tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6272246.post-46870902205392376162007-03-11T03:46:00.000-07:002007-04-19T21:54:16.496-07:00John might be a liar, always keep people waiting, tell ugly racial jokes, cheat on his girlfriends, and shoplift the occasional candy bar, but if you ask anyone who knows him, and knows he does those things, what he's like, they'll say, "He's nice." Heck, John could be a serial killer, and when they interviewed the people in his life after his arrest, and asked them what sort of person he was, they'd STILL say "He was nice"; haven't you seen folks do just that a hundred times?<br /><br />We call virtually everyone who doesn't perform anti-social acts on US, or on others right in front of us, "nice"; what does calling someone "nice" MEAN, then? We pretend that it means what it's SUPPOSED TO, that the person thus labeled is almost always kind, considerate, etc, but what it ACTUALLY means in most cases is:<br /><br /><br />1) I love/like them (and if you think that everyone YOU care about is nice, you're either applying unusually stringent guidelines to who you allow in your life or fooling yourself).<br /><br />2) I've known them a long time... and the longer I've known them, the worse they're allowed to behave and still be called "nice."<br /><br />3) I'm attracted to them... and either am too blinded by hormones to gauge their niceness or realize they're sorta scummy but don't want my friends to know I'm offering my body to someone like that.<br /><br />4) I'm NOT attracted to them, but want to say something positive about them so I don't feel like a mean, shallow person for declining to date them.<br /><br />5) They're a doormat who doesn't argue, stand up for themselves or get in anyone's way.<br /><br />6) They're shy or quiet.<br /><br />7) They're charming (charm is meant to manipulate you into liking a person more than they've earned, and manipulation is the opposite of niceness).<br /><br />8) They're polite (every evil type who isn't a raving lunatic can be as polite as the next person when it suits them).<br /><br />9) I met them once, and the 2 lines they said to me were polite.<br /><br />10) They're an acquaintance that hasn't murdered anyone in front of me yet.<br /><br /><br />I know those last 2 sound facetious, but they're accurate; no one's willing to say "I don't know that person well enough to be sure what they're like." Are we so insecure that we have to pretend that we know everyone well, or that our judgment's so magnificent that we can get accurate readings on people instantly, or maybe that we're so holy that everyone acts like saints around us?<br /><br />And what about those we see as NOT nice? How often is that based on patterns of bad behavior from them, and how often does it just mean that we don't LIKE them... with that dislike based on pitiful things like their not loving the same sports team or music as we do, or their being fat, unusually dressed or a little too "loud"? And here's a quote from the March 2007 issue of Vogue that stopped me in my tracks:<br /><br />"I wouldn't call him nice, exactly-he was far too clever for that."<br /><br />WHAAAAAAAAAAAT?!! In what way could intelligence prevent or counteract niceness? Lemme guess; unlike with every other talent, if you're smart you're supposed to tone it down so that others don't feel inadequate, and if you don't that's insensitive and therefore not nice? Besides; aren't the smart kids always disliked no matter how utterly innocuous they are? Why should ADULTS be any more rational and fair in their judgments than kids? {sigh}<br /><br />So; what can we do about all this? The sooner we stop calling everyone who isn't running around covered in blood with a victim's severed head in their hands "nice" the better off we'll all be, so we should resolve to use "nice" only for those people who objectively deserve it, which can be determined via a simple analysis; if someone's nice, you'll be able to come up with a bunch of things they've done that indicate that they're sweet and warm-hearted, with few or no bad behaviors to cancel them out... and if they're NOT nice, the opposite will be true. Once you figure that out, you'll want to adjust your relationships to correspond to how nice each person is, shunning the un-nice even if they're entertaining, and making every effort to get closer to the nice even if there are things about them that put you off... right?<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6272246-4687090220539237616?l=omniverse.blogspot.com'/></div>Omnihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01535142570254270177noreply@blogger.com