…Why humanity practises compassion by season, then wonders why the world remains broken.
When the calendar softens humanity
Every December, the world softens almost on cue. Strangers smile more easily. Voices lower. Generosity becomes fashionable. Longstanding grudges are paused rather than resolved. Charity campaigns multiply. Politicians rediscover empathy. Corporations rebrand themselves as humane. Communities briefly behave as though kindness were humanity’s default setting rather than a seasonal exception. For a short while, compassion feels natural, effortless, and widely shared.
A few months later, during Ramadan, a similar moral recalibration takes place. Millions restrain their appetite, temper their language, reduce excess, and rediscover humility. Food is shared more deliberately. Giving becomes intentional rather than impulsive. Patience briefly regains social value. According to the United Nations Development Programme, faith driven giving during Ramadan mobilises resources on a scale that rivals some national aid budgets. For a moment, humanity behaves as if restraint and empathy were ordinary human instincts. Then the calendar turns. And so do we.
The inconvenient truth we avoid
This is the inconvenient truth rarely confronted honestly. Human beings are not incapable of kindness. We are simply unwilling to sustain it. What we often label as human nature is, in reality, selective morality. Compassion is activated when seasons, rituals, and social expectations demand it, then quietly withdrawn when ordinary life resumes. Kindness is not scarce. Commitment is.
The uncomfortable lesson embedded in this cycle is that humanity does not lack empathy. It lacks consistency. If kindness were genuinely difficult, its mass appearance every December and Ramadan would be impossible to explain. Yet year after year, societies across cultures demonstrate extraordinary capacity for generosity, humility, and restraint. They simply do so temporarily.
Seasonal morality is engineered, not accidental
Seasonal morality is not accidental. It is engineered. According to data published by Giving USA in 2023, close to thirty percent of annual charitable donations in the United States are made in December alone, with a significant concentration in the final days of the year. This surge is not driven by sudden moral awakening. It is shaped by deadlines, tax incentives, corporate campaigns, religious narratives, and social pressure converging into a predictable moral rush. At the same time, consumer behaviour reveals an equally revealing contradiction.
According to the US National Retail Federation, holiday retail spending across November and December now regularly exceeds one trillion dollars. Modern societies have mastered the logistics of seasonal mobilisation. They know how to move money, emotion, attention, and behaviour at scale when the calendar instructs them to do so. A society that can coordinate excess so precisely cannot credibly claim that sustained compassion is unrealistic. The limitation is not capacity. It is choice.
Ramadan and the myth of limited compassion
Ramadan generosity offers even clearer evidence that sustained kindness is possible. In the United Kingdom, Muslim charities have estimated Ramadan giving at over one hundred million pounds in a single month in some years. Globally, according to UNDP and World Bank aligned studies, the annual zakat economy is estimated to range between two hundred billion and one trillion dollars worldwide. These figures matter not because they are perfect measurements, but because they expose a fundamental myth. Poverty persists not because compassion is unavailable, but because it is episodic. The human heart produces generosity readily.
Systems, however, often lack the discipline required to sustain it beyond sacred months. Indonesia illustrates this gap vividly. According to Indonesia’s National Zakat Agency, official zakat collections exceeded thirty trillion rupiah in 2023. Yet economists and governance experts estimate this represents only a fraction of the country’s true zakat potential. The limitation is not faith. It is institutional design, administrative seriousness, and political will.
Festive kindness and everyday governance failure
Across much of Africa, this contradiction is even more visible. During Christmas, Easter, and Ramadan, politicians distribute food hampers. Faith organisations intensify outreach. Public generosity becomes highly visible. The cameras roll. Gratitude is expressed. Suffering is briefly acknowledged. Then the season ends. In countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa, year-round governance failures quietly resume. Budget leakages. Procurement fraud. Abandoned infrastructure projects. Underfunded hospitals. Overcrowded classrooms.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, corruption drains hundreds of billions of dollars from developing economies every year. The value lost annually far exceeds the combined value of all festive donations. In this context, seasonal charity begins to resemble moral compensation rather than moral progress. When charity replaces justice, injustice learns how to survive unnoticed.
This is not an African problem
This pattern is global. Western economies celebrate generosity in December while maintaining systems that reward extraction over equity throughout the year. Governments issue festive messages about compassion, then implement policies that marginalise migrants, the elderly, and the working poor.
In Europe, winter charity drives coexist with asylum backlogs and restrictive border regimes. In the United States, Thanksgiving gratitude is swiftly followed by Black Friday excess, rising household debt, and labour exploitation. In parts of the Middle East, Ramadan generosity flourishes even as migrant workers continue to endure harsh conditions once the holy month ends; the calendar changes. The conscience sleeps again.
Why kindness becomes seasonal
The reason kindness becomes seasonal is not mysterious. Modern systems reward aggression more than empathy, speed over patience, dominance over dignity. Outside festive and religious seasons, humility is framed as weakness and compassion as inefficiency. Boardrooms prioritise hard outcomes over humane processes. Politics rewards division rather than decency. Social media amplifies outrage faster than restraint. December and Ramadan temporarily suspend these incentives, but they do not dismantle them. Goodness survives under supervision. It struggles under freedom.
The myth of human weakness
When confronted with this hypocrisy, societies retreat into a familiar defence. We tell ourselves that we are only human. Yet December and Ramadan expose that excuse as hollow. If humans can restrain appetite for fasting, they can restrain cruelty for conscience. If we can practise generosity for tradition, we can practise it for justice. What is often described as human weakness is more accurately human convenience.
What if kindness lasted just 20percent longer
Now consider a modest thought experiment. What if the humility displayed during Ramadan and the kindness practised in December were sustained for just twenty per cent of the year? Not perfection. Not sainthood. Simply consistency. Twenty per cent sustained kindness would reshape workplaces by reducing toxic leadership, burnout, and silent resentment.
It would alter governance cultures by shrinking tolerance for everyday corruption and administrative cruelty. It would soften public discourse by reducing casual dehumanisation. It would not end the war, but it would reduce its frequency. It would not eliminate poverty, but it would shrink indifference. The most unsettling part of this experiment is that humanity already knows how to do it. We practise it annually, briefly.
The hidden cost of seasonal morality
Seasonal kindness carries a hidden cost. It trains societies to accept injustice as long as it pauses occasionally. It teaches leaders that symbolic gestures can substitute for reform. It convinces citizens that suffering is tolerable if it is acknowledged from time to time. Most damaging of all, it teaches children that kindness is optional rather than foundational.
Permanent crises, temporary compassion
This matters because the world’s deepest crises are not seasonal. According to the World Bank, nearly seven hundred million people still live in extreme poverty. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, more than one hundred and seventeen million people are forcibly displaced worldwide. These are permanent emergencies met with temporary compassion. What societies treat as seasonal, children inherit as normal.
The moral test that really matters
This is not an argument against December generosity or Ramadan discipline. Those moments matter deeply. They reveal humanity’s better self. But revelation without continuation becomes hypocrisy. The true moral test is not how societies behave when culture, religion, or tradition demands kindness, but how they act when nothing compels them.
Why consistency, not festivals, saves the world
A humane world is not built by festivals alone. It is built on boring consistency. The highest form of kindness is the one that requires no season to justify it. The world is not broken because humans cannot be kind. It struggles because we ration kindness as if it were scarce, when in truth it is abundant but inconvenient. December and Ramadan are not the problem. They are mirrors. They show us who we could be and quietly indict us for who we choose to be the rest of the year.
The greatest hypocrisy of all
Until humility becomes habit and kindness becomes ordinary rather than exceptional, humanity will continue its familiar cycle. Brief goodness will be followed by prolonged damage, and reflection will arrive only when the next season reminds us again. The greatest hypocrisy of humanity is not cruelty itself, but the annual proof that kindness is possible, followed by the collective decision to postpone it.
>>>the writer is a globally celebrated thought leader, Chartered Director, industrial engineer, supply chain management expert, and social entrepreneur known for his transformative contributions to industrialisation, procurement, and strategic sourcing in developing nations.
As Africa’s first Professor Extraordinaire for Supply Chain Governance and Industrialization, he has advised governments, businesses, and policymakers, driving sustainability and growth. During his tenure as Chairman of the Minerals Income Investment Fund (MIIF) and Labadi Beach Hotel, he led these institutions to global recognition for innovation and operational excellence. He is also the past chairman of the Public Procurement Authority.
A prolific author of over 90 publications, he is the creator of NyansaKasa (Words of Wisdom), a thought-provoking platform with over one million daily readers. Through his visionary leadership, Professor Boateng continues to inspire ethical governance, innovation, and youth empowerment, driving Africa toward a sustainable and inclusive future.
