Maybe I got it wrong (30.09.2025)

I received a voicemail the other day from someone I know.  He told me a tragic story, two in fact and challenged my definition of niceness. Some of you will know that I wrote a piece analysing the difference between niceness and kindness, in which I defined the first as a panacea for social discord. This colleague, Tom Maher disagreed and spoke of how people’s niceness to his adversaries had hurt him deeply; my article, he said, failed to point out these ‘third party effects’. 

After listening to him I had to agree that yes, he was right. Niceness has a shadow. It can be cruel.

Let me tell you his story so you can better understand the context (you can read it in more detail in the Irish Times, 16 November 2022). While attending a boarding school in Ireland, ran by a religious order, he was twice abused by the priest, first in the changing rooms where the priest showered naked with the boys and once in the dormitory.

It took Tom many years to grapple with the abuse but finally, in 2021, he reported it to the gardaí (Irish police) as well as the religious order.

To quote Tom, ‘they had a farce of an enquiry which I probed, and because I was probing, I got a legal letter from the top priest of the clerical order in Ireland to desist; at the same time, he was simpering away to the press, saying people should come forward. In my experience, these appeals I saw were always directed at the victim, never the perpetrators.’

Although it has since come to light that the boys often warned each other about this priest, there remains an ‘institutional loyalty to the College so much so that few of his old classmates contacted him to express their support. In fact, he told me, ‘There was a dinner recently where people from my year sat around the table with the guy who had sent me the legal letter and none of them raised my issue, probably from the example you give of dinner and social niceness. I see it as a complete betrayal and a complete kick in the stomach… so yeah, niceness is far from neutral.’

Tom’s experience isn’t an isolated event, and though few of us (I hope) have been complicit in such silence, many of us have allowed niceness to salt people’s wounds rather than heal them.

So, what is niceness?

In my earlier article, I called it a social virtue which serves as a bulwark against disagreeable behaviour. It might lack compassion, and it might appear superficial, but that doesn’t mean it is insincere.  In fact, there is nothing inherently wrong with it. The trouble arises when we value it above the truth.  Then, it stands in the way of justice and becomes a vice.  It shields us from honest self-examination and protects us from ethical responsibility. After all, there are times when, if we wish to be good, we cannot afford to be nice. 

Not everyone who is nice is consciously ‘choosing’ to be unethical. Some are so well practiced in niceness that it becomes a habit, and they do it without thinking. Maybe that was the case with Tom’s former classmates. Perhaps they feared conflict or maybe they felt nothing would be gained by ‘digging it all up again’. Yet surely, genuine moral engagement requires us to interrogate the norms of society. We shouldn’t acquiesce to them out of habit; rather, we should have the courage to question and challenge them. This is what it means to have integrity. It’s the difference between ‘good faith’ and ‘bad faith’ (to quote Sartre).  After all, if they truly despised paedophilia, they would speak out, irrespective of the consequences.

Whatever their reasons, they were complicit in the game of silence. And this is when niceness becomes a form of coercion. It forces those without power to comply with the norms of the dominant group. Sometimes it is subtle, other times it is overt. How many of us have been called ‘difficult’ or ‘rude’ because we refused to agree with someone?  Such pressure forces people to fall into line to avoid being rejected.  It is the ‘niceness trap’ that makes people act against their own interests to comply with the wider group. This culture of compliance is detrimental to everyone because it erodes our self-respect and personal agency, worse, it can allow systemic abuses to go unchallenged. Nietzsche railed against the ‘herd morality’; to be nice at all costs is to sell your soul.

Philosophy teaches us that virtue is not a matter of habit or appearance, but of wise discernment and courageous action. In questioning the value of niceness, we can allow deeper forms of honesty and justice to flourish. It may be less comfortable, but it’s certainly more meaningful.