Unnice

Archived from Jan 21, 2025:

I take the distinction between kindness and niceness pretty seriously. I have been called nice an innumerable amount of times and while I know people say it as a compliment, there’s something about niceness being the observed trait that often rubs me the wrong way. It’s useful, sure, but I take a lot more pride in kindness. There’s an intention to kindness, a thoughtfulness that matters a lot more to me than pleasantries. Of course, I’m nice to servers, baristas and retail employees - that should be second nature to any decent person in my mind. Sometimes, I’m unpleasantly reminded that it isn’t for many. I think politeness and niceness are important, they function as a certain kind of social oil that allows for everyday interactions to be smoothed over and happen with less friction. Niceness is saying please and thank you, kindness is a meaningful gift. Niceness is letting the parent with a crying child go before you in the checkout line, kindness is knowing your loved ones favourite meals. Niceness is basic human decency, kindness is intentional, built up over a lifetime of choices and actions. Kindness is sometimes being kind even when you don’t particularly feel like it. Kindness is a thing earned and given in return. Kindness is profound. Kindness is the foundation of good, strong, deep love.

The flip side of this is I don’t take much issue with being unkind. I will be nice, I will be polite but because kindness is earned; that social niceness can come to a grinding halt in the face of rude, brash assholes. As the years have worn on, I have come more and more to believe it’s best to meet people where they are, even if where they are sucks. Kindness and coddling doesn’t change an asshole because they sustain themselves, excuse their behaviour on the good graces and goodwill of others. I’m not saying become a bully, or stoop to their level, but I do not enjoy wasting my time contributing to the things that fuel them- it is better to just walk away from most of those who thrive on conflict and chaos. This brings up the distinction of unkind compared to “unnice” - my argued semantic difference being that unnice is the assumption a barista made a mistake on purpose because you’ve convinced yourself they have a vendetta against you compared to confronting a person using slurs at the bar. Much like kindness, unkindness is also earned while unniceness is as ubiquitous as it’s surface level cousin, politeness. This can take many forms, in many places but I find being unkind a useful tool. To be clear, don’t think “kill em with kindness” is completely bad advice, but I do think it can wind up giving a lot of assholes a lot more space, time and attention than they ought to have. I am fine with being unkind when called for, but even after over 3 decades on this planet it still surprises me to meet someone who is unnice.

It’s animalistic to be so surprised, to have a part of your brain move, instantly, completely into survival mode. Time slows, heart rate rises and senses seem to sharpen, the world gets bright. My foot slips off the sidewalk and I fall backwards, pushed out into the street by a mess of limbs and violence. My heart catches as I hit something, feet getting tangled beneath me as I try to find purchase on the concrete. There’s likely no more than a second between my fall and colliding with the car that was behind me and suddenly, quickly stepping back on to the sidewalk realising I had nowhere to go. In front of me 3 men thrash and shout, completely oblivious to having shoved me into the street in their blind, senseless rage, a car beside me and an approaching couple with a dog behind. It was someone getting out of a truck, pulled into the parking lot the men had come careening out of who was the only one who asked if I was alright. One guy had stolen a 4 pack of beer from the convenience store and the other two seem to have never realised that one crime being committed doesn’t give you clearance to commit assault. The thief proceeded to call the employee a terrorist due to the colour of skin. Everyone in the situation was awful and I took my rattled self away, on to the rest of my day. The adrenaline exhausted me but the posturing, the violence, the idiocy on display were what stuck with me. In a worse world, the car hit me rather than me hitting it and I truly don’t believe these men would have noticed. They were so immersed in their hierarchy and violence that nothing else existed, least of all the people around them. I am grateful the disregard, the unniceness of it all surprised me - I’ve built a life where things like that don’t happen interpersonally and become easy to see as things that happen on the news, elsewhere. It was a stark reminder of the degradation of communities, of social isolation and a culture teetering on the edge.

I know people often aren’t nice - the news wouldn’t be so tedious and awful otherwise. While fire fighters have been on the front lines in LA (30% of whom are incarcerated and working on slave wages), the LAPD has been giving press conferences to kowtowing media assuring the public that they’re making sure to stop the looting taking place, as though that’s what any normal person fleeing fire, destruction and complete loss of home is worried about. These conferences aren’t about the public, they’re about assuring wealthy shareholders that “law” and “order” will be upheld for those with truly the least to lose. Cops bust unions for mega corporations while being in one of their own and having exactly no sense of irony about the whole thing. Politicians divert billions of dollars to cops while our schools, hospitals and climates crumble. We are all so tired, and it’s hardly a wonder why.

I ramble and I rant but someone already wrote the book on this that gives me sanity, that assures me that my soul will only ever be soothed by putting kindness and empathy first: A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit (don’t buy it from Amazon, get it at a local bookstore). I love reading, there’s a seemingly endless list of books I love but I would place this above many as my idea of required reading. Solnit believes in the human spirit, in our innate desire to create communities we all benefit from and through examples of extreme disaster paints a damning picture of the lengths the wealthy, powerful and violent will go to in the name of keeping us exhausted, distracted and afraid of one another. This is simultaneously the most infuriating and hopeful book I have ever read, frequently leaving me in tears at the sheer beauty of sacrifices made for one another. In better words:

The personal and the private are most often emphasized to the exclusion of almost everything else. Even the scope of psychotherapy generally leaves out the soul, the creator, and the citizen, those aspects of being human that extend into realms beyond private life. Conventional therapy, necessary and valuable at times to resolve personal crises and suffering, presents a very incomplete sense of self. As a guide to the range of human possibility it is grimly reductive. It will help you deal with your private shames and pains, but it won't generally have much to say about your society and your purpose on earth. [...] Such a confinement of desire and possibility to the private serves the status quo as well: it describes no role for citizenship and no need for social change or engagement.

Platitudes and shallow niceness aren’t going to get us anywhere in the face of violent, hateful propaganda funded and fuelled by rich white supremacists entering office and running massive media organisations. These are assholes who do not deserve your good graces and while being informed is good and requires attention, mete it out sparingly; it is better spent within and for your community. Be fuelled by whatever you need to be: hope, anger, spite but let it all materially manifest as kindness where it counts. It is never too late to start being there for your community because when it comes down to it, your neighbour and your community are going to be the ones you will be relying on - act like it.

Thank you, as ever, for being here. It is strange times we live in and every day I am assured in my moral clarity. I refuse to be swayed by messages of violence, dismay and hopelessness. If a motherfucker wants me hopeless you can bet your last dollar I will never give in. They want our hope because it is dangerous to them. I don’t say it enough but I love you. Take that and put it into the world.