been living under it.
This is not about condemnation. I have little faith in the moral usefulness of exile — intellectual or otherwise. I am, and will always be, in favor of dialogue conducted on equal footing, whenever such dialogue is possible. What I am speaking about here is something different: responsibility. The quiet, collective responsibility to ensure that harmful behavior does not become the norm simply because everyone else stayed silent. It is about refusing the kind of passivity that allows damaging ideas to settle into the cultural air unchecked. Not to punish, not to shame, but to draw a line — gently, firmly — around what we are willing to accept as ordinary.
And this is where the distinction between compassion and enabling becomes essential. Compassion asks us to see the full complexity of a person; enabling asks us to look away from the consequences of their behavior. Compassion acknowledges humanity; enabling erases accountability. One is rooted in clarity, the other in avoidance. And holding both at once — empathy without indulgence, understanding without surrender — is difficult, but necessary.
When we blur the line between the two, something predictable happens: The small minority whose behavior harms others ends up shaping the emotional climate for everyone. Not because they are powerful, and certainly not because they are the majority, but because the majority hesitates to intervene. People stay silent to keep the peace, to avoid conflict, to preserve the illusion of harmony — and in doing so, they unintentionally reinforce the very behavior that unsettles them. Silence becomes a kind of permission slip, handed out not by conviction but by discomfort.
Stopping this pattern does not require hostility. It requires honesty. It requires someone in the room to say, gently but firmly, “That wasn’t okay.” It requires refusing to laugh at the joke that isn’t a joke. It requires naming the manipulation instead of pretending not to notice. It requires understanding that boundaries are not acts of aggression; they are acts of clarity.
Kindness without boundaries can slowly turn into something that asks too much of us — a kind of self‑erasure rather than generosity. Compassion without discernment becomes complicity.
And the moment we stop pretending otherwise, the moment we stop excusing the “small” harms, the moment we stop laughing along — the balance shifts. The harmful patterns lose the quiet social permission that once shielded them. The majority regains its voice. And kindness becomes something real again, not something that can be weaponized or exploited.
Boundaries, in this sense, are not acts of cruelty. They are acts of ethical care. They protect the people who are vulnerable, yes — but they also protect the social fabric itself. They create a world in which kindness has meaning because it is chosen, not extracted. They ensure that compassion is not confused with permissiveness, and that forgiveness is not mistaken for forgetting.
And paradoxically, boundaries can even be a form of care for the person whose behavior is being confronted. Not because confrontation will magically transform them — some people may never change — but because clarity is the only honest response to harm. It refuses to participate in the illusion that everything is fine. It refuses to let someone drift through life without ever encountering the truth of their actions. It refuses to let the harmful minority define the emotional terms for everyone else.
When we set boundaries, we are not withdrawing compassion. We are protecting its integrity.
We are saying: Kindness is possible here — but not at the expense of truth. Compassion is welcome here — but not at the cost of someone’s dignity. Care is offered here — but not if it requires self‑erasure.
And when the majority begins to act from that place of clarity, the balance shifts. The harmful patterns lose the quiet social permission that once shielded them. The room becomes safer. The silence becomes honest rather than complicit. And kindness becomes something sturdy, something trustworthy, something that cannot be manipulated into serving the very behaviors it was meant to counter.
