On Being Nice Read online

  We care about intentions for a very good reason: if the action was deliberate, then the perpetrator will be a persistent source of danger from whom the community must be protected. But if it was accidental, then the perpetrator will be inclined to deep apology and restitution, which renders punishment and rage far less necessary. Picture yourself in a restaurant where the waiter has spilt a glass of wine on your laptop. The damage is severe and your rage starts to mount. But whether this was an accident or a willing strategy is key to an appropriate response. A concerted desire to spill signals that the waiter needs to be confronted head-on. You may have to take radical, defensive steps, like shouting at them or calling for help. But if it was an accident, then the person isn’t your enemy. There’s no need to swear at them. In fact, it makes a lot of sense to be forgiving and kindly, because benevolence will imminently be heading your way.

  Motives are therefore crucial. Unfortunately, we are seldom good at perceiving what motives are involved in the incidents that hurt us. We are easily and wildly mistaken. We see intention where there was none and escalate and confront when no strenuous or agitated responses are warranted.

  Part of the reason why we jump so readily to dark conclusions and see plots to insult and harm us is a rather poignant psychological phenomenon: self-hatred. The less we like ourselves, the more we appear in our own eyes as plausible targets for mockery and harm. Why would a drill have started up outside just as we were settling down to work? Why is the room service breakfast not arriving, even though we will have to be in a meeting very soon? Why would the phone operator be taking so long to find our details? Because there is, logically enough, a plot against us. Because we are appropriate targets for these kinds of things; because we are the sorts of people against whom disruptive drilling is legitimately likely to be directed; because it’s what we deserve.

  When we carry an excess of self-disgust around with us, operating just below the radar of conscious awareness, we constantly seek confirmation from the wider world that we really are the worthless people we take ourselves to be. The expectation is almost always set in childhood, where someone close to us is likely to have left us feeling dirty and culpable. As a result, we now travel through society assuming the worst, not because it is necessarily true (or pleasant) to do so, but because it feels familiar; because we are the prisoners of past patterns we haven’t yet understood.

  Small children sometimes behave in stunningly unfair ways: they scream at the person looking after them, angrily push away a bowl of animal pasta, throw away something you have just fetched for them. But we rarely feel personally agitated or wounded by their behaviour, because we don’t assign a negative motive or mean intention to a small person. We reach around for the most benevolent interpretations. We don’t think they are doing it in order to upset us. We probably think that they are getting tired, or their gums are sore, or they are upset by the arrival of a younger sibling. We have a large repertoire of alternative explanations ready in our heads, none of which leads us to panic or become agitated.

  This is the reverse of what tends to happen around adults. Here we imagine that people have deliberately got us in their sights. If someone edges in front of us in the airport queue, it’s natural to suppose they have sized us up and reasoned that they can safely take advantage of us. They probably relish the thought of causing us a little distress. But if we employed the infant model of interpretation, our first assumption would be quite different: maybe they didn’t sleep well last night and are too exhausted to think straight; maybe they’ve got a sore knee; maybe they are doing the equivalent of testing the boundaries of parental tolerance: is jumping in front of someone in the queue playing the same role as peeing in the garden? Seen from such a point of view, the adult’s behaviour doesn’t magically become nice or acceptable. But the level of agitation is kept safely low. It’s very touching that we live in a world where we have learned to be so kind to children: it would be even nicer if we learned to be more generous towards the childlike parts of one another.

  The French philosopher Émile-Auguste Chartier (known as Alain; 1868–1951) was said to be the finest teacher in France in the first half of the 20th century. He developed a formula for calming himself and his pupils down in the face of irritating people. ‘Never say that people are evil,’ he wrote; ‘You just need to look for the pin.’ What he meant was: look for the source of the agony that drives a person to behave in appalling ways. The calming thought is to imagine that they are suffering off-stage, in some area we cannot see. To be mature is to learn to imagine this zone of pain, in spite of the lack of available evidence. They may not look as if they were maddened by an inner psychological ailment: they may look chirpy and full of themselves. But the ‘pin’ simply must be there, or they would not be causing us harm.

  Chartier was drawing on one of the great techniques of literary fiction: the ability to take us into the mind of a character – perhaps a very unglamorous or initially off-putting figure – and show us the powerful, but unexpected, things going on in their mind. It was a move a novelist like Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) was deeply excited by: he would take the kinds of characters that his readers would normally dismiss with a shudder – an outcast, a criminal, a gambler – and describe the complex depths of their inner lives, their capacity for remorse, their hopes, and their powers of sensitive perception.

  This move – the accurate, corrective, reimagining of the inner lives of others – is relevant far outside the realm of literary fiction. It’s a piece of empathetic reflection that we constantly need to perform with ourselves and with others. We need to imagine the turmoil, disappointment, worry and sadness in people who may outwardly appear merely aggressive. We need to aim compassion in an unexpected place: at those who annoy us most.

  5

  Suffering and Meanness

  It happens pretty much all the time: a small jabbing comment, a joke at our expense amid a group of old friends, a line of sarcasm, a sneering assessment, a provocative comment on the internet.

  These things hurt a lot – more than we’re ever allowed to admit. In the privacy of our minds, we search for explanations, but anything satisfying and soothing is usually hard to come by. We’re just left to puzzle at the casual inhumanity that circulates all around us, and suspect that it’s we who are somehow to blame for falling victim to it.

  This is what we should actually think – a truth as basic as it is inviolable: other people have been nasty because they are in pain. The only reason they have hurt us is because they are – somewhere deep inside – hurting themselves. They have been catty and derogatory and foul because they are not well. However outwardly confident they may look, however virile and robust they may appear, their actions are all the evidence we need that they cannot be in a good place. No one solid would ever need to do this. The thought is empowering because nastiness so readily humiliates and reduces us. It turns us into the small, damaged party. Without meaning to, we begin to imagine our bully as potent and even somehow impressive. Their vindictiveness demeans us. But the psychological explanation of evil at once reverses the power dynamic. It is you, who has no need to belittle, who is in fact the larger, steelier, more forceful party; you – who feels so defenceless – who is actually in power.

  The thought restores justice. It promises that the guilty party has, after all, been punished along the way. You might not have been able to right the scales personally (they had already left the room or kept the conversation flowing too fast for you to protest – and in any case, you’re not the sort to make a fuss). But a kind of punishment has been delivered cosmically already somewhere behind the scenes; their suffering, of which their need to inflict suffering on others is incontrovertible evidence, is all you need to know that they have been served their just desserts. You move from being a victim of crime to being an audience to an abstract form of justice. They may not be apologising to you, but they haven’t escaped freely either; their sulphur is proof that they pay a heavy price.
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  This is not merely a pleasant story. A person who feels at ease with themselves can have no need to distress others. We don’t have the energy to be cruel unless, and until, we are in inner torment.

  Along the way, this theory gives hints at how we might – when we have recovered from the blow – deal with those who dealt it. The temptation is to be stern and cruel back, but the only way to diminish the vicious cycle of hate is to address its origins, which lie in suffering. There is no point punching back. We must – as the old prophets always told us – learn to look upon our enemies with sorrow, pity and, when we can manage it, a forgiving kind of love.

  6

  Politeness

  For most of human history, the idea of being ‘polite’ has been central to our sense of what is required to count as a good and civilised person. But more recently, politeness has come under suspicion. While we may not reject it outright, it’s not a word we instinctively reach for when we want to explain why we like or admire someone. ‘Politeness’ can sometimes even carry almost the opposite of its traditional connotations, suggesting an offensive or insolent degree of insincerity and inauthenticity. A ‘polite’ person may be judged as a bit fake – and in their own way, really rather rude.

  The rise in our collective suspicion of politeness has a history. Politeness used to be a key virtue for young aristocrats, yet by the late 18th century it had been thrown into disrepute. An alternative, Romantic ideal had emerged, in large part driven by the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), who powerfully redescribed politeness as an indication of servility and outright deceit. What was important for Rousseau was never to hide or moderate emotions and thoughts, but to remain – at all times – fundamentally true to oneself.

  Rousseau’s writings generated highly influential new ideals of behaviour, to which we remain heirs. The Romantic suspicion of politeness was boosted further by the increasing role of the United States in global consciousness. Being direct and open came to be seen, by Americans themselves, as one of their chief national virtues – an attitude encapsulated in a climactic line from the 1939 film Gone with the Wind, when Rhett Butler turns to Scarlett O’Hara and tells her exactly how he sees it (‘Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn!’). And because America has been the world’s most influential culture for around a century and a half, its attitude towards politeness has been widely and pervasively disseminated around the planet ever since.

  What ultimately separates the Polite from the Frank person isn’t really knowledge of etiquette. The difference doesn’t hang upon considerations of which knife to use at a formal dinner, when to say ‘please’ or ‘thank you’, and how to word a wedding invitation. It comes down to a contrasting set of beliefs about human nature. The Polite and the Frank person behave differently chiefly because they see the world in highly divergent ways. These are some of the key ideological issues that separate them:

  Purity vs. Sin

  Frank people believe in the importance of expressing themselves honestly principally because they trust that what they think and feel will be fundamentally acceptable to the world. Their true sentiments and opinions may, when voiced, be bracing, but no worse. These Frank types assume that what is honestly avowed cannot ever be vindictive, disgusting, tedious or cruel. In this sense, the Frank person sees themselves a little in the way we typically see small children: as blessed by an original and innate goodness.

  Even the most etiquette-conscious among us don’t usually think that the strictures of politeness apply to the very young. We remain interested in whatever may be passing through these diminutive creatures’ minds and stay unalarmed by their awkward moments, infelicities or negative statements. If they say that the pasta is yuk or that the taxi driver has a head like a weird goldfish, it sounds funny rather than wounding. Their habit of addressing their stories to their teddy rather than to the adult sitting opposite them is just a touching sign of their free-spiritedness. It doesn’t matter that there is a stain on their T-shirt when they meet a stranger. The Frank person taps into this childlike optimism in their own uninhibited approach to themselves. Their trust in their basic purity erodes the rationale for editing or self-censorship. They can believe that everything about them will more or less prove fine, whatever they happen to say or do.

  The Polite person, by contrast, proceeds under a grave suspicion of themselves and their impulses. They sense that a great deal of what they feel and want isn’t very nice. They are in touch with their darker desires and can sense their fleeting wishes to hurt or humiliate certain people. They know they are sometimes a bit revolting and cannot forget the extent to which they may be offensive and frightening to others. They therefore set out on a deliberate strategy to protect others from what they know is within them. It isn’t lying as such. They merely understand that being ‘themselves’ is a threat they must take enormous pains to spare everyone else from experiencing – especially anyone they claim to care about.

  Paradoxically, the Polite person who is pessimistic about their own nature doesn’t in fact end up behaving horribly with anyone. So aware are they of their own unlikable sides, they nimbly minimise their impact upon the world. It is their extraordinary suspicion of themselves that helps them be uncommonly friendly, trustworthy and kind in everyday life.

  The Stranger is like Me vs.

  The Stranger is Other

  The Frank person operates with a charming unconscious assumption that other people are at heart pretty much like them; this can make them very clubbable and allows them to create some astonishing intimacies across social barriers at high speed. When they like listening to a particular piece of music at high volume, they will take it as obvious that you do as well. Because they are very enthusiastic about spicy food, or never want to add salt to a dish, it doesn’t cross their mind to ask if you actually like this restaurant or would favour a salt cellar on the table. They can tell you about a bodily function or an aspect of their sex life without knowing you too well, because they have faith that we are all much the same in our emotions in these areas. They are correspondingly undisturbed by the less obvious clues about some of the dissonant feelings that may be unfolding in the minds of other people: if someone is a bit quiet at a meeting, it doesn’t occur to the Frank person to worry that they might have said something wrong or badly misjudged the situation.

  For their part, the Polite person starts from the assumption that others are likely to be in quite different places internally, whatever the outward signs. Their behaviour is therefore tentative, wary and filled with enquiries. They will explicitly check up with others to take a measure of their experiences and outlook; if they feel cold, they are very alive to the possibility that you may be feeling perfectly warm and so will ask if you would mind if they closed the window. They are aware that you might be annoyed by a joke that they find funny or that you might hold sincere political opinions quite at odds with their own. They don’t take what is going on for them as a guide to what might be going on for you. Their manners are grounded in an acute sense of the gulf that can separate humans from one another.

  Robustness vs. Vulnerability

  The Frank person works with an underlying sense that other people are for the most part extremely robust internally. Those around them are not felt to be forever on the verge of self-doubt and self-hatred. Their egos are not assumed to be gossamer-thin and at perpetual risk of deflating. There is therefore understood to be no need to let out constant small signals of reassurance and affirmation. When you go to someone’s house, the fact that the meal was tasty will be obvious to everyone, not least the person who spent four and a half hours cooking it. There is no need to keep stressing the point in a variety of discreet ways. When one meets an artist, there’s no need to mention that their last work was noticed and appreciated; they’ll know that well enough. And the office junior must have a pretty clear sense that they are making the grade without a need to stop and spell it out. The Frank person assumes that everyone’s ego is al
ready as big and strong as it should be. They are even likely to suspect that if you praise someone for the little things, you will only inflate their self-regard to undue and dangerous proportions.

  The Polite person starts from a contrary assumption that all of us are permanently only millimetres away from inner collapse, despair and self-hatred. However confident we may look, we are painfully vulnerable – despite the outward plaudits and recognition – to a sense of being disliked and taken for granted. Every piece of neglect, every silence or slightly harsh or off-the-cuff word has a profound capacity to hurt. All of us are walking around without a skin. The cook, the artist and the office junior will inevitably share in a craving for evidence that what they do and are is OK. Accordingly, the Polite person will be drawn to spend a lot of time noticing and commenting positively on the most apparently minor facets of others’ achievements: they will say that the watercress soup was the best they’ve had in years; they’ll mention that the ending of the writer’s new novel made them cry; they’ll say that the work on the Mexico deal was helpful to, and noticed by, the whole company. They will know that everyone we come across has a huge capacity to hurt us with what we foolishly and unfairly refer to as ‘small things’.

  There is likely to be an associated underlying difference in attitudes to money and love in the context of work. For the Frank person, money is the crucial ingredient we want from other people in our professional lives. Therefore they don’t feel any great need – in service situations, for example – to express gratitude or take pains to create a semblance of equality with an employee. The waiter or the person at the car-hire desk has, they feel, no special need for kindness on top of the money they will already be getting from the transaction.