The Problems With Being Nice

I got to how I don't like the word "nice." In the past few years I've really, really started to hate that word. I hate the connotations for it, how it's lumped in with the politically correct crowd. I'm told to be "nice," to act "nice." "Nice" is supposed to personify me, wholly take me over. But what really is nice? Looking up the definition gives you this:

1. pleasing; agreeable; delightful
2. amiably pleasant; kind
3. characterized by, showing, or requiring great accuracy, precision, skill, tact, care, or delicacy: nice workmanship; a nice shot; a nice handling of a crisis.
4. showing or indicating very small differences; minutely accurate, as instruments: a job that requires nice measurements.
5. minute, fine, or subtle: a nice distinction.

Not good enough. Words are constantly redefined, changed. Decades ago fag used to mean rotting wood. Now it's used as a derogatory term for homosexuals. So, off to do some etymology -- that is, the history of words and their meanings. Turns out being nice doesn't mean what people think it originally means, and is a whole lot worse than that.

late 13c., "foolish, stupid, senseless," from O.Fr. nice (12c.) "careless, clumsy; weak; poor, needy; simple, stupid, silly, foolish," from L. nescius "ignorant, unaware," lit. "not-knowing," from ne- "not" (see un-) + stem of scire "to know" (see science). "The sense development has been extraordinary, even for an adj." [Weekley] -- from "timid" (pre-1300); to "fussy, fastidious" (late 14c.); to "dainty, delicate" (c.1400); to "precise, careful" (1500s, preserved in such terms as a nice distinction and nice and early); to "agreeable, delightful" (1769); to "kind, thoughtful" (1830).

So, to be nice is to be foolish, stupid, senseless or agreeable. Sounds appropriate. Instead, perhaps we should substitute niceness for the more appropriate kindness, although in the latter sometimes being kind means doing what a person needs done, not necessarily what they want done. Although the synonyms for "nice" include such things as "kind," in reality, the word is also used for "ingratiating" or "conciliatory." In both these cases you can see the "politically correct" ideal portrayed in the word itself.

So, being nice is to suck up to the ego of someone else, not to ruffle feathers. This is not being kind. It is ego-stroking, brazenly so.

You Can't Win

Liberal, Conservative, Communist, Nazi. See what I did there? It's the standard dichotomy between the two political sides. One side calls the other stupid and the other side mirrors it, both not seeing their own stupidity or how they're being manipulated by the media in the echo chamber (rights for rights and lefts for lefts). How is it that I'm no longer allowed a voice, and am told that I should go die, because my views differ from the other side? And it doesn't matter which side you're on, either. It's heated, almost a warzone (to which I'm surprised it hasn't devolved into one). If you're pro-choice, you're a murderer. If you're against abortion, you're a backwards thinking neanderthal who is against woman's rights to choose. Dissension to a party line even if you don't fully support it is tantamount to putting yourself up on a cross and waiting for the people around you to throw stones. There's talk about free speech on both sides of the line, but differing points of view are wrong and need to be stamped out before they create another communist or fascist regime.

How did we even get this far, anyway? It's like the parties themselves happily cause these shifts in the population. It's like they want class warfare and racism and the problems brought about by such in order for government to step in to solve it all. Because that's what big daddy government and big mommy government do, they solve problems for the children instead of us figuring things out on the lowest level and keeping them out of our lives and out of our businesses. Government doesn't believe we're intelligent people -- they view us for the stupid quivering masses that we are. Easily manipulated by the media systems that have no integrity that report for their side. Giant propaganda machines. We are living in Orwells world, it just isn't quite how Orwell thought it would be.

A people divided from within. A nation divided from within. And we are ripe for our destruction and reintroduction into the new machine that's waiting