How can some people be so genuinely nice? :(

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I agree with most of what 1401b said,
and this:

Nice is not a real thing. It's a concept with a temporary conditional meaning. It is classified as an "expectation" tool for conditionals used by the hive mind.
If you want to be more "nice", then get closer to the hive mind and learn how to act.

Real behaviors just are what they are. It is the observer who assigns conceptual terms to that behavior like "nice".

Therefore, if you choose to act in a way that will be observed as "nice" by either yourself or others, then you are willfully engaging in a deceptive emotional manipulation. You are looking for a reward of some kind, be it a chemical reward in the brain, or simply the lack of some kind of punishment from those around you.

In its simplest terms the concept of nice behavior would go something like this:
actions which contribute towards the basic desires of other living beings, where there is no possible means of reciprocation.

So then why do such a thing?
Because you have a true and intuitive respect for life, - other living beings.
Because there is a subconscious perception that consciousness is something shared among all life.

Personally I find it relatively easy to do things others may describe as nice for living beings who are not infected with a self-serving mind virus. Because of this, it is extremely hard for me to be nice to most humans. They either need to be not infected, or to be in control to a point where it is obvious that they are aware of the infection and actively oppose its power.

When I'm in an office with plants and I see they need water (for their desire to survive), then I water them, no matter if anyone else sees it or not.

If a person comes up to me acting nice, but is obviously fake, I'd as soon vomit on them.

I watched a program recently called "Brain Games" where they studied subject's anger responces.

They were able to clearly show people who received compassion also tended to give compassion.

If you've never received compassion, especially at an early age, this may be hard to understand.

I watched a program recently called "Brain Games" where they studied subject's anger responces.

They were able to clearly show people who received compassion also tended to give compassion.

If you've never received compassion, especially at an early age, this may be hard to understand.

When a person sets out to be nice to someone, and fails, the intention was still to be nice--that's what matters. But the failure still has to be taken into account.

Think for example about a doctor who tries to save a patient's life. He tries his best, but the patient dies. He didn't know ahead of time that he wasn't going to be good enough at doctoring; and he was the best or only doctor around at the time. If that doctor cares, he'll react to his failure by evaluating it, trying to learn from it, so that in the future he can become more successful. But if he had never tried to become a doctor for fear of not being good enough, he would never have saved any patients at all.

The same goes for learning to be kind: If we try and fail, it's still better than not trying at all, because if we were sincerely trying to act in ways that are beneficial to other people, then we will also use that situation, learn from it, and gradually improve our skills.

One of the barriers to helping behavior is that the observer might not feel competent to help, or might not know what to do. Those cognitive factors can keep someone from helping even when they want to help. In order to help, a person has to identify that help is needed, see themselves as responsible for the situation, and feel able to do something useful. Many people who don't help others very much still aren't sociopathic; they simply learn to say, "It's not my business. Someone else will do it. I'm no good at that." In a way, it's depressing, but in another way, it's encouraging, because it doesn't mean that you're a horrible person for not helping--it may just mean that you need to develop the skills that allow you to identify those situations and take the initiative to improve that person's life.

I feel like the fact that you want to be a nice person shows that you are a nice person, deep down. Understanding what people view as "nice" is confusing and is influenced by things like cultural ettique and whatnot. Some people can come off as very nice, but underneath that façade they're very cold, cunning people who use that front to manipulate others. Maybe accepting yourself and to see yourself as a nice person will help you feel better, even if you don't come off as "nice" in the traditional sense

i have not read any posts in this thread (including the original post) and i am simply replying to the topic title.

"niceness" is a strange word. it does not really mean anything specific. a piece of cake may be "nice" because it tastes good. when some people perform tricks, other people say "ni-iice". "nice" is a brand of buiscuit sold by arnotts in australia.

but from my "averaging" of all the meanings i have encountered, i think that the verb "to be nice" means "to be pleasant" in an active way (rather than merely being benign).

i see people falling over themselves on the streets and in shops trying to be nice to each other, and i see it as a useless expenditure of energy. merely being "orderly" and "efficient" is sufficient in my mind to fulfill ones role on the streets.

i think people superfluously expend energy in trying to attract other peoples appreciation or gratitude with the bait of "niceness". they may be lonely i guess.
some people may be "nice" due to a deep seated insecurity that makes them feel like imposters (or unworthy to be included) in a metropolitan sense, and so they compensate by gushing "niceness" in order to posit themselves as a more deserved element of society. who knows.

as long as people behave themselves and get out of my way while i am out , then all is well as far as i am concerned.

What the heck is wrong with being nice?

you seem sleazy to me. i am not sure why. i am sorry about that.

Excuse me?

Maybe this is a joke?

You don't know me. I'm just a figment of your imagination.

Again, what's wrong with being nice? Nice---in the modern sense, not in the Medieval sense (i.e., naïve, suggestible, easy to screw over).

This is, in no smart part, a rhetorical question, not needing an answer.

well i still am not convinced as to your authenticity, and i guess i will never be, but that is life in the big smoke .

Last edited by b9 on 15 Aug 2014, 10:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

Authenticity in WHAT?

I yam what I yam. If you don't like it, you know what you could do.

And I've never lived in a big smoke, whatever that means.

you do not seem to have any original ideas as far as i am concerned.
i may be stupid, but i expect that you are the one in deficit anyway. you think with a strong force often about sex, but you never did anything else like use your imagination and so you got nothing in the end.

i have to go now.

I don't get what you mean....and I'm glad.

Perhaps you were just in a bad mood.

Let's let bygones be bygones.

And I do live in the big smoke--NYC.

By the way: every idea is derived from somebody else's idea.

no. i just saw how ineffectual your set of ideas was and i was certain that i was not wrong in acsertaining you as a less than critical thinker.
whatever!
eat me huh?

no. i just saw how ineffectual your set of ideas was and i was certain that i was not wrong in acsertaining you as a less than critical thinker.
whatever!
eat me huh?

I agree with you about the importance of intent, but when you can't read people accurately, then how do you really know the intent?

In your doctor analogy, the logic works because the process stops at simply failing. In the real world it doesn't stop there. When you kill patients there is always a backlash of emotion that often becomes aggressive and turns into lawsuits. It only takes one really bad experience to stop the whole process, and thus the doctor must ceases the efforts to keep trying.

I think this is what has happened with many of us. Some very bad experiences have shown that it may be foolish to keep trying at the same level that was used previously to the bad experiences.

What can you really do when the damage has been done? Convince the person to keep trying anyway and risk more harm? The environment would have to change, and so the nature of people would have to change, or you would need an environment without those people.