On Being Nice Read online

  On Being Nice

  Most books that want to change us seek to make us richer or thinner. This book wants to help us to be nicer: that is, less irritable, more patient, readier to listen, warmer, less prickly … Niceness may not have the immediate allure of money or fame, but it is a hugely important quality nevertheless and one that we neglect at our peril. This is a guidebook to the uncharted landscape of niceness, gently leading us around the key themes of this forgotten quality. We learn how to be charitable, how to forgive, how to be natural and how to reassure. We learn that niceness is compatible with strength and is no indicator of naivety. Niceness deserves to be rediscovered as one of the highest of all human achievements.

  Contents

  I. Why We Don’t Really Want to Be Nice

  1. The Legacy of Christianity: Nice but Weak

  2. The Legacy of Romanticism: Nice but Boring

  3. The Legacy of Capitalism: Nice but Bankrupt

  4. The Legacy of Eroticism: Nice but Unsexy

  II. Kindness

  1. Charity

  2. The Weakness of Strength

  3. Losers and Tragic Heroes

  4. Motives

  5. Suffering and Meanness

  6. Politeness

  III. Charm

  1. What Is the Purpose of Friendship?

  2. The Problem of Over-Friendliness

  3. How to Overcome Shyness

  4. Why Affectionate Teasing Is Kind and Necessary

  5. How to Be Warm

  6. Why Flirting Matters

  7. Why Kind People Always Lie

  8. How to Be a Good Listener

  9. How to Be Open-Minded

  10. How Not to Be Boring

  11. How to Talk about Yourself

  12. How Not to Rant

  13. The Charm of Vulnerability

  14. The Ultimate Test of Your Social Skills

  I.

  Why We Don’t Really Want to Be Nice

  Setting out to try to become a nicer person sounds like a deeply colourless and dispiriting ambition. In theory, we love niceness, but in practice, the concept appears to be embarrassingly anodyne, meek, tedious and even sexless. Being a nice person sounds like something we would try to be only once every other more arduous and more rewarding alternative had failed.

  Our suspicion of niceness may feel personal, but it has a long history, bearing the sediment of at least four major cultural currents that we should try to understand:

  1

  The Legacy of Christianity: Nice but Weak

  For centuries, Christianity was the single most powerful force shaping our intellectual horizons, and it was profoundly committed to promoting niceness to the world. With the finest aesthetic and intellectual resources, it sang the praises of forgiveness, charity, tenderness and empathy.

  But – unfortunately for niceness – Christianity didn’t simply leave it there. It also suggested that there might be a fundamental opposition between being nice and being successful. Successful people, believers were told, were not, on the whole, very nice people – and nice people were not, on the whole, very successful. It seemed that applicants to the Kingdom of Heaven had a choice to make: niceness or success.

  This dichotomy deeply tarnished the appeal of niceness to anyone with the faintest spark of healthy, worldly ambition in their hearts. Christianity might have been striving to enthuse people about niceness, but by connecting it up so firmly with failure, it created an enduring feeling that this quality was chiefly of interest to losers.

  2

  The Legacy of Romanticism: Nice but Boring

  For the last 200 years, we have been heavily influenced by the cultural movement known as Romanticism. For the Romantics, the admirable person has been synonymous with the exciting person: someone intense and creative, mercurial and spontaneous; someone who might upset tradition and dare to be forceful, or even rude, while following the call of their own hearts.

  The diametric opposite of this heroic figure was, for the Romantics, someone mild and respectable, guarded and conservative, unflashy and quiet: in other words, the boring person. Here, too, there has seemed a radical choice to be made: either fiery, unpredictable and brilliant; or meek, conventional and in bed by nine.

  3

  The Legacy of Capitalism: Nice but Bankrupt

  To this charge sheet of niceness, capitalism added another indictment; presenting an interpretation of the world as a deeply competitive arena in which all companies were committed to forge continuous battle for market share, in an atmosphere marked by ruthlessness, determination and impatience. Those who succeeded had to know how to destroy the competition and handle the workforce without a trace of emotion. A nice person, unwilling to squeeze wages or outwit an opponent, would end up either bankrupt or in the mailroom.

  4

  The Legacy of Eroticism: Nice but Unsexy

  A final, more personal, association hangs over niceness: the belief that the nice can’t be sexually desirable, because the qualities that make us sexy are bound up with the possession of brutal, domineering, confident edges at odds with the tenderness and cosiness of the nice. Once again, an awkward choice presents itself: between the pleasant friend with whom to go to the park and the dangerous companion with whom to disappear to the dungeon.

  Despite all this, the truth is that we like niceness very much and depend upon it even more. It is just that our true memories of niceness have been suppressed by a culture that unfairly makes us feel unintelligent for lending niceness our approval. All of the qualities we have been taught to think of as opposed to niceness are in fact highly compatible with and, at points, highly dependent upon it.

  However much we are committed to success, for long portions of our lives we are intensely vulnerable creatures wholly at the mercy of the gentleness of others. We are only ever able to be successful because other people – usually our mothers – have given up a good share of their lives to being nice to us.

  As for excitement, this too can only be a phase, as all those who have ever made real contributions to humankind know. Quiet days, domestic routine and regular bedtimes are the necessary preconditions of creative highs. There is nothing more sterile than a demand that life be constantly exciting.

  For its part, capitalism may reward competition between firms, but it relies on collaboration within them. No company can function long without trust and bonds of personal affection. Much to the frustration of bosses, money cannot guarantee the commitment required from employees in all the more sophisticated areas of the economy; only meaning and a spirit of companionship will.

  Lastly, the sexual thrill of nastiness only ever properly entices in conditions of trust. However much we may fantasise about a night with a ruthless conqueror, it would be alarming to wind up with an actual example. We need to know that someone is fundamentally kind before an offer of a rope and the sound of swear words become properly interesting.

  So much of what we value is in fact preserved by niceness and is compatible with it. We can be nice and successful; nice and exciting; nice and wealthy, and nice and potent. Niceness is a virtue awaiting our rediscovery and our renewed, unconflicted appreciation.

  II.

  Kindness

  1

  Charity

  At its most basic, charity means offering someone something they need but can’t get for themselves. That is normally understood to mean something material; we overwhelmingly associate charity with giving money.

  The heroes of Christianity are exemplars of such charity. Outside the city, St Francis comes across a poor man. His garments are thin and ragged. Winter is coming on and coats are expensive. The saint is moved to charity and hands over his cloak.

  But, at its core, charity goes far beyond finance. I
t is in our relations with colleagues, friends and family members that charity becomes particularly necessary. Here what we tend to be short of is charity of interpretation: that is, a kindly perspective on the weaknesses, eccentricities, anxieties and follies that we present but are unable to win direct sympathy for.

  A charitable soul does the extra work for us. They come forward with explanations of why we behave as we do: they understand enough about our past to have a picture of where our impatience or over-ambition, rashness or meekness come from. They hold in mind what happened with our parents and with the move to another country. They create a picture of who the person in the ‘begging’ position is that is sufficiently generous and complex as to make us more than just the ‘fool’ or ‘weirdo’, the ‘failure’ or ‘loser’ that we might otherwise so easily have been dismissed as.

  The genuinely charitable person gives generously from a sense that they too will stand in need of charity. Not right now, not over this, but in some other area. They know that self-righteousness is merely the result of a faulty memory, an inability to hold in mind – at moments when one is truly good and totally in the right – how often one has been deeply and definitively in the wrong.

  Charity remembers how there might still be virtue amid much evil. Charity keeps in mind that if someone is tired and stressed, they are liable to behave appallingly. Charity is aware that when someone shouts an insult, they are not usually revealing the secret truth about their feelings; they are trying to wound the other because they feel they have been hurt – usually by someone else who they don’t have the authority to injure back.

  Charity is interested in mitigating circumstances; in parts of the truth that can cast a less catastrophic light on our follies.

  In financial matters, charity tends to flow in one direction. The philanthropist may be very generous, but usually they stay rich; they are habitually the giver rather than the recipient. But in life as a whole, and especially in relationships, charity is unlikely to end up one-sided: who is weak and who is powerful can change rapidly and frequently. You are likely to be, as it were, a ‘patron’ in one area and a ‘beggar’ in another. So we must be kind not only because we are touched by the suffering of others but because we properly understand that we are never too far from being in need of an equally vital dose of charity to get through life.

  2

  The Weakness of Strength

  To help us in our efforts to be kind, it can help to consider a theory known as the Weakness of Strength. The failings of friends, colleagues and partners can be deeply galling. We become close to them because of their skills and merits, but after a while it can be the disappointing sides of their personalities that dominate our view of them.

  We look upon their faults and wonder why they are the way they are. Why so slow? Why so unreliable? How can they be so bad at explaining things or telling an anecdote? Why can’t they face bad news straight on? Even worse, we feel they could change – if only they really wanted to; if only they weren’t so mean …

  The Weakness of Strength theory dictates that we should strive to see people’s weaknesses as the inevitable downside of certain merits that drew us to them, and from which we will benefit at other points, even if these benefits are not apparent right now. What we are seeing are not their faults, pure and simple, but rather the shadow side of things that are genuinely good about them. We’re picking up on weaknesses that derive from strengths. If we were to write down a list of strengths and then of weaknesses, we’d find that almost everything on the positive side could be connected with something on the negative side.

  In the 1870s, when he was living in Paris, the American novelist Henry James became a good friend of the celebrated Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev, who was also living in the city at that time. Henry James was particularly taken by the unhurried, tranquil style of the Russian writer’s storytelling. He obviously took a long time over every sentence, weighing different options, changing and polishing, until everything was perfect. It was an ambitious, inspiring approach to writing.

  But in personal and social life, these same virtues could make Turgenev a maddening companion. He’d accept an invitation to lunch; then – the day before – send a note explaining that he would be unable to attend; then another saying how much he looked forward to the occasion. Then he would turn up, two hours late. Arranging anything with him was a nightmare, yet his social waywardness was really just the same thing that made him so attractive as a writer. It was the same unwillingness to hurry; the same desire to keep the options open until the last moment. This produced marvellous books – and dinner party chaos. In reflecting on Turgenev’s character, Henry James reflected that his Russian friend was exhibiting the ‘weakness of his strength.’

  The theory goes like this: every strength that an individual has brings with it a weakness of which it is an inherent part. It is impossible to have strengths without weaknesses. Every virtue has an associated weakness. Not all the virtues can belong together in a single person.

  This is a theory that can help calm us down at moments of particular crisis, because it changes the way we see the defects, failings and weaknesses of others. Our minds tend to hive off the strengths and see these as essential while deeming the weaknesses as a freakish add-on, but, in truth, the weaknesses are part and parcel of the strengths.

  This theory usefully undermines the unhelpful idea that, if only we looked a bit harder, we would find someone who was always perfect to be around. If strengths are invariably connected to failings, there won’t be anyone who is remotely flawless. We may well find people with different strengths, but they will also have a new litany of weaknesses. It is always calming to take a moment to remind ourselves that perfect people don’t exist.

  3

  Losers and Tragic Heroes

  Our societies are very interested in winners but don’t really know what to do about losers – of which there are always, by definition, many more.

  For a long time, around success and failure, the rhetoric tends to be very upbeat. We hear about resilience, bouncing back, never surrendering and giving it another go. But there’s only so long this kind of talk can go on. At some point, the conclusion becomes inevitable: things won’t work out. The political career is not going to have a comeback. There’ll be no way of getting finance for the film. The novel won’t be accepted by the 32nd publisher. The criminal charges will always taint one’s reputation.

  Where does responsibility for success and failure lie? Nowadays, the answer tends to be: squarely with the individual concerned. That is why failure is not only hard (and it always has been), but a catastrophe. There is no metaphysical consolation, no possibility of appealing to an idea of ‘bad luck’, no one to blame but oneself. No wonder suicide rates climb exponentially once societies modernise and start to hold people responsible for their biographies. Meritocracies turn failure from a misfortune into an unbudgeable verdict on one’s nature.

  But not all societies and eras have seen success and failure in such a stark light. In Ancient Greece, another remarkable possibility – quite ignored by our own era – was envisaged: you could be good and yet fail. To keep this idea at the front of the collective imagination, the Ancient Greeks developed a particular art form: tragic drama. They put on huge festivals, which all citizens were expected to attend, to act out stories of appalling, often grisly, failure. People were seen to break a minor law, or make a hasty decision, or sleep with the wrong person, and the result was ignominy and death. What happened was shown to be to a large extent in the hands of what the Greeks called ‘fate’ or ‘the Gods’. It was the Greeks’ poetic way of saying that things often work out in random ways, according to dynamics that don’t reflect the merits of the individuals concerned.

  In The Poetics, the philosopher Aristotle (384– 322 BC) defined the key ingredients of tragedy. The hero of the tragedy should be a decent person: ‘better than average’, often high-born but prone to making small mistakes. At the start, it may
not be obvious that they are making an error. But by an unfortunate chain of events, for which they are not wholly to blame, this small mistake leads to a catastrophe.

  Tragedy is the sympathetic, morally complex, account of how good people can end up in disastrous situations. It is the very opposite of today’s tabloid newspapers or social media, where the mob rushes to make judgements on those who have slipped up. Aristotle thought it extremely important that people see tragic works on a regular basis to counter their otherwise strong inclinations to judge and moralise. Aristotle thought a good tragedy should inspire both pity and fear: pity for the tragic hero based on an understanding of how easy it is to make the slip that leads to disaster; and fear for oneself as one realises how open our lives are to careering out of control. All of us could quite quickly come apart if ever events chose to test us.

  Tragedy is meant to be a corrective to easy judgement. It exists to counter our natural instincts to admire only the successful, to spurn those who fail, and to dismiss unfortunates as losers.

  We are currently uncomfortable around the idea of a good person not succeeding. We’d rather say that they weren’t good than embrace a far more disturbing and less well-publicised thought: that the world is very unfair. But without the idea of tragedy, we make existence for everyone far crueller and more judgemental than it need be.

  4

  Motives

  A fundamental path to remaining calm and kind around people, even in very challenging situations, is being able to distinguish between what someone does and what they meant to do. In law, the difference is enshrined in the contrasting concepts of murder and manslaughter. The result may be the same; the body is inert in a pool of blood. But we collectively feel it makes a huge difference what the perpetrator’s intentions were.