How Much Do You Care? Kind, Kin, Genus and Care (v2)
The word kind, as in to be kind towards, friendly, is completely related to greater care and inclusion of others into your circle of compassion, empathy, conscience and morality. The story of being kind (caring) is related to how we view what our kind is. This work developed from an inquiry, questioning, curiosity, doubt, on the accurate use of the word kind, what it really means and how people use it (similarly as I have done with other words, such as compassion and sympathy).
Kind, Kin, Genus and Generation
The word kind as an adjective is “friendly, doing good, feeling of relatives for each other”. It comes from the word gecynde, which means “natural, native, innate, kind, nature, race”.
The prefix ge- is used to form “nouns or adjectives of association or similarity” or to form “nouns and verbs with the sense of ‘result’ or ‘process'”.
Cynd from the adjective and the noun kind, is rooted in cynn which is kin, meaning “class, sort, variety, nature, race, family”. Kin in turn comes from gene- which is the root of the words gene, genus and generate.
Genus means “kind or class” and comes from gene-, “produce, give birth, beget”. Kind and genus mean the same thing, because they are the same word essentially. C/K and G are interchangeable across languages because they have the same philological derivation in our throats/mouths, the same origin in vocalization. Kin = cynn= gen. Philologically, all vowels can essentially be replaced by any other vowel to possibly link words from different languages.
Gecynde is redundant in the use of letters, because ge- and cyn are used to mean the same thing. The former is a prefix, while the latter is actually a word. They point to the same relationship in reality, of association and similarity from a resulting process. This process is birth and generation, which associates the various relative similarities of a kind, genus, class, family or sort. There are different identification levels of more or less similar or different kin and kinds.
As a side note, if you have been following my recent work on language, symbols and reality (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8), you will recognize the importance of the word generation as it relates to the Power of Consciousness and the influence of word symbol magic. Words and speech generates and produces images in our consciousness which also affect, influence, invoke, produce and generate affective emotional states within us. Our thoughts and emotions will in turn motivate us and lead to what we do in the world: our actions and behaviors.
Genus is also important in relation to words symbols and the philosophical metaphysics of particulars and universal categorization of being. Below is a chart showing the relation between symbols and the genus-species classification of general universals to particular individuals. I show this only to elucidate the correspondence between the word genus, kinds, classes and philosophical categorization of being. It is confusing unless you know what each part represents to connect it all together as a model or framework for understanding.
Generating Care
From kind and kin, there is a relation to care, and greater care. The closest most identified kindness, friendliness, doing good to others, feelings of relation and kinship as relatives for each other, is that of our direct blood relations, especially our offspring. Family is the first identifier for reciprocal cooperative benefit in survival and attempts to live in harmony. You don’t harm your family or those you live with, because they will assist or endanger your own survival.
To harm another you care for, is to harm yourself. This applies to family, as well as larger general application of extending identification to others, even if they can’t harm you directly. There is an understanding of harming others is harming ourselves, and that as long as others suffer, we will also suffer.
We can trace a correspondence and find greater expansive encompassing genera that encompass (compass, compassion) more of the variety of others, into a greater unity of concern, interest and care. Just because another being can’t do you harm, do anything for you or against you, or harm, doesn’t mean they are not deserving of your moral concern, interest and care of your actions towards them. If you only live to not harm others based on reciprocity, because of what you can gain or lose from them, then you are living in a lower consciousness state of being.
Our identification to others can expand. From the immediate identification and connection to our close family, there is the larger family, the clan. Next is the community, the tribe. Then the village, town or city, the province, the state, country or nation, the race, species and other species in our animal kingdom (kingdom, kind, kin).
Care and Kin
Care, compassion (compass), empathy, conscience, consciousness and morality. Care and kindness can expand beyond smaller levels and circles of kinship and compassion; beyond the family only, tribe only, nation only, race only, and humanity only.
Clearly most people recognize concern, consideration and interest for their felling kin of the animal kingdom when we look at the emotional connection and identification with animal companions. This shows we are capable of greater compassion, empathy and moral expansion.
Care and kindness can expand towards the next universal kind and genera we belong to, which is all animals. We animals all share feeling and thinking in being and existing, but to different degrees and levels. We can expand care from only our family, to only our tribe, to only our country, to only our race, to only our species, into other species.
As Charles Darwin said:
“The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.”
There are different levels in which our identity can correspond to others through greater identification, association connection and valuation. They are different levels of general identifications. A kind, is a genera, a universal. Human kind shares kinship with the animal kingdom. There is a reason these words are used, because they are directly linked etymologically in true meanings reflecting reality.
As we go up in genera, genus and common generation towards larger encompassing groupings. We can develop our “heart-center”, the core, the center of being, the “inner man”, the “heart of man”, the “spirit of man”, the “spirit”, the “essence”, the “quintessence”, the “True Self”, the “True Care” . These are symbols for an aspect of consciousness, not a literal heart. The True Care we can develop is based in a moral comprehension and moral encompassing of others.
Our compass in life of striving for Moral Truth that encompasses greater compassion for others and affects the “spirit in which we do things” being driven and motivated by our care for concern, consideration and interest of others and not solely ourselves. This grows our “heart”/consciousness, “spirit”/consciousness. This is becoming more a “higher self”, a “true self”, being led by a “higher will” of concern, consideration and interest for Moral Truth and therefore our actions towards others.
Care, Kin and Genus
Care is directly related to kid, kin and genus, generate. Ge-, genus, kin, kyn, cyn, is about a similarity and association from a resulting process. This applies through the generating process of our common kin and kind, but also in a philosophical understanding. We associate particular individual substances that share common universal genera.
Care is from PIE root ga-, which indicates an association or togetherness, and completeness or wholeness, which indicates “perfectivity” of a finished action. Ge- and ga-, is generating a process and result which begins and ends. That is what completeness and wholeness, a process, result or action through associating many things and producing a unity, wholeness of completeness. An an example, think of generating, begetting and birthing of creating a newborn. The result is the birth of a new human being born, in completeness and wholeness from different parts that associate and come together to form a complete whole being.
Here is a quick word association list from the etymology of each word:
Kind – natural, needed, innate
Kin – race, sort, rank, gender, sex, family
Genus – race, stock, birth, dissent, origin, offspring, beget, bear, become, happened, create
Care – sorrow, anxiety, grief, burden, serious attention, lament, trouble, close attention, concern, responsibility, worry, maintenance, upkeep. Positive sense of charge, oversight, protection, take care, take in and, treatment of those in need, have an inclination, have fondness for.
Natural, needed, innate, race, sort, rank, stock, birth, origin, bear. What is innate, natural, needed is what is a part of us and cannot be separated from us. That is the substance we all are. This is our kind. We are animal life forms, sharing the commonality of blood , bone, muscle, teeth, etc., like others of our kind, as our innate form and the sort and rank of life we are (animals). We have a common kind of birth and origin. We are born into the world with a capacity of varying degrees of consciousness. We think and feel. We are of the same kind (animal), with a great degree of variation in this universal genus (animal kingdom), but this is our greater family. We also differ in degree of consciousness power to affect reality. We have higher consciousness capabilities to comprehend and expand moral awareness and inclusion of others in an objective manner, rather than subjectively based on our immediate circle of people in our lives.
In care, we can have sorrow, anxiety, grief, burden, lament, trouble, worry, concern. Why? For what? Usually, something negative happens. A generation of wrong takes place, a behavior or force applied that culminates in the resulting manifestation (generated action) of a negative aspect of reality. We feel it, something is generated within us. It creates a burden, worry and concern in us. From that burden, worry or concern, can come the True Care to generate our experience and reality in the way and path it should be, rather than the way and path it currently is as a wrong. We can correct things.
The negative feelings must be listened to (bearing it), in order to drive us in the right direction. We need to feel reality, feel the guilt, feel the shame, feel the judgment we put upon ourselves through the actions and behaviors we choose to engage in that harm innocent others. We reap what we sow ourselves. Once we start to feel reality as it truly is, and see it for what it is, then we can change. We have to pay attention to ourselves and reality, to discern, decode and de-occult the reality we live in. Ignoring our actions and behaviors and the harm they produce does not evolve consciousness.