Renowned social researcher and psychologist Hugh Mackay believes Australia can turn the COVID-19 crisis into a revolution. A kindness revolution that is.
When humans are faced with a catastrophe, he says we always rise to the occasion.
"Whether it's fires or floods or a pandemic," he said. "There's a few exceptions but that tends to bring out the best of us.
"We are innately hardwired for cooperation because we're a social species but we sometimes forget that we have this capacity for kindness."
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This concept forms the basis of his new book The Kindness Revolution, which he will discuss at the University of Newcastle's eighth Looking Ahead Lecture in the Great Hall on Tuesday night.
"The point of the book is to say here we are in 2020, we're presented with a double crisis - first of all the bushfires and then the pandemic - instead of just slipping back into the way we used to be, can we turn the crisis into a revolution?"
"Can we keep on acting the way that we acted under the threat of the pandemic. Wouldn't it be rather pathetic if we only saved our best behaviours for a crisis?
"I am saying very specifically let's start a revolution. We won't get leadership from politics, or business or banks. Individually we need to look at one of the loveliest things about being a human is that we have this built in capacity for kindness.
"If enough of us start acting like this we are going to have a transformative effect on the society.
"If a revolution really gains momentum it has the capacity to change aspects of Australian politics, as much as our personal lives, in things like our attitude towards reconciliation between Indigenous and non Indigenous Australians, or our attitude towards the care of the elderly or to poverty and homelessness."
In the book Mr Mackay talks about cynics, who would perhaps say this is all good in theory, but can it really be done?
"If you look around Newcastle, of course there's bad stuff, but what you see every day is thousands of acts of kindness," he said. "Thousands of people acting well, volunteering to patrol beaches or to train as firefighters or to coach underprivileged teams or just to help elderly people off the bus.
"This sort of stuff is happening already. It's not as if the revolution would stop us being awful and start us being kind because we're already being kind all the time.
"So yes the cynics can say 'great idea Hugh but that's not what humans are like, humans are an ugly bunch, we go to war and we kill each other' and that's true but that's not the big truth.
"If you watch the news every night you would think it's the truth but of course our millions of daily acts of kindness don't make the news because they're not news that's humans behaving like humans."
If you look around Newcastle, of course there's bad stuff, but what you see every day is thousands of acts of kindness.
Hugh Mackay
Following Mr Mackay's address, he will be part of a panel discussion to examine the notion of a "lucky country". But he said he doesn't exactly see Australia as "lucky".
"We have to remember that that term 'the lucky country' was coined by Donald Horne in 1964 as an insult. He was making a savage criticism of Australian society.
"He was saying this is just a lucky country, we've got by more by good luck than good management and a lot of people have misinterpreted that and decided to accept it as a complement.
"What I'm really saying is let's put all this talk of being a lucky country behind us because that's saying 'oh well she'll be right, we'll get by, we're lucky'. Let's think of a much lovelier description of Australia as the loving country - loving as in kind.
"If we dream of a country that is kinder, that is more compassionate, more inclusive, more tolerant, more harmonious, less cynical, less prejudiced the only way we're going to get there is if enough of us decide individually to live like that."
Register for the lecture by visiting newcastle.edu.au/hugh-mackay
