Really nice article, but it sort of flies in the face of all our biological imperatives.

Being a good "kindee" means forgoing security, control and some safety.

Constant Gratitude for just the miracle of life means forgoing the driving dissatisfaction that will push you ahead.

This is the classic battle between our ancient biological impulses and the reality of modern society. Many religions try to square these: Buddhisms central focus is to "stop grasping" your desires, Christianity wants you to "surrender" and put your faith in god. And then you also have articles like this that have a vague spiritual bent but mostly preach mindfulness and gratitude as a balm to our general dissatisfaction. Do we still need constant anxiety around our safety, do we still need to feel dissatisfied with each achievement and constantly want more? Or were those just useful imperatives for an animal 50,000 years ago but useless to us today?

In my personal life I have momentary success being mindful/grateful, but the bare reality is we are the product of millions of years of life being a short cruel struggle, fraught with danger. Does modern society give us the right to throw all that away and pretend we get to float around observing the beauty of the world? Or is our life supposed to be a battle?

Even setting aside ethics and faith, from the perspective of the norm of reciprocity, being kind to travelers (or those who appear to be) is effective in winning them over as allies. In my personal experience, the more aggressive a person is, the more likely they are to be hyper-vigilant or starved for kindness, meaning they tend to be deeply moved by even a small gesture. Of course, genuine psychopaths in confined environments are the exception. This is an extreme case, but a certain murderer (from a real incident in Japan) stated : "I just wanted to kill anyone. So, I stabbed the person who ignored me when I greeted them."

It is survival of the fittest gene

A cooperating human race has been excellent for our survival.