'Kindness' as a term-of-choice instead of 'love'

We can study thru out the animal kingdom empathic and altruistic behavior, but it might be a bit of a stretch to say we can study love. And maybe using the term ‘love’ for political organizing purposes is more likely to lead a person–all else being equal— to mystical escapism.

In terms of using rationalism (the sciences plus the humanities) to achieve goals and solve problems, ‘kindness’ seems more applicable than ‘love’ if we want to observe behavior and attitudes via Psychology, Sociology, and other fields.

I admit that in addition to having many meanings, ‘love’ has a mystical, poetic connotation that might make it inferior to ‘kindness’ (and also ’empathy’ and ‘altruism’) as a word choice for rational inquiry (which includes community organizing.)

This calls to mind what some Secular Humanist writers say is a main conflict over the past millennia or two : rationalism vs superstition.

We can’t identify and cultivate kindness or empathy solely via the social and physical sciences. Understanding the full context requires the Humanities to be added to the mix, without which we have no values for framing our scientific inquiry. Religion and mythology has a place within the Humanities, but not to the point of being exempt from the standards of rationalism. In other words, we can open-mindedly account for non-rational/intuitive parts of human mental functioning without becoming irrational.