Tyranny of Niceness

Your niceness grates against your true feelings and thoughts, causing an ongoing internal friction

avoid telling people, especially authority figures, that they have offended you or that you disagree with their opinions or suggestions.

order to appease others you do things you either regret or simply wish you had not done that you cannot bring yourself to undo

conform to styles of dress and furnish your home according to the advice of self-proclaimed experts or your neighbours rather than according to your own values, tastes, and financial capabilities.

contradictions in your interactions with people, expressed in the interests of being nice

clients struggle to honour their own needs and desires rather than sell out in order to be or say or do what they believe people want of them.

The contradictions of niceness are so imbued in our culture that we have clichés to describe them: “nice guys finish last,” “no more Mr. Nice Guy,” and “too darned nice.

maybe you have been jilted by someone you thought was the nicest person you’d ever met, someone you loved

Alfonso Caruana, a drug lord with links to the mafia. He was one of the world’s most wanted men, yet neighbours knew him as a family man living a quiet life with his wife and children in the suburbs

They lived in a nice community made up of nice people living in well-kept homes, people who went to church on Sundays and attended their children’s little league baseball games, whose anti-social behaviour went no further than an occasional traffic ticket. People move to places like Littleton to avoid acts of violence such as these youths committed.