We have a clear example of this at the moment, with the Paralympic games. The founder of the games, Dr Ludwig Guttmann, revolutionised the care of spinal injury in the UK. Until his innovations, a patient with a spinal cord injury had a life expectancy of less than two years, with most patients dying from bedsores and urinary tract infections.
Guttmann's methods were resisted all the way by his colleagues and the nurses working under him, because they seemed wilfully cruel. Guttmann reduced the sedation of patients, even if it meant that they were in constant pain. He had patients turned every two hours, day and night, even if they were terribly sleep-deprived. He forced patients to exercise and undergo painful physiotherapy.
The results were nothing short of miraculous. Within a matter of years, patients who were previously seen as hopeless incurables were being sent home to live long and fulfilling lives. The medics around Guttmann simply lacked the vision and insight to realise that these patients could be treated effectively. They were kind and caring people, but they could do nothing but dose their patients with morphine and watch them die.
Kindness is nothing but a particular sort of shortsightedness. Being a decent and moral person often requires one to do something that is entirely correct but deeply unkind. Medicine is the most obvious example, but we all live with such challenges every day. Do we give our children candy or broccoli? Do we tell a friend that their haircut is unflattering? Do we tell a relative that their partner is a philanderer? Often, the moral choice is not the kind one.