Adding to a post I wrote yesterday regarding insufferable people, I would just like to clarify that by insufferable I do not mean "people who are not nice." On the contrary, most "nice" people I have known in my life have been excruciatingly insufferable, just as I myself have been excruciatingly insufferable during times in my life when I aimed to be "nice." This topic has essentially been beaten to death, but I feel it is imperative to keep harping on about it because "niceness" still seems to cause a great deal of confusion for most people.
So, "nice" people are insufferable. This immediately begs the question - how could a "nice" person possibly be insufferable? The answer? For the simple reason that "nice" people strive to be bearable, pleasing, likable, and sociable. That is, "nice" people place too much emphasis on feelings, both their own and the feelings of others. They want to feel good about themselves and they want others to feel good. To borrow a contemporary pejorative term, nice people are all about "feelz".
Since nice people prioritize feelings above all else, they are most often not all that concerned about Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, especially if Truth, Beauty, and Goodness run the risk of making someone feel bad. Thus, nice people will go to great lengths to distort Truth, Beauty, and Goodness in the interest of establishing or maintaining harmonious relationships based on little more than "feel-goodery."
Reality is another anxiety point for nice people, especially when reality interferes with their obsessive drive to please. Let's face it, reality is often unpleasant, and nothing bothers nice people more than potential unpleasantness. Hence, they will eagerly sacrifice reality at the altar of pleasure to bring about an atmosphere of pleasantness, both within in themselves and in others. Pleasure is essentially what niceness is at its very core; hence, the drive to be nice likely stems from a hedonistic impulse to derive pleasure from a situation.
Conversely, in their determined efforts to be pleased and pleasing, "nice" people will rarely demonstrate any resistance to badness or bad ideas, especially if bad ideas contain the seeds of establishing potential harmony and cooperativeness. "Nice" people will also, without any hesitation whatsoever, reject goodness or good ideas if these contain any possibility of offending, alienating, or excluding anyone. Put another way, "nice" people will willingly embrace evil if it contains the promise or possibility of making them seem agreeable or establishing a sense of agreeableness within a group. They will also be quick to reject or condemn the Good if this threatens to make them or anyone else they are trying to please feel bad.
In my estimation, most "nice" people are, at best, scheming diplomats, and, at worst, moral cowards. No wonder our contemporary world lays such emphasis on niceness as a virtue!
The problem is niceness is not a virtue at all. More often than not, it is merely a mask or a smokescreen or the white flag of pacifism or surrender. Many consider niceness to be a declaration of unselfishness, but this is a trick. I would hazard to guess that most "nice" people feel inspired by selfish rather than unselfish reasons.
Above all else, niceness must never be equated with goodness. You don't have to be good to be nice; on the contrary, it is much easier to be nice when you are not good because it is much easier to be dishonest, servile, and accommodating than it is to be honest, steadfast, and unaccommodating.
There's much more I could add to the above, but what I have written thus far concerning "niceness" should more than adequately explain why I consider the vast majority of "nice" people to be insufferable. Nice people are not necessarily good people, in any sense of the word. I have far more sympathy for good people, because in my experience, good people tend to be "not nice."
To tie in with yesterday's post, I have to deal with far fewer "nice" people today than I have had to do in the past. Luckily, the number of good people with whom I have established relations has increased. Oddly enough, most of these good people are anything but "nice."
So, "nice" people are insufferable. This immediately begs the question - how could a "nice" person possibly be insufferable? The answer? For the simple reason that "nice" people strive to be bearable, pleasing, likable, and sociable. That is, "nice" people place too much emphasis on feelings, both their own and the feelings of others. They want to feel good about themselves and they want others to feel good. To borrow a contemporary pejorative term, nice people are all about "feelz".
Since nice people prioritize feelings above all else, they are most often not all that concerned about Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, especially if Truth, Beauty, and Goodness run the risk of making someone feel bad. Thus, nice people will go to great lengths to distort Truth, Beauty, and Goodness in the interest of establishing or maintaining harmonious relationships based on little more than "feel-goodery."
Reality is another anxiety point for nice people, especially when reality interferes with their obsessive drive to please. Let's face it, reality is often unpleasant, and nothing bothers nice people more than potential unpleasantness. Hence, they will eagerly sacrifice reality at the altar of pleasure to bring about an atmosphere of pleasantness, both within in themselves and in others. Pleasure is essentially what niceness is at its very core; hence, the drive to be nice likely stems from a hedonistic impulse to derive pleasure from a situation.
Conversely, in their determined efforts to be pleased and pleasing, "nice" people will rarely demonstrate any resistance to badness or bad ideas, especially if bad ideas contain the seeds of establishing potential harmony and cooperativeness. "Nice" people will also, without any hesitation whatsoever, reject goodness or good ideas if these contain any possibility of offending, alienating, or excluding anyone. Put another way, "nice" people will willingly embrace evil if it contains the promise or possibility of making them seem agreeable or establishing a sense of agreeableness within a group. They will also be quick to reject or condemn the Good if this threatens to make them or anyone else they are trying to please feel bad.
In my estimation, most "nice" people are, at best, scheming diplomats, and, at worst, moral cowards. No wonder our contemporary world lays such emphasis on niceness as a virtue!
The problem is niceness is not a virtue at all. More often than not, it is merely a mask or a smokescreen or the white flag of pacifism or surrender. Many consider niceness to be a declaration of unselfishness, but this is a trick. I would hazard to guess that most "nice" people feel inspired by selfish rather than unselfish reasons.
Above all else, niceness must never be equated with goodness. You don't have to be good to be nice; on the contrary, it is much easier to be nice when you are not good because it is much easier to be dishonest, servile, and accommodating than it is to be honest, steadfast, and unaccommodating.
There's much more I could add to the above, but what I have written thus far concerning "niceness" should more than adequately explain why I consider the vast majority of "nice" people to be insufferable. Nice people are not necessarily good people, in any sense of the word. I have far more sympathy for good people, because in my experience, good people tend to be "not nice."
To tie in with yesterday's post, I have to deal with far fewer "nice" people today than I have had to do in the past. Luckily, the number of good people with whom I have established relations has increased. Oddly enough, most of these good people are anything but "nice."
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