On Being Nice

1. Why Niceness Feels Weak or Boring (Cultural Resistance)

Being a nice person sounds like something we would try to be only once every other more arduous and more rewarding alternative had failed.

Cultural suspicion. Niceness is often viewed with suspicion, seen as anodyne, meek, tedious, or sexless. This resistance stems from historical cultural currents that have unfairly linked niceness with negative traits, making it seem like a last resort rather than a desirable quality.

Historical legacies. Four major legacies contribute to this view: Christianity linked niceness to failure ("nice but weak"), Romanticism linked it to conformity ("nice but boring"), Capitalism linked it to financial ruin ("nice but bankrupt"), and Eroticism linked it to undesirability ("nice but unsexy"). These associations have deeply tarnished the appeal of niceness in the modern mind.

Niceness is compatible. Despite these negative associations, niceness is not inherently opposed to success, excitement, wealth, or sexual appeal. It is, in fact, often a necessary precondition for these things, supporting vulnerability, creativity, collaboration, and trust. Rediscovering niceness means appreciating its compatibility with strength and achievement.

2. Kindness: Charitable Interpretation & Understanding Weaknesses

Charity remembers how there might still be virtue amid much evil.

Charity beyond money. While often associated with material giving, charity is most needed in our relationships as "charity of interpretation." This means offering a kindly perspective on the weaknesses, eccentricities, and follies of others, doing the extra work to understand their behavior through the lens of their history and circumstances.

Weakness of Strength. A key tool for kindness is the "Weakness of Strength" theory, which suggests that people's failings are often the inevitable downside of the very strengths that attracted us to them. What appears as a fault is the shadow side of a genuine merit, making perfect people non-existent and helping us calm down in moments of frustration.

Mutual need. Genuine charity stems from recognizing our own potential need for it; we are all patrons in some areas and beggars in others. Understanding that others' difficult behavior often comes from suffering or underlying issues (like self-hatred or past patterns) allows for a more benevolent interpretation, reducing agitation and fostering forgiveness.

3. Compassion for Failure & Suffering (Losers, Motives, Meanness)

Tragedy is the sympathetic, morally complex, account of how good people can end up in disastrous situations.

Empathy for failure. Modern society often views failure as a personal catastrophe, a verdict on one's nature, leading to harsh judgment. Ancient Greek tragedy, however, offered a different perspective: good people can fail due to fate or circumstances beyond their full control, inspiring pity and fear rather than scorn.

Understanding motives. Distinguishing between what someone does and what they meant to do is crucial for kindness. We often misinterpret actions, seeing malicious intent where there is none, often driven by our own self-hatred. Adopting the "infant model" of interpretation—assuming underlying distress rather than deliberate malice—helps keep agitation low.

Meanness stems from pain. A fundamental truth is that people are nasty because they are in pain; their meanness is evidence of inner suffering. Recognizing this shifts the power dynamic, revealing the mean person as the one who is not well. This understanding encourages looking upon enemies with sorrow and pity, aiming compassion at those who annoy us most.

4. The Hidden Wisdom of Politeness (vs. Frankness)

It is their extraordinary suspicion of themselves that helps them be uncommonly friendly, trustworthy and kind in everyday life.

Politeness under suspicion. Historically a key virtue, politeness is now often seen as insincere or fake, contrasted with the Romantic ideal of frankness and authenticity. This shift is influenced by figures like Rousseau and American culture's emphasis on directness.

Divergent beliefs. The difference between polite and frank people lies in their core beliefs about human nature:

• Purity vs. Sin: Frank people trust their innate goodness; polite people suspect their darker impulses and actively protect others from them.
• Stranger is like Me vs. Stranger is Other: Frank people assume others are like them; polite people assume others are different and proceed with caution and inquiry.
• Robustness vs. Vulnerability: Frank people assume others are robust; polite people assume everyone is vulnerable and needs reassurance.

Politeness's value. Polite people, paradoxically, often behave more kindly because their self-suspicion makes them careful not to offend. Their awareness of human vulnerability leads them to notice and affirm the small achievements of others. Their caution is a logical response to the complexity and potential for error they see in themselves and the world.

5. Friendship Needs Defined Purposes

The more we define what a friendship might be for, the more we can focus in on what we should be doing with every person in our lives – or indeed the more we can helpfully conclude that we shouldn’t be with someone at all.

Friendship's disappointment. Friendship can be disappointing when it lacks clear purpose, leading to aimless interactions. We resist defining friendship's purpose, fearing it sounds cynical, but clarity can actually enhance connections.

Five potential purposes: Friendships can serve various vital functions:

• Networking: Collaborating to achieve ambitions.
• Reassurance: Sharing vulnerabilities and normalizing struggles.
• Fun: Being silly and shedding serious pressures.
• Clarifying Minds: Helping each other understand confused thoughts and feelings.
• Holding on to the Past: Connecting with past versions of ourselves.

Ruthless clarity. Recognizing these purposes allows for more focused and rewarding friendships. It also permits a "ruthless" culling of acquaintances with whom there is no identifiable reason for connection, leading to more meaningful relationships and a better understanding of what we seek in others.

6. Avoiding Over-Friendliness & Cultivating Warmth

Just because an animal is large, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t want kindness; however big Tigger seems to be, remember that he wants as much kindness as Roo.

Over-friendliness pitfalls. Over-friendliness, though well-intentioned, can be irritating. It involves agreeing on everything (a form of not listening), offering ill-targeted praise (praising things the other doesn't value), and being relentlessly upbeat (making it hard to share darker feelings).

Pleasing through understanding. Truly pleasing people understand that disagreement can be exhilarating, praise is valuable only when sincere and targeted, and people are cheered up more by being understood than by forced cheerfulness. They sympathize with sorrows and accept vulnerability.

Warmth's philosophy. Warmth goes beyond cold politeness by recognizing the fundamental neediness, fragility, and vulnerability of others, regardless of their outward status. Like Kanga in Winnie-the-Pooh, warm people treat others with the same tender care they would give a child, remembering that everyone, however outwardly robust, craves kindness, reassurance, and simple comforts.

7. Overcoming Shyness (Psychological Cosmopolitanism)

I am human: nothing human is foreign to me.

Shyness as provincialism. Shyness is not immutable but rooted in a "provincialism of the mind"—an over-focus on surface differences (age, class, tastes) that makes strangers seem daunting and unknowable. It's an implicit refusal to believe in shared humanity.

Psychological cosmopolitanism. Overcoming shyness requires developing a "psychological cosmopolitanism," recognizing that despite outward variations, all humans share a common core of likes, hates, hopes, and fears. This mindset, echoed by Terence's quote, allows us to look beyond differences and find common ground.

Accepting shared humanity. The cosmopolitan isn't fearless but chooses not to be cowed by difference, guessing at a collective species unity. Shyness, while containing a touching awareness of potentially being a nuisance, ultimately pays an unnecessary price by preventing connection based on shared vulnerabilities and the messy reality of being human.

8. Affectionate Teasing is Kind

The teasing remark speaks over the head of the dominant aspect to the subordinated side of the self, whom it helps to release and relax.

Teasing's value. Affectionate teasing, distinct from cruel mockery, is a profound human accomplishment. It's a generous and loving act that helps us notice and laugh at our own imbalances (too serious, too gloomy, etc.), gently nudging us towards a healthier mean.

Speaking to the hidden self. Good teasing works by recognizing a struggle within us, speaking past the dominant outward persona to a currently under-supported, nicer side of ourselves. It's pleasing because it shows the teaser sees past the front we put on, recognizing the complexity beneath the surface.

What needs teasing? The most instructive question is what we need to be teased about. This highlights how affectionate teasing emerges from genuine insight into who we are, taking the part of a good side that needs encouragement. It's a compassionate, constructive way of helping someone change.

9. Flirting as a Generous Act of Reassurance

Good flirting is in essence an attempt, driven by kindness and imaginative excitement, to inspire another person to believe more firmly in their own likability – psychological as much as physical.

Flirting's bad name. Flirting is often seen negatively, as manipulative or a false promise of sex. This view misses its potential as a vital social process for generously redistributing confidence and self-esteem.

A gift of likability. Good flirting is a kind act that inspires belief in one's own likability. It artfully conveys: "I would love to sleep with you," "I won't sleep with you," and "It's not your fault." It leverages the truth that the pleasure of sex is often more about acceptance than the physical act itself.

Beyond intercourse. Good flirts understand that many genuine reasons prevent sex (partners, age, context) that have nothing to do with finding someone repulsive. They find less obvious ways everyone can be attractive, offering a view of ourselves as desirable that counters our tendency towards self-hatred. Flirting is an ethical need of the soul, liberating erotic endorsement from the narrow gate of actual sex.

10. Why Kind People Sometimes Lie

However much they love the truth, good people have an even greater commitment to something else: being kind towards others.

Lying for kindness. Truly good people are sometimes ready to lie, not for personal gain, but out of intense love for a greater truth and goodwill for the person they are deceiving. This counters the simplistic ideal of absolute truth-telling.

Loyalty to greater truth. Lies are necessary when full disclosure would threaten a more important truth, like loving an elderly aunt despite disliking her cake. Our tendency to make unfortunate associations (disliking cake = disliking me) forces kind people to offer a smaller falsehood to protect a larger truth.

Protecting sanity. Kind people lie to protect the sanity and well-being of others, understanding that a literal truth can lead to radically false and damaging conclusions (e.g., infidelity meaning "I don't love you"). They lie only when detection is unlikely, as an unearthed lie causes unjustifiable trouble. We should sometimes hope others lie to us to protect us from truths we can't handle.

11. The Art of Listening for Clarification

The good listener knows that we’d ideally move – via conversation with another person – from a confused and agitated state of mind to one that was more focused and serene.

Listening's rarity. Being a good listener is a crucial skill, yet few possess it, often being too eager to speak. Conversation often devolves into socialized egoism rather than mutual understanding.

Clarifying the vague. Good listeners understand that people often speak from a place of urgent, undefined confusion. Their goal is to help the speaker move from agitation to clarity. They use supportive remarks and probing questions ("tell me more," "why did that happen?") to encourage deeper exploration of feelings and issues.

Focusing themes. Good listeners are skilled interrupters, not to insert their own ideas, but to gently guide the speaker back to their core, elusive concerns. They don't moralize, accepting human strangeness and imperfection, creating a safe space for vulnerability and helping others see that their struggles are normal, not wicked.

12. Being Interesting by Embracing Vulnerability

The interesting person isn’t someone to whom obviously and outwardly interesting things have happened... They are someone who has grown into an attentive, self-aware listener and a reliably honest correspondent of the tremors of their own mind and heart...

Boredom is internal. No one is inherently boring; they only appear so when they fail to understand or communicate their deeper selves honestly. Like art finding beauty in the ordinary, human beings are always interesting when witnessed authentically.

Hiding feelings. We bore others when we prioritize outward facts or conventional topics over our genuine feelings (guilt, envy, regret, dreams). This hiding often stems from a
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Last updated: July 3, 2025