Morning! Good morning!

Oh, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening and good night

Setting out to try to become a nicer person sounds like a deeply colorless and dispiriting ambition

In theory, we love niceness, of course, but in practice, there appears to be something embarrassingly anodyne, meek, tedious, even sexless about the concept

A nice person sounds like something we try to be only once every other more arduous and more rewarding alternative had failed

Our suspicion of niceness may feel personal, but it has a long history

bearing the sediment of at least four major cultural currents that it pays to try and understand:

For centuries, Christianity was the single most powerful force shaping our intellectual horizons

and it was profoundly committed to promoting niceness to the world

With the finest aesthetic and intellectual resources, it sang the praises of forgiveness, charity, tenderness, and empathy

But – unfortunately for niceness – Christianity didn’t simply leave it there

It also suggested that there might be a fundamental opposition between being nice and being successful

Successful people were not, so believers were told, on the whole very nice people

and nice people were not, on the whole, very successful

It seemed applicants to the Kingdom of Heaven had a choice to make: niceness or success

At a stroke, the dichotomy deeply tarnished the appeal of niceness to anyone with the remotest spark of healthy, worldly ambition in their hearts

Christianity might have been striving to enthuse us about niceness, but by connecting it up so firmly with failure

it created an enduring feeling that this was ultimately a quality of interest chiefly to losers

For the last two hundred years, we’ve been heavily influenced by the cultural movement known as Romanticism

and for the Romantics, the admirable person has been synonymous with the exciting person

someone intense and creative, mercurial and spontaneous, someone who might upset tradition

and dare at points to be forceful, even rude, in the name of following the call of their own hearts

The diametric opposite of this heroic figure was, for the Romantics, someone mild and respectable, guarded and conservative, unflashy and quiet

In other words, the boring person

Here too, there has seemed a radical choice to be made: either fiery, unpredictable and brilliant, or meek, conventional and always in bed by nine

To this charge-sheet of niceness, Capitalism added another indictment

presenting an interpretation of the world as a deeply competitive arena in which all companies were committed to forge continuous battle for market share

in an atmosphere marked by ruthlessness, determination and impatience

Those who succeeded had to know how to destroy the competition and handle the workforce without a trace of emotion

A nice person, unwilling to squeeze wages or outwit an opponent, would end up either bankrupt or in the mailroom

A final, more personal association hangs over niceness: the belief that the nice can’t be sexually desirable

for the qualities that make us erotic are bound up with the possession of brutal, domineering, confident edges at odds with the tenderness and coziness beloved of the nice

Once again, an awkward choice presents itself:

between the pleasant friend with whom to go to the park and the dangerous companion with whom to disappear into the dungeon with handcuffs and a whip

Despite all this, the truth is that we like niceness very much and depend upon it even more

It's just that our true memories of niceness have been suppressed by a culture that unfairly makes us feel unintelligent for lending niceness our approval

All of the qualities we've been taught to think of as opposed to niceness are in fact highly compatible with, and at points, highly dependent upon it

However much we are committed to success,

for long portions of our lives, we are intensely vulnerable creatures wholly at the mercy of the gentleness of others

We’re only ever able to be successful because other people, usually our mothers, have given up a good share of their lives to being nice to us

As for excitement, this too can only ever be a phase, as all those who've made real contributions to humankind know

Quiet days, domestic routine and regular bedtimes are the necessary preconditions of the creative highs

There is nothing more sterile than a demand that life be constantly exciting

For its part, capitalism may reward competition between firms, but it relies on collaboration within them

No company can function long without trust and bonds of personal affection

Much to the frustration of bosses, money can’t guarantee the necessary commitment from employees

only meaning and a spirit of companionship will

Lastly, the sexual thrill of nastiness only ever properly entices in conditions of trust

However much we may fantasize about a night with a ruthless conqueror

it would be alarming to wind up with an actual example

We need to know someone is fundamentally kind before an offer of a rope and the sound of swearwords become properly interesting

So much of what we value is, in fact, preserved by niceness and is compatible with it

We can be nice and successful, nice and exciting, nice and wealthy, and nice and potent

Niceness is a virtue awaiting our rediscovery and our renewed, un-conflicted appreciation