Is It Really So Nice To Be Nice?
“I did not attend his funeral; but I wrote a nice letter saying I approved of it.” – Mark Twain
Niceness is now universal in our society. Everyone and everything is nice to one another, by way of being nice to themselves. Niceness has come to define us, so that when historians come to write of our era they will speak of us as people who were unfailingly “nice”.
By “niceness” I do not mean any kind of genuine or heartfelt sentiment. Niceness originates not from a desire to please others but from the desire to be well thought of – a self-serving urge. Niceness is a faade, erected amid a culture of narcissism. Genuine kindness is the opposite of niceness; its inverse, to the extent whereby the two cannot co-exist. Kindness is intended to make others feel good; niceness is a tool used to encourage them to be (or at least seem) kind to you.
As well as being the era of “niceness”, ours is the age of political correctness gone global. The two are, in fact, closely related, and the latter may be seen as the deliberate and inevitable result of the dominance of the former. Political correctness has come to dominate North America, keeping the country’s people locked in an over-regulated linguistically-policed state of mind. Political correctness is everywhere – enforced upon the media as it is upon the lawmakers and those who keep the law. We have no choice in the matter, but must adhere to the doctrine – the philosophy – of political correctness whether we want to or not. To object to its dominance is to mark yourself out as a target. To speak out against the rampant dominance of the politically correct is to identify yourself as hostile to the society which they have come to control. To take this to its logical extreme, anyone who goes so far as to even acknowledge that The Game exists is skating on very thin ice. To maintain your conviction, moreover, is the ultimate form of political suicide.
Political correctness is not easy to define, specifically because it stands for nothing. It is neither racist nor sexist – indeed, it is inherently opposed to both. It represents a negative construct created to oppose such positive forms of prejudice. It acts by cutting out and denouncing any ideological statement whatsoever. To stand for political correctness is to stand for negativity – for nothingness – for a social vacuum at the very heart of society. Political correctness is the ultimate form of hypocrisy, in that while it calls upon you to denounce nothing and no one it simultaneously requires that you denounce all those who do not conform to the strictures of a carefully regulated world in which political correctness is law.
As a result, all that is left of society is a meaningless muddle of people stripped of their convictions and homogenised to think and feel the same as each other. This leads them to adopt the most bland and blameless of traits: niceness.
And all this is the work of the Players who have trapped us in their Game. Equipped with false sentiment and the shield of politically correct jargon to cover their retreat, they set themselves up as the great positive proponents of negativity. Anyone who objects is excluded from the society they now govern. They have taken our rights and our liberties and constructed a prison for our minds. And everything has been done without the slightest impediment because, whatever else they may be, they are unstintingly nice about it all!
John Berling Hardy gives those who are committed to winning the tools to make it happen. For more of his writings please visit www.playingtheplayers.com
Tags: Inspirational/Motivational, personal development, Self Help
