Tag: nice

I am increasingly concerned about two trends in our culture that may or may not be related. This blog is about the first trend — a trend of insisting that people be ‘nice’.  My next blog will address the second trend — incivility — and a possible relationship between the two.

I, personally, experience this demand for niceness mainly in two settings.

A great many Jews, religious and secular alike, feel inspired by the Jewish concept of tikkun olam: our collective duty to help heal the world. Like many other progressive concepts, tikkun olam can easily be caricatured as a “nice” thing to do rather than a good thing. Awww, those B’nai Mitzvah students are picking up litter in the park — isn’t that nice! In this formulation, “nice” is code for gestural, temporary and ultimately ineffectual.