We all know a 'nice' person. Someone who cares not to offend or fuss. Someone who can talk at lengths about nothing, were the furthest permitted level of debate is that of non-political dietary choices. The ought and unthinkables of our choices of pizza topping, for example. They know everything in the mainstream, or rather they touch the mainstream, knowing just enough to vaguely graze conversation without ever having to assert a fact of consequential culture. If an autistic search for assertoric knowledge is conducted it is done through easy-to-digest video essays within the lore of pop-culture theology.
'Nice' people don't care about who they are, but instinctively defer to their status as a cog in a wider security system. The system which provides constant physiological engagement, without the trouble of existential engagement. Every fashion outsourced to the group, mental anguish suppressed by medication and all romance within a eugenically convenient and commutable distance.
As a matter of fact, most people are 'nice' people.
What is 'niceness'? What makes a person 'nice'?
The decider of 'niceness' is the distributed system of other 'nice' people. To be 'nice', a person must meet 3 requirements:
The person must be considered inoffensive to other 'nice' people.
The person must adhere to mainstream thought, culture, ceremonies and attitudes without knowing much about them.
The person must be able and willing to heuristically adapt to the fluctuating nature of requirement 2.
A 'nice' person is an agent of the state and they don't even know it. As a matter of fact, unconscious agents are far more valuable and robust than those who are aware of their allegiances and the implications of them.
'Nice' person are the great invention of hominid social technology. The revolution which allowed us to band together and subdue or exterminate all other hominids. The 'nice' person isn't the aggressive mutation which finally slays the mammoth for the glory of the tribe, but they are one of the mass who startled it.
Behind every dream of utopia lies legions of 'nice' participants, all unquestionably fanatical. Once power meets a critical mass 'nice' people start acting as if things were never different. They are the great mass of humanity who must deal with the implications of the abstract ideals of the revolution on the ground. Utopia, a "monopolistic type of thought", has a "relative remoteness from the open conflicts of everyday life".1 As does the 'nice' person, although they are implicit agents of the regime they never have to fight the same battles as zealots. They simply do the cleanup, keeping calm and carrying on.
Civilization has urbanized, industrialized and digitized the training of 'nice' people. Furthermore, this rearing has commenced at a younger and younger age. To be, and be surrounded by, 'nice' people was once a privilege of the upper classes. The emergence of the educated and mercantile middle class expanded the remit of this imperative. The domesticity and consumerism of this class driving 'nice' more extreme in its 'niceness'. Lastly, the abolition of child labor and the expansion of the state into education pushed the insistence of 'nicety' into a much earlier age. Any pretense at boyhood was destroyed as the systems of compulsive state education became more feminized to run parallel with the ideal of 'nice'. "For the training of men, as of animals, can be completely successful only in early youth".2 After this, technology came into a personality-shredding form with the social advent of personalized digital presences. In spaces both physical and digital it is imperative to eugenical realism that one is 'nice' or else one might be, quite frankly, 'scaring the hoes'. This is now to the extent where eugenically realist mechanisms have a part in the selection which favors 'nice' genetic stock. That is, intellectually inoffensive, subservient and docile. The protocols of so called 'traditional' societies would wince at our current intersection of technological selection and social rigidity.
'Nice' has subdued its targets lower attention through high technology. The talons of these mental compulsions have become evermore pervasive and automatic as they have become increasingly high fidelity and portable. Schopenhauer noted: "much reading robs the mind of all elasticity [...] and that is the surest way of never having any thoughts of your own is to pick up a book everytime you have a free moment".3 This makes you wonder what he would have said about the smartphone. No longer content to be mentally stimulated, the technicolor and audio-visual system fills time expenditure. Contemporary technologies exploit the desires of our physiological bodies to achieve 'nice' goals. This is done through personalized comedy, curiosity, shock and pornography. Today, contrary to Schopenhauer's concerns, we aspire to the ability to concentrate on a book and absorb the infinitely more verbose thoughts contained within.
'Niceness' has reoriented our spaces and fashions, the television completely changed how people arrange their households. Entertainment is of prime importance and is reflected in the slobbish and unoriginal ways people choose to dress. To avoid the oppressive moral anxiety and time wastage of 'nice', despite the risk of being singled out for the schadenfreude by the mass, you need to start judging books by their covers: "Style is the physiognomy of the mind. It is less deceptive than that of the body."4
The tyranny of 'niceness' is, however, no original invention of civilization. It is simply the intensification of our natural heuristic judgment systems through social and technological development. In order to conserve energy, time and security the human animal defers to the superficial:
"Healthy hair is something all humans look for, even on a subconscious level, hair that is dirty, unkempt, pulled out, or uncared for may suggest poor health or even mental illness. Hair attracts, entices, conforms, repels, or shocks."5
This is why scams are so easy to pull.
This judgment of what isn't 'nice' has also, naturally, locked into the seeking and pleasure systems of the human animal. The disgust of that which doesn't fit into 'niceness' is often an aberration to the underlying will of life. As the tribes of the world have grown exponentially larger this viciousness of 'nice' becomes apparent in its tendency to mass rejection and mob justice. Humanity has become so 'nice' that it has reverted to savagery through domesticity. The mob, the zeitgeist, takes a perverse pleasure in the failure of that which doesn't fit the heuristic: "The worst trait in human nature [...] Schadenfreude".6
Deriding what is unique is a learned habit. Children often approach the unusual with curiosity, an adult cannot resist contextualizing within their lack of imagination. Adults socialize their children to know their place. We all know humans cannot fly.
Those without convictional challenge ('nice' people) might as well be considered bad people. A stray leaf is easily blown by even the slightest of wind. A nudge of incentive can incline a critical mass towards righteous genocide. The most daring thing these people do is put "jedi" on their census form.
Most of human history has been 'nice' by its own standards. Only Occidental culture has allowed for a prolonged and systematic critique of itself. If this is true, for nothing else, then therein lies the incentive for those who are rebels against 'niceness' to preserve what remains of it.
Mannheim, K. (2015). Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. Translated by Wirth, L. and Shils, E. Martino Publishing. p.10
Schopenhauer, A. (2014). Essays and Aphorisms. Translated by Hollingdale, R.J. London: Penguin Classics. p.177 On Psychology, 24.
Ibid. p.90 On Thinking for Yourself.
Ibid. p.202 On Books and Writing.
Navarro, J. (2018). The Dictionary Of Body Language. Harper Thorsons. p.10
Schopenhauer, A. (2014). Essays and Aphorisms. Translated by Hollingdale, R.J. London: Penguin Classics. p.139 On Ethics.