Despotic Niceness
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Nice guys are famous for their failures in dating. They spend a lot of money to show their generosity, they will agree to almost everything women ask and of course, they never get the girl. They get frustratingly friendzoned. They fantasize that their crush will come back miraculously, like in a romantic comedy. As they grow old, they grow bitter, angry that women don’t know what’s good for them as they drown their wrath and despair in porn.
Why don’t nice guys get the girl? What’s so incredibly unattractive about them?
They’re agreeable and give the girl everything she wants. Yet they’re also indecisive, preferring others make decisions so they can absolve themselves of responsibility. They’re also boring. They’re as bland as a slice of Wonder Bread and about as creative. Lacking a strong and grounded identity, they are nice in the hopes that girls will reciprocate. They exude sliminess as they try to hack into the position of boyfriend.
They are using despotic niceness.
Manipulation
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Despotic niceness is a form of manipulation. It’s using the norms around niceness to get what you want. Despotic niceness is passive-aggressive quid pro quo. Nice guys are waiting for girls to reciprocate like a charity that gives you pre-printed return labels. The norms of niceness demand that nice people reciprocate. Anyone that doesn’t reciprocate is considered a jerk.
Many women also use despotic niceness. They’ll be friendly to a guy that clearly wants to date them and count on his reciprocating niceness. They’ll get help moving, get rescued financially and use him as an emotional crutch. The guy reciprocates the very mild niceness to signal that they’re nice. The women use the guy’s hope of further reciprocation to string the guy along.
Despotic niceness is not only a weapon in dating, however. At work, a nice boss will ask you to do something unpleasant as “a team player.” Your family member who keeps screwing up will keep getting bailed out as a “loving” relative. Even the government tells you that as a citizen, you should support war because it’s “patriotic”. The truth is that nice people manipulate and aren’t so virtuous as they seem.
Not a Virtue
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Nice comes from the Latin word nescire, which means to not know, to be ignorant. Over the centuries, the word evolved to mean agreeable because ignorant people are easily manipulated. In modern parlance, niceness means being purposefully ignorant. We pretend that a hideous haircut looks good because we are nice. We pretend that we like our boss’s joke because we are nice. Niceness is a dishonest public persona, a fakeness for the sake of fitting in.
How did we end up here? Why are we purposefully ignorant for the sake of agreeableness?
Tool of Compliance
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Think about the structure of society. Overseers of any classroom, company or government organization need a way to keep order. One way to keep order is to get everyone disciplined, like in an army. The other way is through a cultural norm of niceness. Niceness lets overseers keep order through expected reciprocation. The hard work of discipline can be avoided if each person identifies as being nice.
Such an environment becomes despotic because it limits the realm of thought. Nice people don’t offend, so it’s difficult for them to even think certain thoughts. What’s inoffensive becomes the acceptable range of possible thoughts and that defines the Overton Window. Niceness as an identity trait means a very limited palette of thoughts from which new thoughts emerge. Creative thoughts are hard because they might be offensive. It wouldn’t be nice.
This is why nice guys are boring. They are predictably bland because their range of thought is limited.
Kind and Honest, not Boring and Cowardly
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Stop being nice. Be honest and kind instead. Nice is not being honest nor kind because neither of those expects reciprocation. Real honesty and real kindness require virtues like courage, love and justice. Niceness is not only fake, manipulative and despotic but also dull, limiting and cowardly.
Be honest. Don’t be purposefully ignorant indulging in polite fictions. Tell the truth, even when it’s going to be offensive. Especially when it’s offensive. It’s okay if they get upset. Sometimes that rage is a form of despotic niceness coming out. Other times, it’s despair. In a society full of niceness, honesty is rare and valued by mature people.
Be kind. Telling the truth is brutally difficult, especially when the norm is niceness. Kindness is telling the truth in a loving way. It’s not minimizing the brutality of the truth. That’s niceness sneaking back in. Kindness is doing so gently and in a way the other person can receive it.
Ground yourself in truth and love, not in fitting in by being nice. To be honest and kind requires character, maturity and grounding.
You’ll need to work on yourself instead of relying on others’ reciprocation. You’re going to grow up. And it’ll get you more dates than being a nice guy.
