Takami K's Response to "When Nice Ain't So Nice"

I had never before thought that there could be something wrong with being nice.  What would I have thought if I had been asked, “When, if ever, would it be a bad thing to be nice?   When can being nice be a bad thing?  What negative repercussions exist from being nice all of the time?”  If you haven’t read the article yet, I recommend taking a moment to think about these questions before moving on.

One point Bell makes in her article, “When Nice Ain’t So Nice,” is the idea that being nice is often a false show of emotion.  She argues that children are raised to be nice, which usually means to be “docile, obedient, and subservient to the parent…”  I’d like to add to that subservience to other authority figures, such as teachers and friends’ parents.  I agree with her entirely; when a child receives a compliment as high as, “You’re such a good kid,” it basically means the child has been nice.  A parent might shame a child by calling him or her a “bad child” when the child disobeys a command, or does some act of aggression.  Children are taught to want to be good children, in general.  I find it hard to think of a better alternative, however.  Bell does not advocate abandoning niceness altogether, because it is rather necessary for the function of society.  I find it hard, however, to find a better alternative to raising children.  I’ll come back to this idea in a bit.

Bell also says that Utah, famous for its niceness, also has the highest amount of antidepressants taken per capita.  Research has shown that one of the leading causes of depression is repressed anger. 

Taking into consideration the fact that children are taught not to express anger in order to maintain niceness, it seems logical to deduce that the way children are raised contributes to depression in later life.  Bell states that people withhold their anger in relation to their neighbors, children, and friends; then, it comes out when driving.  Bell’s entire assumption is based on the idea that people must get angry and that there is no such thing as a nonviolent way of releasing anger.  I think society may benefit from teaching children proper ways of releasing anger (as compared to the status quo, where I believe no such education is in place).  However, it may help even more to teach people how to not get angry.

Though some people are more prone to anger than others, anger is a choice in all occasions.  If people could simply reduce their amount of anger, all of the problems cited in Bell’s article would indeed be solved or dramatically reduced.  She uses violent letters sent to the editor anonymously that are “hostile and mean-spirited.”  She also cites violent driving on the freeway and neighbors who beat their wives and molest children.  I do agree that all of these things are problematic and do exist in today’s society.  Her suggestion for improvement is to allow children from a young age to let out their anger so that it does not bottle up and lead to something like this when they are older.  I think that if people could simply have less anger to bottle up in the first place, the problem would be solved without all of the excess steam that billions of children letting off their anger may produce.

How can we not get angry, then?  The short answer is, to choose not to be angry.  Some people in public situations may choose to get angry for a show of manliness or ferocity.  In private settings, one may choose to be angry because that is the easiest way to react to a maddening situation.  If my computer were to shut down right now and lose this paper I had written, reacting in an angry way would not help my cause at all.   By recognizing that and allowing logic to take precedence over emotion, I can override the anger reflex and simply start working on the paper again or go  about some way to recover the document.  In short, I am asserting that getting angry is a waste of time and energy, and does nothing constructive in the long run. 

I think I could go on even more, but for the sake of She Who Is Like Unto Aphrodite’s blog-readers, I will stop.