NICEISM

 Nice-ism n. tendency, more or less socially codified, to approach 
reality in terms of whether others behave cordially; tyranny of decorum 
which disallows thinking or actingfor oneself; mode of interaction based 
upon the above absence of critical judgement or autonomy.

All of us prefer what is friendly, sincere, pleasant-nice. But in an 
immiserated world of pervasive and real crisis, which should be causing 
all of us to radically reassess everything, the nice can be the false.

The face of domination is often a smiling one, a cultured one. Auschwitz 
comes to mind, with its managers who enjoyed their Goethe and Mozart. 
Similarly, it was not evil-looking monsters who built the A-bomb but 
nice liberal intellectuals. Ditto regarding those who are computerizing 
life and those who in other ways are the mainstays of participation in 
this rotting order, just as it is the nice businessperson (self-managed 
or otherwise) who is the backbone of a cruel work-and-shop existence by 
concealing it's real horrors.

Cases of niceism include the peaceniks, whose ethic of niceness puts 
them-again and again and again-in stupid ritualized, no-win situations, 
those Earth First!ers who refuse to confront the thorouhly reprehensible 
ideology at the top of "their" organization, and Fifth Estate, whose 
highly important contributions now seem to be in danger of an eclipse by 
liberalism. All the single-issue causes, from ecologism to feminism, and 
all the militancy in their service, are only ways of evading the 
necessity of a qualitative break with more than just the excesses of the 
system.

The nice as the perfect enemy of tactical or analytical thinking: Be 
agreeable; don't let having radical ideas make waves in your personal 
behavior. Accept the pre-packaged methods and limits of the daily 
strangulation. Ingrained deference, the conditioned response to "play by 
the rules"-authority's rules-this is the real Fifth Column, the one 
within us.

In the context of a mauled social life that demands the drastic as a 
minimum response toward health, niceism becomes more and more infantile, 
conformist and dangerous. It cannot grant joy, only more routine and 
isolation. The pleasure of authenticity exists only against the grain of 
society. Niceism keeps us all in our places, confusedly reproducing all 
that we supposedly abhor. Let's stop being nice to this nightmare and 
all who would keep us in it.

