r/LeftWithoutEdge • u/RosethornRanger • 9d ago

Politeness and niceness are a social strategy.

Most people are bigots and not anything close to safe, even if they seem nice in a brief interaction.

edit:

it seems like people on here do not see it that way, I got a link in my bio for a space that very much does

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u/Hardcorex 8d ago

I grew up (like many it seems) to think Kind and Nice are the same thing. Nice can be fake, polite, and hide ulterior motives. But I was led to believe being nice was paramount. We shouldn't be loud, or unruly, just nice. It also leads to "The Nice Guy".

Kindness is what matters, and someone can be rude, brash and kind.

Nice, is the people putting their "all are welcome here" signs in their yard, but then going on facebook and writing hateful shit.

I was naive for too long and would take people at face value, but had to learn to see through their facade.

Where I think it's the worst is in politics, where if someone raises their voice, or protests in a disruptive way, then they are disregarded as extreme and violent. Instead of accurately recognizing the inherent violence of what they are protesting against.

I also learned quickly that if someone calls themselves and ally, I should not trust them to be respectful of me being trans. It's far too often, and actions speak louder than words.

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u/capsandnumbers 8d ago

On the interpersonal level I'm quite optimistic about human nature. I think we seem to snap together due to our hardwired social instinct.

That's to say nothing about how the societal and political levels affect the interpersonal, whether human nature is doomed on those levels, or whether it's the case today that most people are dangerous in spite of that inbuilt pro-sociality.