Being hard-hearted is not the same thing as being strong. The dichotomy between being strong and being hard-hearted is like the dichotomy between being weak and being gentle.
The difference between being gentle and being weak is that a gentle person is that way by choice. If you’re gentle because you have to be, then you’re just weak. Gentleness only means something if it’s coming from a person with the capacity to do harm. I could crush a kitten in my hands, but I choose not to; this makes me gentle, because I am holding back my strength. If I’m incapable of crushing the kitten, then I’m not really being gentle. I’m just too weak to hurt it.
Strength is similar. Being tough with someone is only a sign of strength if you have the capacity to be kind. If you’re just a raging prick to everyone you meet, then that’s hard-heartedness, not strength. But if you have the capacity to be kind, and choose to be tough when needed, then that’s strength. And strength requires maintenance of your softness.
In fact, hard-heartedness results from weakness. I’ll let my buddy Arthur Schopenhauer explain:
“What makes people hard-hearted is this, that each man has, or fancies he has, as much as he can bear in his own troubles. Hence, if a man suddenly finds himself in an unusually happy position, it will in most cases result in his being sympathetic and kind. But if he has never been in any other than a happy position, or this becomes his permanent state, the effect of it is often just the contrary: it so far removes him from suffering that he is incapable of feeling any more sympathy with it. So it is that the poor often show themselves more ready to help than the rich.”
Do you understand? Hard-heartedness is expressed in these words: I already have enough to deal with. At bottom, it’s a kind of stinginess. It’s the assumption that you don’t have anything to give. It takes a lot more strength to maintain your “softness”, and still roll with the punches, than it does to just give up and become a total jerk.
A little etymology will help. When we say that a person is “mean”, what are we really saying? The original phrase was “mean-spirited” — literally, to be mean of spirit, to have a small soul. To be mean can imply stinginess. “Mean” means “small”. Compare someone who is “magnanimous”, which is another word for generous. This is from the Latin “magnus”, meaning “large”, and “animus”, meaning “soul”. To be magnanimous is to have a great soul, to be generous.
Cruelty is not a sign of strength, unless it is done by someone with the capacity to be soft. If cruelty is your natural mode of being, then you’re not truly being strong. You’re just small-spirited. The capacity to do harsh things is only a sign of strength if it comes from someone who has the strength to maintain their softness.
Consider Marlon Brando’s monologue in the movie Apocalypse Now:
We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio… We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms.
…And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters… These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love… but they had the strength to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral… and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling… without passion… without judgment… Because it’s judgment that defeats us.
Notice how he doesn’t say, “Oh, they hacked off all those little kid’s arms because they’re evil monsters.” He says, “These are men with families who go home and play with their kids. But they have the strength to do something this cruel when it’s necessary.” That’s what strength is — the capacity to do whatever is necessary, and remain human.
People who want to geek out and become cold monstrosities are, in fact, weaklings. If you start acting overtly cruel just for the sake of it, and the inside of you has been hollowed out, then you’re just a weakling. Can you protect your heart, and still be hard on the outside? That’s the question.
I disagree. Couldn’t disagree with it more, in fact. I don’t think being cruel is strength. I think the capacity to be kind and compassionate, and understanding and forgiving, and stay that way even when it’s difficult, is the real indicator of strength.