When Did I Turn Mean?

I used to be a very, very nice person. It was my super power. You can pick, and pick, and pick at Cheryl, but she will quietly deal and still be nice. When did I stop doing that?

Now I get fired up about something and  post a heated opinion on facebook. It might even offend people, and I'm not bothered by that, whereas I used to get annoyed with everyone's rhetoric. I might think to myself "Yes, that's true, but it won't convince anyone if they keep saying it that way. They're only offending people."

I used to have this response to a lot of feminist material that was man bashing and minority rhetoric that was white bashing. Yes, these powers need subverted, suppressed, but angry rants don't do a thing to change minds.

I realized recently when reading an angry rant in response to some oppressive, anti-women, legislation that angry rants aren't always about convincing the other side. Sometimes you can't convince the other side, so the only thing you can do is to rant angrily to get your own side fired up. Get them mad, make them passionate. This is a huge motivator to get people to vote. It's why politics get so ugly. Fearmonger long enough and well enough and people will have no choice but to vote for you because they're terrified of what the other side would do in office.

This cycle will never break. Fear will always be a greater motivator than any passionate agreement. But I used to feel very passionate about breaking this cycle. And I think it's still an admirable goal and effort regardless of its feasibility.

Today I was called "nice" as if somehow being nice makes me naive and simple. My views will be wrong because they aren't adequately jaded. And suddenly I'm fired up again about being the person who won't get angry, who won't be driven to fear. I will not be convinced to treat others with disdain as if to bring them down. This is an aggressive act and will be seen as an attempt to rise above them, to be the new superior ranking individual. No. I will not be shamed for my niceness. I will embrace it, and I will hope that is can create the change I hope to see in the world because I do have a world vision.

This might sound a bit communist at first, but I want to be passionate about being nice and establishing a more cohesive community-minded society through niceness. Our society is sooo individualistic, and I think that's why capitalism is failing. I believe in capitalism. I believe it is more efficient than government intervention, but I've lost faith in our cultural ability to make capitalism work. Capitalism will always fail as long as some people think that sharing with others is an enabling force and that wealth is somehow a sign of hard work and poverty a sign of laziness.

No money will trickle down from people at the top who look at the bottom and think those people aren't working hard enough or they're not educated enough. Those people at the top (most of them) have never been at the bottom and can't fairly assess the needs of people down there.  If we can change our cultural mindset and recognize the humanity in eachother more through productive communication and niceness, we might actually be able to see capitalism succeed, but successful capitalism requires sharing of wealth, and since we can't be responsible enough to do that on our own, or government is going to have to step in and do it for us.

There are people working for 60 hours a week at 3 part-time jobs, earning minimum wage, and they are making far less than I do but working so much harder. They don't have benefits, and they can keep working that hard until they die, and the will probably never have anything to show for it. And don't blame them for not getting an education. They were lucky to finish high school because they started two of those jobs back then to help their parents pay bills when their younger sibling got sick and there was no insurance to cover it. And if they start dealing drugs or stealing cars and bicycles and reselling them to make money, who can blame them? What other choice did they have for success?

There are people at the top born into so much wealth and privilege, who are generous to the extent that they get a tax break, and whose money is all carefully invested by other people paid to do so. Those people may never have to work in their lives. The work they do, they do so as not to get bored, but they don't know what it's like to be at the bottom. They imagine people at the bottom are lazy and that's why they have no money.

And there are those of us in the middle, feeling like we are so strapped for cash but able to take long hot showers and baths when we want, and buy groceries that we can let go bad and throw away, and afford TV and internet. We manage to not feel guilty about the poor because we think we work hard, and, well, we just try not to think about it so that we can remain comfortable.

We build our own narratives of hard work to convince ourselves of what we deserve. We barrier ourselves from others so that we can stay ignorant and not feel any responsibility. Enough. Let's open the lines and become a real community. You want capitalism to work? Start by being nice.