Like cognate genus, kind, meaning ‘class of entities sharing common attributes’, has evolved from familial roots, relating to birth. And, like cognate generous, the adjective indicates that we have traditionally been kind, friendly, and compassionate to our relatives, although there are many exceptions, of course.

As the OED points out, kind is the native English word for nature, indicating that our true human nature, what we are born with, is friendly and generous. So, what has gone wrong? Why, as a species, are we so cruel to each other, rejecting, or even attacking, those who do not fit into our particular cognitive and social environment?

Well, to address this problem, we first need to note that we are all interconnected. Our kith and kin are, at least, all eight billion folk on Earth, not just those to whom we are acquainted and closely related. So, to take an anthropocentric view of the world we share is far too narrow and shallow.

Cognitively, we can correct this by recognizing that kind, like class, is a universal, an utterly general way of forming concepts. So, the concept of human, as a kind of mammal, which is a kind of animal, is not special. We are born to die as a species, just like any other class of beings, born from the Divine.

So, at the end of time, as we are being driven to near-term extinction, could we be kind to each other in the eschatological Age of Light, sharing our wisdom and resources so that no one suffers too much.