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46 lines
2.4 KiB
Plaintext
46 lines
2.4 KiB
Plaintext
NICEISM
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Nice-ism n. tendency, more or less socially codified, to approach
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reality in terms of whether others behave cordially; tyranny of decorum
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which disallows thinking or actingfor oneself; mode of interaction based
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upon the above absence of critical judgement or autonomy.
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All of us prefer what is friendly, sincere, pleasant-nice. But in an
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immiserated world of pervasive and real crisis, which should be causing
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all of us to radically reassess everything, the nice can be the false.
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The face of domination is often a smiling one, a cultured one. Auschwitz
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comes to mind, with its managers who enjoyed their Goethe and Mozart.
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Similarly, it was not evil-looking monsters who built the A-bomb but
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nice liberal intellectuals. Ditto regarding those who are computerizing
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life and those who in other ways are the mainstays of participation in
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this rotting order, just as it is the nice businessperson (self-managed
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or otherwise) who is the backbone of a cruel work-and-shop existence by
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concealing it's real horrors.
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Cases of niceism include the peaceniks, whose ethic of niceness puts
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them-again and again and again-in stupid ritualized, no-win situations,
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those Earth First!ers who refuse to confront the thorouhly reprehensible
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ideology at the top of "their" organization, and Fifth Estate, whose
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highly important contributions now seem to be in danger of an eclipse by
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liberalism. All the single-issue causes, from ecologism to feminism, and
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all the militancy in their service, are only ways of evading the
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necessity of a qualitative break with more than just the excesses of the
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system.
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The nice as the perfect enemy of tactical or analytical thinking: Be
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agreeable; don't let having radical ideas make waves in your personal
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behavior. Accept the pre-packaged methods and limits of the daily
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strangulation. Ingrained deference, the conditioned response to "play by
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the rules"-authority's rules-this is the real Fifth Column, the one
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within us.
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In the context of a mauled social life that demands the drastic as a
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minimum response toward health, niceism becomes more and more infantile,
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conformist and dangerous. It cannot grant joy, only more routine and
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isolation. The pleasure of authenticity exists only against the grain of
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society. Niceism keeps us all in our places, confusedly reproducing all
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that we supposedly abhor. Let's stop being nice to this nightmare and
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all who would keep us in it.
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