Naughty and Nice

There's an odd life lesson that many of us learn when we grow up, and it's not the kind of message that we expect. Nice doesn't pay off. Hmm, so now I have to explain what I mean. You've surely heard of the phrase, Nice guys finish last. Why's that? The saying sounds cynical, suggesting that nice guys let others win, that they won't play dirty enough when it matters.

For some reason, many of us are turned off by nice. Say, someone is nice to you. They do things for you, buy things for you, whatever you want, they're there for you. From your vantage point, that's an odd feeling. What do you do to deserve this niceness? And more importantly, what do you owe back? And since you don't want to have to owe anything back, you might start to be aloof or even downright mean to the person who's being nice to you.

There's this notion called the "asshole theory" which suggests that being an asshole attracts more interest than being nice. I'm not sure this is completely true. Unless you have money, fame, power, or something positive to offer a person, being an asshole eventually leaves you with no friends.

I remember reading a book by Guy Kawasaki, who worked for Apple, and in particular, Steve Jobs, in the early days. He was a successful programmer. But the book he wrote was pathetic. Sure, he looked up to Jobs, even revered him, but the guy played him like a violin. He would alternately praise him and put him down. Steve knew that to make certain people productive, you play on their desire to be loved, and their fear of being hated. It's how you can train a dog. Give them a snack when they do well. Give them a kick or a shock when they do badly. It's amazing, and amazingly sad how this works.

But being nice comes at many different levels. The kind of nice I'm talking about here is doing favors for someone and being helpful. This is the kind of niceness that people can indeed like. After all, if you can get beyond the fact that the person may be nice because they want you to like them, you are at least benefitting from the favors they offer.

The space of nice is, however, rather broad. A friend says he's nice to everyone. But by that, he simply means that he's not mean. He doesn't say bad things of others (at least, not that I'm aware). He doesn't raise his voice, or lose his temper. He's genuinely pleasant.

However, he's also incredibly distant. He could have, for example, when I was visiting recently, say, stay over, I can host you for a few days, as did two others I did end up staying with, but he didn't. He's nice in the way that someone who doesn't like you might be nice given that they had no choice but to be nice. And that itself ought to tell me that I should stay away. But I don't because I find people like him fascinating. And as long as he chooses to be "nice", which is barely appropriate of the definition in my book, I'll continue to drop by and visit.

Niceness, therefore, doesn't necessarily equate with honesty, nor does it equate with doing favors (ie, being polite). I have another friend who's far ruder, who has a short temper, who likes ordering people around, who tends to get his way by yelling, and yet, at times, he's pretty honest, let's you know what's on his mind, and is willing to do favors from time to time. I can't say which is better, as I think I could do without the yelling, but I'm used to it, as are his friends.

This gets to the point that an asshole can be nice from time to time, and so people crave that part, as they learn to either deal with the less pleasant aspects, or to do things to prevent triggering those responses.

Women, for some reason, have a greater deal of societal pressure to be nice. Sure, there are women that get upset, but they get slapped with a certain five letter word. They have to be supportive and helpful, characteristics of a good wife. They're supposed to be their spouse's better half, so their spouse can fly off the handle, while they stay calm and try to restore order. I'm sure some women resent having to be this nice, when they want to rail just like their male counterparts.

The funny thing is that even if you could convince someone that's nice (but not aloof) that the asshole theory works, they find it incredibly difficult to change. They believe so much in being good to others, that the thought of being mean just to get attention is abhorrent. It just feels wrong, like selling your soul. In the end, they say it's not them, and if they can't find someone who'll like them, well that's the way it's going to be. They won't be who they aren't.

Similarly, those who are assholes are not likely to change, because their behavior is so ingrained. They learn to say what's on their mind, and to muzzle themselves is also very uncomfortable. It makes them less certain of who they are, and gives them a sense of emasculation (this can apply to women too, despite the name).

Does that mean we're destined not to change? I think not. If all of us would take acting lessons, where we pretend to be others, and if we didn't find acting a dishonest profession (which I think most of us don't), then we might be able to pretend we're someone else, and if we pretended long enough, we could get ourselves to be who we wanted to be.