Nice -- Genuine or Performance Art?
Date: January 17, 2014 11:57PM
Make sure nice is not performance art or emotional censorship
Posted by: corboy (global-66-249-175-76.dialup.o1.com)
Date: January 17, 2014 07:46AM
Spartacus: Accept that first bit of cognitive dissonance and one has slipped down the chute.
Meh: Nice is overrated. Thats why so many cult education sites have that classic warning
"When you have met the friendliest people you have ever known..."
Ive been burned enough that my instinct is to wonder what goes on behind the scenes when a group or person is not once but repeatedly described as "nice" as "unbelieveably nice" or "incredibly nice".
I now ask myself "They have this public reputation of being nice."
"What do they do with painful emotions?
"What happens when things dont go well and they feel frightened, angry, betrayed. This happens to any human being at some point in life.
"So what do these nice people do when not nice situations bring up their diffciult emotions emotions?"
"Are these people nice because they have strong character and consciously, humanely acknowledge and can deal with difficult painful emotions?
Or is this niceness performance art? A default social pattern slapped into place - especially in the presence of outsiders or potential recruits?
Can they acknowledge difficult emotions?
Or have theyve been taught to fear 'negative emotion'?
Have they been taught (formally or informally) or have they learned strategies by which to hide difficult emotions and cover these up, especially in the presence of outsiders?
Is it possible that they've been trained to believe that people who display a full range of emotion, including anger and sadness, are unevolved and *inferior* to them?
Will tell you I once knew a guy who belonged to group that had this kind of reputation.
Smile, smile smile.
Nice, nice nice. Members even avoided dark colors. Instead they opted for white, yellow, gold trim and flowers, especially white and pink roses. Other elements were lucite and mirrors. Their color range matched their emotional range -- pastel / sentimental.
This dude kept trying to impose elements of his belief system.
Repeatedly, politely, respectfully, I kept saying I wasnt interested in the stuff and didnt want any further discussions of it.
He kept bringing it up despite my repeatedly reminding him.
I finally felt so frustrated that I raised my voice and finally snapped at him.
So he'd sit there, still smile, smile smiling, and say, still smiling, "Why are you yelling?"
Passive aggressive. This nice person was not nice at all.
By his system, he got to win. He'd impose his belief system, ignore my polite statements that I didnt want to hear it. So he got to self soothe pattering about his belief system, gratifying himself, pretending mutuality while ignoring my repeated statement that I was not interested in this subject matter. The hell with me. He got to prosyltize, if only to himself. Self pleasure, self soothing.
Then when I became frustrated at being not listened to reaching the point of raising my voice in anger, X may have had a further satisfaction : proving himself superior using my anger as proof that I was less evolved. And proving himself to be superior to a practitioner of Zen Buddhism (me) because he succeeded in angering me while maintaining a smiling calm facade.
(This guy is a native born white American, btw)
All this meant ignoring he had direct responsiblity for having triggered this by ignoring me when I had communicated my boundaries in a normal range tone of voice.
Dont take nice at face value. Make sure its real, not performance art.
To many nice people are stuck people.
People stuck carrying the blacklisted emotions they're forbidden to acknowledge. They may be unrecovered adult children of addicts alcoholics (ACA)etc, and found a cult that rationalizes unrecovered ACA behavior.
They live out anger vicariously by conning non believing acquaintances into getting angry.
Or if things get seriously dysfunctional in their families, their children may subconsciously act out the dark stuff the parents(or cult) refuse to acknowledge.
And if they're rich, and the kids go too far embarrassing them, ship the kids off to some holding pen, out of sight and out of mind