There are no nice guys or assholes. There are just people who do nice things, shitty things, and everything else in between. The difference is in labels vs actions. [1]
A lot of people get stuck between the dichotomy of nice people (the label) doing mean things (the action) — e.g. “How can nice people do mean things?”
This perplexity often causes them to change the labels so those “nice” people become “mean” people.
The sentence then translates to— Mean people doing mean things.
The swap happens because they resolve that those mean people were probably mean all along, they probably just had a charming facade.
The opposite would also be true. Jerks (the label) being nice (the action) to their family members. This would change to — Nice people being nice to their family members — as expected.
The reality is, if one focuses on actions rather than labels, it helps to remove any incongruity.
Here is how Diane Nguyen from BoJack Horseman puts it:
“There’s no such thing as “bad guys” or “good guys.” We’re all just…guys, who do good stuff sometimes and bad stuff sometimes. And all we can do is try to do less bad stuff and more good stuff, but you’re never going to be good because you’re not bad.”
A way to resolve the labels vs actions dichotomy for yourself is to just do the right thing. Try as much as possible to do the right thing every time and you will never have to wrestle between nice or mean [2].
It may seem like ‘right’ and ‘nice’ are the same thing, but they are not. ‘Right Thing’ is the outcome and ‘Nice Thing’ is the approach. You can hire someone out of the goodness of your heart to help them financially, but if they do not have the skills for the job then it’s the wrong thing to do, though it’s a nice gesture.
Conversely, you can do the right thing with a bad approach — You could fire someone from their job because they consistently miss milestones by disgracing them in front of their co-workers. It is the right thing to do but totally the wrong approach [3].
There is a saying “Nice guys finish last”. But I believe those that finish last (assuming a level playing field) fail to do the right things. They fail to do the right important things. “Niceness” is the vehicle, “rightness” is the destination [4].
Thanks to Kayanna, Olamide and Ozo for reviewing this. :)
[1] You can swap “nice guys” for nice people. I just used “guys” as this is a common terminology
[2] Right and wrong fall under the subjective moral compass. You can indeed do the wrong thing but think it is the right thing. This can mostly be ascertained through reflection or asking others.
[3] Losing your job is never a nice feeling and I won’t wish it on anyone.
[4] “Nice guys finish last” is actually a misquotation of Leo Durocher
“Do you know a nicer guy in the world than Mel Ott? He’s a nice guy. In last place. Where am I? In first place. I’m in first place. The nice guys are over there in last place, not in this dugout.”