It's funny, I'm fond of claiming that I used to be "nice".
There's a line in a song called Handbags and Gladrags.
"Once I was a young man, and all I thought I had to do was smile". Yup.
When I heard that I laughed, I'm so glad I wasn't the only one with that plan! The truth is, possibly because it was a plan, rather than trusting it to my nature. I unbalanced myself somewhat. The basis of my plan for world dominance was multifarious, a lot of it was making up for "deficits", real or perceived.
There is such a thing as being nice, but as much as we are encouraged to fake it, it's kind of natural, or flows from the self. It can be a delicate balance from a more deliberate and conscious plan.
Like say, thinness, it's something we're encouraged to cultivate, or overemphasize. I think deep down I am a nice person. By that I mean, I've never had any real desire to be bad for it's own sake. I've had the desire to be free, to be liberated, to be unashamed to be human, but never just to be bad, for it's own sake.
I can't say I've never watched films or read books or met "bad" people who have been compelling and life enhancing, but it's always been their sense of freedom, their independence and their refusal to feel what they're told because everyone else says so, that I've admired, never badness for it's own sake.
The excitement(?!) of being or doing bad has often left me puzzled. If you have the talent and ability to be cleverly bad, you have it to be cleverly good. I can't help feeling that the former is a failure and mismanagement of self. When a clever fraudster goes about their business. I can appreciate the skill involved but the fact that it is illegal undermines any cleverness.
The truly admirably naughty are far more haughty than that, they tend to hide in plain sight (mostly) and do what they want to do, without provoking the law to confine them like children. They do not easily succumb to mastery by others, as they see themselves as the equal of anyone. They don't need to delve into psycho dramas of "badness" to get the juice to act, they just do.
Niceness, seems to work best, as far as I can tell from the outside, when it's combined with an equal capacity for clinical ruthlessness, whenever and wherever it's needed. It kicks in. The basis of this, is a lack of a sense that of original sin, ie. that one is bad and needs monitoring. So if one needs to be cool or cold, it's because one needs to be, it's appropriate, fears that one is being a bad person don't get to cloud the issue.
Being nice to a plan that overwhelms the truth of your spirit; being nice because you fear that deep down you are bad bad bad and need to keep yourself on a tight leash, being nice because you expect to be rewarded, etc, you get the picture, is not likely to work as well as being nice because you like and trust yourself.
I get annoyed when women are tagged with this "they like bastards" crap, it's universal. Come on, look up any story of conmen/women as see how everyone fell for their nice act, male and female alike. But given someone who's so repressed and outer directed and has become detached from themselves-and let's face it, if you sum up your own worth with the conclusion, abandon ship, don't be surprised when others think, OK, you know best!
If you count yourself low, others tend to as well, after all, who should know better than you?
Being saved by someone who see through it all to sense and appreciate your inner worth is somewhat unusual, come on be fair us humans need greater signalling than that, it's a noisy world with many distractions. Save time, make it easier.
And hey, if that's what you wish for, why not just save time and recognise it yourself and advertise it a bit, by just, you know, living it.
Reality, or sometimes just the appearance of it, really is quite real.
So really, nice guys/ girls, you don't need to descend into bastardy as deliberate as your self repression-sorry, niceness- just calm down, believe you're intrinsically a good person- I'm assuming you'd have noticed by now if you weren't.
And start living.
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