A friend from New York recently asked, “Do we even remember what kindness is?” Our phone conversation was all over the ballpark, and we never got back to her question, but her remark kept bugging me, popping into my head at random times all week long. My friend’s work puts her in front of a screen for much of the day, and I suspect she also spends some time on social media. I dropped Facebook long ago, but like her, I too sit in front of my laptop for hours every day, writing and browsing various sites for news of the world and ideas for my work. And it’s true, the headlines and commentators I read rarely display the milk of human kindness. But what about the real world? The one made up of flesh-and-blood people rather than digital bells and whistles? Is kindness becoming extinct there as well? After …