More than twenty-five years ago, in The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom pointed out that college students in the United States had become very “nice.” Students in general did not want to offend anyone and there was a constant concern to protect one another’s feelings. Bloom meant this as a half-hearted, even backhanded compliment at the time. It should not be seen as any kind of compliment any longer. In fact, niceness has become the enemy of excellence in our universities, and its pervasive role is setting up our young people and our society for failure and an especially venal form of soft despotism.
“Niceness” is a rather shallow set of habits and attitudes more concerned with comfort than engagement, ease than excellence, contentment than striving to do one’s best. It was and is the perfect complement to our contemporary liberal insistence on “tolerance” as the chief virtue. Tolerance, after all, means simply allowing others to do and/or say what we may not like. When one takes things like religious faith and doctrine seriously, toleration can lead to spirited debate and vigorous pursuit of the truth, to everyone’s betterment. We accept that others may hold views we believe are wrong, even dangerous, because the only way to truly change hearts and minds is through civil discourse and example.
Unfortunately, when truth comes to be seen as subjective, toleration becomes the chief virtue, and it comes to mean simply ignoring one’s fellows, in essence not caring what others do. If you leave me alone to do what I want, I will leave you alone to do what you want—whatever it is, because truth and virtue do not really matter, and probably do not exist in any event. All we have are our own preferences, so that our chief duty is to ignore one another’s actions. The result is a culture in which religious faith is viewed in the same manner as any other “hobby,” whether it is stamp collecting or group sex. In the same way, “niceness,” as opposed to the discipline of civility, can mean simply not caring whether anyone is right or wrong, reasonable, unreasonable, or simply lazy, so long as no one bothers to challenge anyone else.
That we have long since reached the point where niceness is a barrier to the pursuit of excellence was reinforced, for me, by a small item in a journal for college teachers. It seems a Canadian college professor got himself in hot water for failing to be nice. Attending a journalist’s lecture to students, this professor was frustrated at one student who said young people do not vote because they do not understand the political system, finding it too complicated. The professor interjected “Read a book, for God’s sake.”
Outrage ensued.
Actually, at the time, applause ensued. But once the common-sense quality of the remark had time to wear off, the niceness police sat up and took notice. Class discussions and student newspaper commentators condemned the professor for “heckling” a concerned student who, apparently, had a right to be praised for being brave and inspiring because she chose to use her own ignorance as an excuse for political apathy.
The professor (a male who “heckled” a female student, so, yes, the gender police also got involved) apologized for his remark. Interviewed by a Canadian national magazine, he sought to salvage some dignity from the situation along with his job by apologizing for his transgression against niceness while reiterating the importance of reading. Bravery, indeed.
One might, and many would, argue that this little drama turned out as it should—with the duty to be civil being upheld along with the value of knowledge. But this is not at all the outcome of such situations on campus. Rather, quite inconsequential violations of reasonable codes of civility (“wait your turn” and, of course “be polite”) become the focus of a great, even nationwide expression of concern, and even outrage. Meanwhile, the most the “offender” can manage is a small, abstract bow toward knowledge as a good, after making the mandatory apology. And we should not fool ourselves into thinking that niceness will reinforce, comply with, or even respect civility; it trumps it. Thus, if someone is giving the “wrong” talk at a university—if it is considered “not nice”—the niceness police will feel free to shout it down. Thus, New York City’s chief of police was literally heckled off the stage at Brown University when, at an invited event, he attempted to defend a policy (“stop and frisk”) the audience found too mean.
The upshot is that, even or perhaps especially at universities, the right to not have one’s own beliefs, character, or even work ethic questioned trumps the pursuit of knowledge. Professors can say “knowledge is good,” but cannot point out that any particular student might need to work a bit harder to secure that knowledge and the skills needed to put it to good use. And anyone who actually questions broadly held beliefs about important topics, especially those related to race, sex, and sexual orientation, will find themselves branded as racist, sexist, and homophobic—that is, not nice, hence banished from the group to whom niceness, or even civility, is owed. The result, of course, is increasingly lazy and ignorant students (and professors). The result also is students, and graduates, who increasingly are immune to any call to excellence and virtue, more likely to take umbrage than to increase their efforts if called on to do better.
It should be obvious that the results for those students and graduates will not be good out in the “real world” of employment, of bosses and deadlines. Of course, the results also are an increasingly unquestioned adherence to dominant, leftwing views regarding race, sex, sexual orientation, and various public policies aimed at expanding the social welfare state. The result is bad for public policy, and also bad for the young people who will find themselves challenged outside the bubble of academic “niceness,” who will not find themselves “affirmed” by people who are not paid to do so, and who, therefore, will be disappointed for most of their lives. These are the lessons most parents learned long ago regarding the need to avoid spoiling their children. Sadly, we all, increasingly, are spoiled by a cultural sensibility that values emotional comfort more highly than reality can support. And a nation of spoiled children cannot be free. They will demand comfort from the state, not only in material but also in emotional terms, sacrificing the freedom to challenge and excel to the “freedom” from being challenged.
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Professor Kingsfield, the professor from the Paper Chase, would not be able to teach today and he is the model of the great professor for liberals, conservatives, libertarians alike. If you want to suggest others, please offer them
Well-nuanced! Many thanks! Niceness is censorship, by way of passive aggression.
As a boy I had an elderly neighbor with a Heidelberg dueling scar and I am still jealous. So much for nice.
Actually, from my experience in the business world, I can tell you that Niceness, or a form of it (modern sophism like ‘Coaching’ and other consulting gimmicks) have become more and more prevelant, and are often as important as old fashioned metrics in the corporate world. I imagine no one cares about it where people still build things and make money – namely in China. Meanwhile, rest assured that students, convinced by failing western universities that their sexual orientation or gender make them incredibly special people will be happily welcomed by failing western businesses where they will do hard work like going to coaching seminars and trying to rescue their company’s bottom line by learning to be more sensitive to oneanother.
It’s prevalent in the liberal church bodies too- that because Christ said to love all, that somehow means we should strive towards the saintly life and push others to do so as well. Living in a big liberal city the worst thing you can be accused of is being closed minded. Having differences in values is not right. People are afraid to be judged as right and wrong. It’s a sorry state of affairs.
Relativism is, without a doubt, an exceedingly important subject. My question is this- does the liberal/relativist say that there simply is no Truth, or, that the Truth cannot be known? Do these two views amount to the same thing?
I think the example you chose, of a professor telling a student to “Read a book, for God’s sake,” and then outrage ensuing, is a poor one. My first thought upon reading the story was, “How stupid.” I mean, really, if the student is in fact worried that youth today are unable to grasp the political process (not that revolutionary of an idea, in my opinion), telling her to “Read a book” is extremely dismissive and kind of… pompous, to say the least.
I am surprised that all hell broke loose on this professor, usually things like this is just ignored. Professors will be professors, am I right? Is this really an indication that a concern for “niceness” is on the rise? Hardly. Are people truly more concerned about being polite to each other, even if just in a facile and politically correct manner, than they were in the past?
Think back to the 1950’s or even further, to the Victorian age. It really puts things into prospective, doesn’t it. The efforts that people undertook to be “nice” and “polite” in those ages are unlike anything we see today, and all to avoid offense. Snapping open an old Victorian etiquette book and reading a chapter is a nauseating experience for all those living in our bawdy and vulgar culture today. The idea that you may not say whatever pops into your mind, expletives and all, is anathema to life today.
I think if there was some way to devise a scientific experiment to study “niceness,” you might actually find that it has declined over the years. Sure, there are a few instances where it has increased. For instance, it is no longer “nice” to call people fags, or to openly mock students (who pay out the nose for their degrees), or whatever stupid issue the PC police have undertaken.
If you compared the same campus, but 60 years apart, do you really think that the students today would be “nicer,” in any real way, than those who attended in the 1960’s?
Niceness has become crucial for our society, because we no longer share basic cultural standards that allow us to criticize each other without feeling that the very essence of one’s identity has been denied.
Here is a liberal who agrees with Dr. Frohnen, but is not so nice about it, calling America a “cult of ignorance”:
http://media.aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ASIMOV_1980_Cult_of_Ignorance.pdf
In truth, “niceness” today is nothing but spinelessness and cowardice. The excuse for our disconnect from the centrality of being we nominate as “God”, Who licenses our nature and encircles our behavior with Goethean organic “limits” the Nihilists seek to rip apart, to seed utter pandemonium.
Make no mistake, and I preach no “chiliastic hysteria”, only realistic truth: the syndicated echelons of the Dark One are at our doors in every sense and way, lusting and demanding the souls of our children, and “niceness” is the alibi of our acquiescence to objective evil. All Satan requires is a gentle, nice acquiescence…
Conservatives need to learn that genteel polished mannerisms of gentrified effeteness, no longer “apply.” Tradition is the tool-kits safeguarding “ontic-theological order” – not empty conventional “sociality”, etc.
Sir Kirk would agree, at this point in American history. Niceness has had its time. We need bold and daredevil hearts in this catacomb resistance of the last battalions of those who uphold the Godhead. And, lest any naivete exist, the ONLY conservative is the conservator of the ORDO of the DEITY. Kirk almost alone knew this, and this is why Kirk and America are intertwined in fate.
From the Declaration, we can salvage the concept Jefferson borrowed from Rosicrucian and Spinozist thinkers, of a woefully pantheistic “Nature’s God”, into something else: America shall rise to its best potential, its dormant greatness, into something truly substantial – and this shall be the key to our “silent counter-revolution” – one day, becoming outward.
Editors should not be afraid of the word “counter-revolutionary” in contemporary political discourse in America. Please have heart. Counter-revolution is conservative when conservatism has betrayed God. Kirk today would be a counter-revolutionary, conservative patricians, I can promise you… These waters have to be waded through with the utmost skillfulness…
My commie buddie is always yapping about ‘the middle’ way whenever I take a strong stance.
I think part of this might be fallout from the dialectic and that way of thinking. It supposes their is always an ‘higher synthesis’ between the strong opinion and its opposite, when, in fact, sometimes someone is just right. Or just wrong.
Put a stake in the Geist already.
We are seeing a challenge to the tyranny of niceness in sports right now. The unpopular view that people of a certain hue cannot expect justice and so must sit out the National Anthem in protest is creating turmoil and controversy–as well it should.