When Everyone Is Being Nice

Run. There will be a wave of hypocrisy, followed by mental illness, crime, and social and political unrest.

When "to be nice" becomes the narrative, society rewards all behaviors that resemble "being nice" and ignores all that do not. This is operant condition. Soon, "being nice" gets programmed into society, while the lack of it gets eliminated.

The scenario incentives people to be nice and punishes people who make no attempt to be nice. People start to act all nice and cute to get admitted to college and to get hired. Those who don't don't get any opportunity. Do we see here a selective emergence of hypocrisy and an elimination of those who refused to be hypocrites?

In such a society, you should not be surprised that people at work and in college are regularly lying in the veil of nicety. You should not be surprised that people are faking. You find out that people are acting nice but are not, respectful but are not, caring but are not, compassionate but are not.

Since everyone is acting nice and cute, there is no way to discern who actually is nice. They all have masks on. You become unsure if they actually like you when they say it. You become insecure if they actually want to hang out with you when they say it. You start to doubt everything people say. You learn not to trust anyone. It becomes hard for you to open up and share your problems with anyone because you have lost the ability to trust. Congratulations, you are mentally screwed.

Anxiety and mistrust make it difficult for you to make friends and to hold on to ones you already have. Eventually, you find yourself isolated, in your quiet space, persistent, perpetual, forever. If you are away from your family, you see yourself falling into depression. Your emotions are running out of your control. You are consistently sad, but you can't share it with anyone. You have lost the ability to trust. Everything bad brings you much more despair than usual. Everything good remains far from perception. You find it hard to fall asleep because your brain is not quiet. You are constantly thinking of how you managed to screw up your life. Negative thoughts do not escape your mind. You keep yourself inside and avoid going out. Some even become afraid of people.

This is where some of you lose your mind. You find something that can change your mood instantly. This is your addiction. Post-consumption, you find that your anxiety is relieved, that your stress has been reduced. However, you start to get addicted to whatever the addictive substance was. Addicted, you end up doing things never thought you would do. This makes you even more depressed, leading you to find relief again. This cycle pulls you down and down to absolute ruin and wretchedness. This is where some of you drive, act, or date irresponsibly. You have lost full control of your actions. Some of you are saved because you have a positive force in life, such as good weather, dependable friends, family, boss, etc.

Some keep roller coasting down the trajectory of a failed life, with no one to stop them. They end up taking someone's life accidentally. They may also do it intentionally because they think others have caused them sorrow. They believe they are forever doomed, that their situation will never improve. They conclude that there is no point in living, that life is worse than death. They lose the fear of death. They become existentially nihilistic and suicidal.

When mental illness runs wild, the ability to reason falls; people lose the ability to think critically. This is when anti-social activities increase. People hungry for power use the fallen state of society to get elected. They convince the masses that society is unfair, that some rich people (or a religious or political group) have made others poor. Restless and tired, people find hope in the new leader and start to follow him. Soon, the political state of the nation becomes inflamed. Political unrest follows.

Of course, things do not have to turn out this way. I have presented a simplified and generalized version of what appears when ego (self-righteousness) enters society. I urge you to abandon hypocrisy for your and your society's well-being.

Endnote -

How does one get out of the downward spiral I mentioned?

Think of society as a company. The mission is to make it healthy and prosperous. Every action we take is either strategically aligned (love your neighbour as yourself, don't steal, etc) or strategically inconsistent (theft, expectations, playing games with people, etc). When I was in the US, I was friends with (one-sided) some people for almost 2-3 years before they realized that I had not been faking friendship. Since they had always received fake friendships, they thought I was faking too. Over time, they discovered that they could rely on me, depend on me, and that I had no expectations from them. They changed. I hope some of them would extend unconditional friendship and love to others, flipping the status quo (fake friendship) in the process. Real friendship should be the status quo, not the exception.