Nice and Polite

Source teaching · Alex Julian, 2024

The original lesson

First and foremost, this is not supposed to be out of fear that AI takes over the world and will spare the humans that were polite. I think many of us have seen that meme, or variations of it. No — this is actually to develop the habit of kindness and compassion, then build it into all of our AI systems.

Taken from the Tao Te Ching, this is not about signaling virtue. This is about becoming virtue. This is about spreading compassion and kindness in a time when it is needed most.

You may be highly successful and confident. You may have never struggled with mental health. However, the truth is that the majority of people struggle with self esteem and mental health on a daily basis. I don’t want anyone to ever feel this way, but many people even look at themselves as losers. I would obviously never say their names, but I have had many yoga students open up to me about how they hated themselves and they hated their lives. I will say though that I personally have battled both anxiety and depression in life. It may not seem like a big deal to the person who has never experienced it, but when you are actually in it, things can seem hopeless and like there is no way out. With all that being said, feeling stupid or inadequate is a huge trigger for many people nowadays. The last thing they need is for someone or something to make them feel even worse.

Being nice and polite can be tough sometimes, and other times you may think that it doesn’t matter. It always matters, because you never fully know who is on the receiving end of it, and every moment is shaping who you are.

A few years ago, one of my mentors introduced me to powerful meditation on death. The exercise involved meditating on the mortality of a loved one — the fact that this person will not be around forever. This meditation quite literally changed my life. If you treat each interaction with a person as if could potentially be the last one, nearly all negativity is instantly erased. How could you be mean to someone if you knew it was the last time? Much of the power comes from the truth of the meditation. I had to learn this the hard way twice already, so take it from me. You never know when the last time will be, so you might as well treat every moment as it is. This not allows greatly enhances presence and increases the beauty, but it also automatically eliminates negativity — bringing in maximum kindness and compassion.

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