"Be kind because you never know what someone is going through" is a nice sentiment but fairly useless advice

You might have heard the advice "Be kind, because you never know what someone is going through". I think that's a nice sentiment, but at the same time I think that, as advice, it's pretty useless.

This advice is meant to apply to situations where you might negatively judge someone. Perhaps they seem grumpy, or scruffy, or vague, or are exhibiting some other negative behavior or trait.

The advice sounds good -- instead of jumping to conclusions about that person, acknowledge that they might have some hidden struggles that are causing them to be that way. By following this advice you can be more compassionate.

But I think the advice is fairly useless in practice, in that it doesn't make people more compassionate.

It's predicated on the idea that people observe the behavior of the other person, and then formulate a negative judgment of the person. The advice is meant to short-circuit the second-step of that process.

Forming that negative judgment is in effect developing an explanation of the reason for the person's behavior: they're acting that way because they're a jerk, or a loser. The explanation is usually that there's some defect in the person's character.

But I don't think that two-step process (perceive, then draw conclusions) exists in reality. In reality, people's observations are the judgments. They perceive a person who is a jerk, a lazy arsehole, or a grumpy mofo. Their perception inherently contains the explanation. And that explanation appears to them to be an objective part of what they're observing.

The advice to "Be kind, because you never know what someone is going through" requires you to think that you don't actually know what the cause of someone's behavior is. But in real life we tend to always think we do, objectively, know why the person is behaving in that way (because they're a jerk, and so on).

We might appreciate the point about being kind in the abstract, but we're not likely to think it applies in the cases where it actually does.

What would better advice look like? It would acknowledge that our perceptions inherently involve explanations of what is being perceived, and that doing this is the problem.

It might look something like the following (but ideally more concise and punchy): Remember that, though your perceptions of people seem objective, your brain is subconsciously making assumptions about people's character in order to explain their behavior, and these assumptions can be wrong. Their behavior might not be because of their character, but because of what they're going through.