Hi nice people, it’s nice to see ya.
If I haven’t made it clear by the… everything about this newsletter, let me come right out and say it: I’m a nice guy. Trust me, I realize that is not (necessarily) a likable quality. Some people are nice in a charming way. I’m nice in an exhausting way.
Sure, I’ve long been over begging people to like me, but that doesn’t mean I won’t manipulate you into liking me by complimenting your t-shirt. Let me put it this way: I’ve never met a single soul who didn’t think I was about to pitch them a pyramid scheme.
When it comes to virtues, I’m not sure if “niceness” is an official one or not- you know, notarized by the Pope or whatever. In fact, the only virtue that I definitely know is a virtue is patience- but only because we’re constantly reminded that ‘patience is a virtue’. I guess it was put to a vote at some point- but it was really close? The Virtues Council was like, “Alright, patience is officially elected to be a virtue- but we’re going to have to remind people about this. A lot.”
But of course, us nice guys always have something bubbling up from beneath, which is to say, vices. Drinking. Smoking. Porn. Gambling. Cheeseburgers. You name it. They’ve all weaved in and out of my life to various degrees over the years.
Some of these vices have been easier to cut back or cut out than others. I still remember the “a-ha” moment I had when I realized I’d never seen anyone over the age of 25 look happy while smoking a cigarette. That helped. And also, ya know, I was getting tired of looking super cool outside of bars.
I’m still working on my cheeseburger intake.
Long stretches of my life have been defined by the battle between my virtues and my vices- but never as much as when I went to the extremes of each only to find that doubling down on either had its downsides. Basically:
After college I got into doing cocaine. Too into doing cocaine.
Which led to me getting really into church.
But ultimately I had a crisis of faith and dipped out.
I’m not going to explain why- because don’t worry, I already wrote an entire one-man show about it. And yes, it did tour and got great press and I was in the Providence Fringe Festival (just in case there’s any industry types reading this).
But the point is, when you leave your belief system behind, there’s a lot of gaps you have to fill in on your own. What do you really believe? What are your virtues?
And look- a lot of them are the same: Don’t lie, steal, or cheat. Love your neighbor. Turn the other cheek. Honor your elders- unless one of them says something kind of racist, then try to gently correct them.
Where I landed is that there can be a healthy balance of virtues and vices. And one of the key mantras that I pulled from that experience sounds a little silly, but I think is beautiful in its simplicity: it’s nice to be nice. The world needs more nice people. And I hope that as people come in and out of my life- and one day when I’m not around anymore- when people talk about me they’ll say: “Hunter, he was a really nice guy.”
Because I am a nice guy- and maybe that’s not always a likable quality. But I like it.
Reader’s Poll:
Oh, you think these are neutral? Think again! It’s time to play: Virtue Or Vice!
📝 Nice News
200 Pennsylvanians got together to talk politics- and listen // Incredibly, people can still see each other as people? Read it to believe it
A Canadian couple’s message in a bottle just made it all the way across the Atlantic Ocean // And yes, they’re still together! ♪ I’ll send an SOS to the world ♬
A teenager in Texas has created an app that helps protect senior citizens from cyber scams // Honestly, finally. Share with grandma
😃 Nice Person Of The Week: Michael Brownstein
Michael Brownstein is a philosophy professor at CUNY Grad Center as well as John Jay College, where he is also the department chair. He’s an alum of Deep Springs College and author of the upcoming book Somebody Should Do Something: How Anyone Can Help Create Social Change.
On a personal note, Michael is one of my all-time favorite subject matter experts from my once-monthly variety show Hi, Nice People! (basically a stage show version of this newsletter). He was smart, funny, and- best of all- downright nice! He immediately wrote back when I reached out to him about this interview- and I’m going to say that’s definitely virtuous!
Ok, here’s Michael:
What's something nice that someone's done for you lately?
I was feeling down this weekend and my partner bought me fancy cheese. I didn’t even want cheese! But it made me feel better anyway.
What makes a virtue a virtue and a vice a vice? Is there such a thing as a healthy balance of virtues and vices?
At the end of the day, I think virtues and vices are tacit social agreements. They’re social norms just like shaking hands or saying “gesundheit” after someone sneezes, except they’re norms that tell us the traits of character we’re supposed to pursue or avoid.
I think this makes virtues and vices different from rules about morality, like “murder is bad” or “don’t drown puppies for fun.” Most people, it seems to me, think of rules like these as something more than just informal agreements about better and worse ways to be. They play the role of social laws for many of us, the analogues of gravity and chemical bonding in the physical world. But it’s much easier to accept that people’s ideas about virtue and vice differ wildly across cultures and history. For people in Victorian England, it was a vice to ask direct questions; a virtuous, polite person would say something like “I hope you’re doing well.” That just seems arbitrary to me, like many of our norms today.
Is there a healthy balance between virtues and vices? If you buy what I said so far, then sure. If vices are social conventions, then probably a lot of personal pleasure and cultural innovation come from breaking them.
And I’ll say one more thing, which is a blatant plug for my new book (with co-authors Alex Madva and Dan Kelly): when people think about virtues, mostly what comes to mind are traits that benefit ourselves and the other individuals we interact with. Honestly, charitableness, bravery, etc - they’re all good for me and good for the direct recipients of my choices. But there are other kinds of virtues too, virtues having to do with building communities and making the world a more just place. For example, I think it’s virtuous to know about and understand problems like systemic racism and climate change. And it’s even more virtuous to want to do something about them. And it’s even more virtuous still to actually do it!
Are there ‘armchair experts’ out there getting something wrong about how we think about virtues, vices, or philosophy in general?
For sure, but you might mean something different by “armchair expert” than I would. If you mean, “ordinary people,” then I’d say of course they sometimes get things wrong about virtue and vice. But that’s just because everyone gets some stuff wrong about everything. Ordinary people get lots of stuff right too!
For philosophers, having opinions “from the armchair” means something more specific. It means having a view that’s “data-free.” For example, if I asked you, “why do some people steal?,” you might use your intuition to come up with all kinds of ideas. Maybe people are inherently selfish. Maybe they had bad parents. Maybe it’s bad humours. The caricature of an armchair philosopher would sit there thinking really hard and then decide, yeah it’s the humours (or whatever), and then write a treatise about it.
Alternately, you might go out, collect evidence, and do some science. Or just read some science. Perhaps it turns out that what predicts stealing is just economic desperation. Or maybe it is the humours after all! (It isn’t.) To know, we’d have to go out in the world and look, rather than inspect the contents of our own minds for whatever ideas just feel right.
Philosophy for much of the 20th Century was done from the armchair, in this sense. There’s a whole set of reasons why, to some degree having to do with philosophers trying to find their niche after fields like psychology and economics stole their turf.
I’m more comfortable saying “armchair experts” get things wrong if by that we mean “philosophers discovering eternal truths by inspecting the contents of their own genius” than if we mean “ordinary people have opinions about stuff.”
When presented with the choice to do the right thing or the wrong thing, what motivates us to choose one over the other?
There’s an old school philosophical question here about whether people can pursue the wrong thing for its own sake, or if they can only pursue the wrong thing because they have a mistaken perception that it’s the right thing. It’s a good question, and I have no idea what the right answer is.
But then there’s a less-fancy psychological question about motivation. (See: example about stealing above.) And in this case, I think there are gazillions of different motives for gazillions of different situations. It might be fear of death that motivates me to eat healthy food, but some other motive entirely that gets me to compliment a friend. I’m sure there are cases where people are like, “I’m driven to do Right,” but usually I think we’re just motivated to do specific thing that we think is right, like telling a friend, “you look nice,” or eating quinoa. (Ugh.)
By the time we’re adults so much of our worldview seems to be solidified. Is there something we can do to gut check our personal moral codes, ethics, or philosophical view of the world?
Philosophy can certainly do something like this, by forcing us to articulate what we believe and why. It’s not so much a gut check as a way of discovering what one thinks by having to say it.
There are all kinds of other activities that purport to shake us up in a good way, from meditation to ayahuasca retreats. I don’t know if they work, or how, or when, or at what cost, if any. The psychopharmacologist Robin Carhart-Haris talks about psychedelics softening the “grooves of thought,” which seems relevant.
Don’t forget to pre-order Michael’s new book (I already did!) Somebody Should Do Something.
Something Nice On Your Way Out ✌️
I recently spotted some feel-good bathroom graffiti in Brooklyn. There’s a non-zero percent chance that this is some kind of sex euphemism and if so, just… don’t tell me:
Ok, that’s all for this week! Stay tuned for the next The Nice Times, hitting inboxes on Friday, August 1.
Be sure to click the ♥️ so more people can have a nice time!
You can also drop a comment below 👇
LOVED THIS!!!! I now need a cheeseburger