Why is it nice to be nice?

[sees]

Yes the chemical reward motive for being kind is woefully ridiculous!   Think about it....who goes to all the effort of, say, putting on a surprise party for someone (with all that this entails) just for a chemical 'hit'!?   Clearly the motive here is to do something nice for someone i.e. making another person happy - a humane, loving act!

Edited November 11, 2017 by sees

[SHaYap]

12 hours ago, XenoFish said:

It doesn't pay to be nice.

Depends on what 'pay' is defined here, I know a couple of Receptionists that are paid very well and nicely too just to smile and be helpful on a 9 to 5 day ...

~

Anyhow, for the rest of those in other professions, maybe its for nothing more than a pleasant exchange of heartfelt sincere smiles ...

~

[Essan]

Take a look at today's news.    If everyone was nice, journalists would be out of a job  

[sees]

43 minutes ago, Essan said:

Take a look at today's news.    If everyone was nice, journalists would be out of a job  

Bad news sells....

here is the alternative...pick your focus! 

https://www.positive.news/

Edited November 11, 2017 by sees

[XenoFish]

1 hour ago, third_eye said:

Depends on what 'pay' is defined here, I know a couple of Receptionists that are paid very well and nicely too just to smile and be helpful on a 9 to 5 day ...

~They get paid to be 'nice' doesn't mean they're actually nice.

Anyhow, for the rest of those in other professions, maybe its for nothing more than a pleasant exchange of heartfelt sincere smiles ...

~If you want repeat customers you've got to fake the smile and pleasant attitude.

Sorry but people are driven by their own selfish motivation. Being nice is just an attempt to prevent someone from beating you or killing you. Maybe being nice is also a way to secure a chance to breed and/or survival. Every times someone's been nice to me, they have either wanted something, or had bad news to tell me. I don't trust nice people, I don't trust people for that matter. 

Edited November 11, 2017 by XenoFish

[sees]

I would suggest that someone who doesn't trust people is already cynical and not best placed to accurately appraise the more humane qualities that we have.

Of course there MAY be ulterior motives operating when people are nice, but that is the exception I feel.  I have experienced amazing acts of kindness that had no hidden agenda. 

I wrote about an outstanding/exceptional experience of kindness given unexpectedly to me (by 2 different strangers within the same hour!) in this blog of mine... 

 

 

Edited November 11, 2017 by sees

[SHaYap]

1 hour ago, XenoFish said:

Sorry but people are driven by their own selfish motivation. Being nice is just an attempt to prevent someone from beating you or killing you. Maybe being nice is also a way to secure a chance to breed and/or survival. Every times someone's been nice to me, they have either wanted something, or had bad news to tell me. I don't trust nice people, I don't trust people for that matter. 

Be that as it may be, if its for a better common cause, I guess I cut the selfishness a bit of slack I guess ...

~

[Will Due]

Being nice isn't being nice at all. 

I was once involved with discussing this issue on another forum and became curious what the Bible had to say about being nice. So I did a word search on one of those Bible search engines for the word "nice."

Results: 0

 

 

[rashore]

13 minutes ago, Will Due said:

Being nice isn't being nice at all. 

I was once involved with discussing this issue on another forum and became curious what the Bible had to say about being nice. So I did a word search on one of those Bible search engines for the word "nice."

Results: 0

 

 

Maybe that's because the word nice wasn't around when the various biblical books were written.

[Illyrius]

20 hours ago, Still Waters said:

The benefits gained from receiving kindness are intuitively obvious. But the motivations for engaging in kindness are much less so. In fact, the very existence of kindness and altruism seems to contradict Darwin’s theory of evolution, based as it is on a competitive process of natural selection in which only the fittest survive.

So how could kind behaviour have evolved – and why was it not eliminated by natural selection? Many theorists have grappled with this problem over the years. We review the most prominent ideas below.

https://theconversation.com/why-is-it-nice-to-be-nice-solving-darwins-puzzle-of-kindness-85055

It is nice to receive kindness. It makes you feel good about yourself and accepted. However i think that people are generally and genuinely kind only to people which share a worldview similar to their own. People are hostile to people whose ideas they find as wrong. I hate the doctrine of Darwin and personally I avoid people which are adherent to that doctrine, I am not hostile towards them, only ignoring them.

Kind behaviour, in my personal opinion evolved as a support to people who think in a similar way and hold a similar worldview. Or as a support to people who guaranty security of community. People are not kind, at least not sincerely to people of a different worldview. They can tolerate to certain extent different opinions but that is really just a tolerance which can easily become hostility if the boundaries of tolerance are transpassed.

Edited November 11, 2017 by Mr. Argon

[simplybill]

There is a difference between being 'nice' and being 'kind'. Being nice is a personality trait that may change with the situation, whereas being kind is more of a character trait, a quality that remains in place even in difficult situations. The Book of Proverbs in the Old Testament has a couple of verses that provide balance to our idea of 'niceness':

"Faithful are the wounds of a friend, But deceitful are the kisses of an enemy."  (Prov. 27:6 NASB)   There are times when being kind comes in the form of a sharp rebuke that doesn't sound nice at all, but may be a life-changing event for the recipient. One occasion in my own life was back in my drinking days when a co-worker bluntly said to me, "You're an alcoholic. I can say that because I'm an alcoholic too." My co-worker had been sober for a long time, and his harsh words had the weight of knowledge and wisdom behind them. His rebuke pretty well dispelled any illusions I had that I was a mere social drinker. (I was averaging 12 or more beers per day.)

and:

"What is desirable in a man is his kindness, and it is better to be a poor man than a liar." (Prov. 19:22 NASB)  The original Hebrew word for "kindness" is interchangeable with the word "loyalty". Genuine kindness doesn't give us the option to be flattering toward someone in order to gain an advantage. Our honest assessment of another person's behavior may come across to them as mean or judgmental, and may end a friendship, but the long-term effect will qualify the delivery and hopefully give the recipient a different perspective on their destructive behaviors.  

  

 

[Illyrius]

7 minutes ago, simplybill said:

"You're an alcoholic. I can say that because I'm an alcoholic too." My co-worker had been sober for a long time, and his harsh words had the weight of knowledge and wisdom behind them. His rebuke pretty well dispelled any illusions I had that I was a mere social drinker. (I was averaging 12 or more beers per day.)

It is good to be sincere and not falsely "kind or nice."

[sees]

33 minutes ago, Mr. Argon said:

It is good to be sincere and not falsely "kind or nice."

Yes and it seems some people have difficulty that others can be sincerely kind or nice i.e. that it's not pretension.

[Will Due]

It's nice to be nice if you're Hillary Cinton. She does it because she's a criminal. She does it for cover.

Donald Trump is not nice. Thank God.

 

 

[The Silver Thong]

Strength  in numbers.  Back in the day if you saved another with food or water they were able to hunt another day. You only thin the herd when it's a burden. So being nice can also be greedy as it benefits ones self.  Or it just makes you feel good.  Is being nice the same as empathy  

[Peter B]

11 hours ago, Mr. Argon said:

It is nice to receive kindness. It makes you feel good about yourself and accepted. However i think that people are generally and genuinely kind only to people which share a worldview similar to their own. People are hostile to people whose ideas they find as wrong. I hate the doctrine of Darwin and personally I avoid people which are adherent to that doctrine, I am not hostile towards them, only ignoring them.

Kind behaviour, in my personal opinion evolved as a support to people who think in a similar way and hold a similar worldview. Or as a support to people who guaranty security of community. People are not kind, at least not sincerely to people of a different worldview. They can tolerate to certain extent different opinions but that is really just a tolerance which can easily become hostility if the boundaries of tolerance are transpassed.

Out of interest, how do you behave towards people you don't know? Do you ask them if they're adherents to the doctrine of Darwin to work out whether to be kind to them or ignore them? Or do you take the risk of being kind to people without knowing whether they're Darwinists? :-)

And regarding the bolded quote from your second paragraph, there's something cheerfully ironic that your view of kindness is very similar to Darwinist Richard Dawkins's view of kindness.

[Illyrius]

1 minute ago, Peter B said:

Out of interest, how do you behave towards people you don't know? Do you ask them if they're adherents to the doctrine of Darwin to work out whether to be kind to them or ignore them? Or do you take the risk of being kind to people without knowing whether they're Darwinists? :-)

And regarding the bolded quote from your second paragraph, there's something cheerfully ironic that your view of kindness is very similar to Darwinist Richard Dawkins's view of kindness.

I am suspicious to people I don't know. I take a risk, and if I discover they are Darwinists i run away breaking the world athletic record of sprint on 100 m. I can't break the record of 200 m, but still trying. I am far more cheerfully ironic than them.

[XenoFish]

13 hours ago, third_eye said:

Be that as it may be, if its for a better common cause, I guess I cut the selfishness a bit of slack I guess ...

~

People do good and kind things because it makes them feel good, that's selfish in and of itself. Because they seek that feel good rush. Kindness and being nice can become a habit due to it being a reward seeking behavior.

[SHaYap]

2 hours ago, XenoFish said:

People do good and kind things because it makes them feel good, that's selfish in and of itself. Because they seek that feel good rush. Kindness and being nice can become a habit due to it being a reward seeking behavior.

Well ... there is nice and there is 'right' as in the right thing to do, in a sense of 'proper' ... doesn't always feels good but there you have it ...

~

[LightAngel]

19 hours ago, sees said:

  I have experienced amazing acts of kindness that had no hidden agenda. 

 

 

 

True.

I think true kindness comes when we have empathy. Only then can we give without wanting anything back.

[Illyrius]

15 hours ago, sees said:

Yes and it seems some people have difficulty that others can be sincerely kind or nice i.e. that it's not pretension.

Yes. Personally I can be sencirely kind of nice too some people. And I avoid to the maximum to be falsely kind or nice, but perhaps sometimes i fail in that endeaovur. Not too often.

Edited November 12, 2017 by Mr. Argon

[sees]

I would suggest that it is patently evident that people are nice NOT just because it makes them feel good but because they care/have empathy and would like to please someone!  To overlook this is to undermine the main motive!

Edited November 12, 2017 by sees

[Crazy Horse]

18 hours ago, Will Due said:

It's nice to be nice if you're Hillary Cinton. She does it because she's a criminal. She does it for cover.

Donald Trump is not nice. Thank God.

 

 

I understand what you are saying here Will, some folk do use the fake smile, whilst delivering the fake news for example lol. But thats not really niceness, more like phoneniness, deceit, fraud, and or hypocracy.. And more and more folk are seeing straight through this falseness.

On a side note, apparently Hillary is going to hand herself in tomorrow!

 

[Crazy Horse]

Maybe in this instance we are all over thinking it?

I mean, we all have different reasons for being nice depending on the context and situation and our own personality type etc. So trying to pin down the reason, exactly, isn't so important, perhaps we should focus on the results of folk acting in a genuinely nice way to each other?

Actually, thinking about it, the more genuine I am, the more other folk appreciate the effort, and the greater my sense of happiness too!

 

[sees]

5 minutes ago, Crazy Horse said:

Maybe in this instance we are all over thinking it?

I mean, we all have different reasons for being nice depending on the context and situation and our own personality type etc. So trying to pin down the reason, exactly, isn't so important, perhaps we should focus on the results of folk acting in a genuinely nice way to each other?

Actually, thinking about it, the more genuine I am, the more other folk appreciate the effort, and the greater my sense of happiness too!

 

Yes, I fully accept that some people may only ever be nice for ulterior motives.  It occurred to me just before reading your post.  

Being genuine is a lovely quality i.e. authentic.... I appreciate this quality and also have it. It's akin to being honest.  I find it makes people feel comfortable with me - that they know where they are with me - no pretensions (i.e. it involves being honest about self, admitting shortcomings etc).

Edited November 12, 2017 by sees