by Gregory Pototsky
As the president of the International Academy of Kindness, I do not have the initial reaction to get aggressive in response to someone’s aggression. I believe that such vagaries should be ignored. Sometimes it is better not to pay any attention to things. If we take bad things seriously, we attach value to them. On such occasions, it is easier to wash off the writings and ignore them. Little vandals have always done and will always do these things. Very often they do not understand and cannot even imagine what they are doing.
Leo Tolstoy was an incredibly kind person. He was the teacher of kindness and believed in nonresistance to evil by violence. When we are fighting against evil we very often become evil ourselves because we use the opponent's approach. Whatever happens we should be kind and do kind things. Kindness attracts people's hearts and evil steps back and disappears. When somebody does something inappropriate and tries to destroy a piece of art, all normal people think that such a person is a savage, bad person. Someone makes an effort to create this piece of art and spends significant means to let this art object be. With this, there is always someone who envies it. Those people are just haters, bad people.
Other people can see these bad people accordingly, and they know that having a dialogue with them will not make any sense. Being bad is not a position, it is a state. If such people are still in an animal state and vandalize a special place, normal people have no option but just tidy up after them. A human has a true personality only when they are kind. Mankind is not divided into different races or nations. It is divided into Persons and Non-Persons. One can be called a Person only when they are kind.
Kindness and gratitude are the main laws of human society. Abusing those laws trigger personal and international conflicts. Laws of kindness and gratitude are as important laws as Newton's Gravity Law. Where there is kindness there are no borders and there is true freedom. When a person can reveal all the best they have in their souls there is kindness.
Such vagaries as an attempt to desecrate a monument should be treated as inevitable, the same as people's imperfection. I feel pity for those small people, whose misery makes them do such ugly things in order to be noticed
There is a lot of evil in the world. Homo sapience does not mean “reasonable man,” it means “reasonable animal.” This animal has a brain that causes numerous wars and disasters. This epoch is coming to its end and a new era of homo spiritus – a person, choosing kindness consciously - starts. “Human history has not started yet,” as a great French philosopher Edgar Morin said. All solutions to social and personal problems will be based on the principle of kindness. Laws are very often unjust. Many laws were enforced and adopted because of wars or because the majority voted for them, which is not always correct. To achieve justice, people need to use the principle of kindness.
I sculpted Dandelion the Symbol of Kindness to get across these simple ideas about kindness. The monument consists of elements - open palms with open eyes on them - that symbolize kindness and an open heart. The palms make a sphere, illustrating that the Earth will exist while we are kind. One of the palms is dropped on the leaf because when seeds of kindness spread around the world it will be impossible to root them out, just as it is impossible to get rid of dandelions if at least one appears somewhere. The tablet on the monument reads: “A human has a true personality only when they are kind. All problems should be solved with the principle of kindness. Kindness and gratitude are the main laws of human society. Where there is kindness there are no borders.”
I wanted these ideas to be understood by as many people as possible. For that I installed Symbols of Kindness in 17 countries around the world: Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, Nagorny Karabakh, France, Germany, Austria, the Philippines, China, Russia, Pakistan, Ecuador, Colombia, Greece, and Hungary. On Dec. 18, in Puerto Morelos, not far away from Cancun, Mexico, we inaugurated Dandelion the Symbol of Kindness to announce that the end of the world is coming, but not for people.
The epoch of Homo sapiens, beasts and animals is going to be over. The time of homo spiritus, people choosing the way of kindness, will begin. When people choose kindness consciously and do kind things, violations of monuments will no longer take place.
Gregory Pototsky sculpted the bust of Leo Tolstoy at AU and is the president of International Academy of Kindness. He can be reached at grpototsky@mail.ru.
