Indiscriminate kindness and liberality become affirmation of everything bad that exists

Evidence

Liberality that accords men their rights indiscriminately, terminates in annihilation, as does the will of the majority that ill uses a minority, and so makes a mockery of democracy while acting in accordance with its principles. Indiscriminate kindness towards all carries the constant threat of indifference and remoteness to each, attitudes communicated in their turn to the whole. Injustice is the medium of true justice. Unrestricted benevolence becomes affirmation of all the bad that exists, in that it minimizes its difference from the traces of good and levels it to that generality which prompts the hopeless conclusion of bourgeois-mephistophelian wisdom, that all that sees the light of day deserves to go the selfsame way. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 87

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that indiscriminate liberality terminates in annihilation, and that ‘injustice is the medium of true justice’, is a dense, counterintuitive dialectical position.
• APHORISMS: ‘Injustice is the medium of true justice’ — a compressed, life-shaping paradox worth returning to.
• XREF: connects to: Innocuous everyday pleasures secretly affirm the damaged world they claim to escape — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 21; Romanticizing the simple folk is really romanticizing the system that oppresses them; Good-intentioned people routinely make life hell for themselves and others — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice: Society,…, 714 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Casual sociability perpetuates the injustice it seems to soften #exemplifies (0.85)
• Pity toward the oppressed can destroy human dignity more certainly than misery itself does #exemplifies (0.82)
• Good-intentioned people routinely make life hell for themselves and others #exemplifies (0.80) — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 714
• Positive stereotypes like ‘poor but happy’ legitimize inequality #exemplifies (0.80) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1410
• Positive feelings like pity can reinforce inequality #exemplifies (0.80) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2273
• Moral unmasking that fails to shock bolsters the very values it attacks #exemplifies (0.78)
• critical philosophy that becomes serviceable to power turns its own positives destructive #exemplifies (0.75)