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When Did Being Nice Become Stigmatized?
Or is it just me?
In today’s wild, digital world, kindness and niceness have fallen out of favor.
Open acts of kindness are now often met with skepticism and suspicion or even perceived as weak, intrusive, or overly sentimental. And often, people only do kind deeds to keep up a “good appearance” on social media.
Most people know what being kind consists of (no, it’s not donating half your salary to charity). Doing simple things like holding a door for someone, giving a genuine compliment when warranted, or saying sir/ma’am goes a long way.
It could seem this way because I was raised in the South, where hospitality is more generally practiced than in other areas. But somewhere along the line, our culture shifted away from this attitude and into “mind your own business.”
I’ve often wondered where this came from, and a few ideas come to mind:
The Emergence of Individualism
The rise of individualism in many Western societies has dramatically influenced the way we interact with each other. This cultural shift emphasizes self-reliance, personal freedom, and autonomy over collective responsibility and interconnectedness.
