[Buddha-l] Re: Niceness

[jkirk]

>
> I think they are different aspects of the same thing. Being a hopeless
> addict of etymology, I can't resist pointing out that the word "nice" is
> derived, through medieval French, from the Latin "nescius", which means
> ignorant. The word "nice" used to mean simple-minded, foolish,
> unsophisticated, ignorant. A simpleton often makes pleasant company,
> because one can easily take advantage of such a person. We usually think
> of people as nice when they don't get in our way very much. People who
> really help us in an active way, by pointing our our own foolishness
> (niceness?), usually don't seem very nice to us........................
.............................

> Richard Hayes
> http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes
=========================================
Niceness got a big hit around the end of the fifties, beginning of the 
sixties in this
country (USA), when rebels began to notice that the prevailing ethic of the 
fifties middle class was being "nice." Girls and women especially were 
expected to be nice. This meant conventional politeness, endless 
smiley-ness, and not rocking anyone's boat, not holding any strong views 
(especially political ones), and looking forward to getting married and 
having 6 children, and no premarital sex. (The same was the case for both 
white and black middle classes at that time.)
Richard's exposure of the etymology of the word is very interesting (I'm 
also an etymology addict)-----if it originally literally meant ignorant or 
simple-minded, the word evolved to extend the 'ignorant' meaning in the 
sense that nice people did not inquire too far, did not delve deep into 
serious questions of morality; unlike some Buddhists, they took everything 
for granted as told to them or taught to them by parents, teachers, and 
politicians.
But IMO the word has evolved further, to mean someone who is 'ignorant' in 
the sense that he or she is non-discriminative according to the sense of it 
in Buddhism.
'Non-judgmental' would not be right because even Buddhists find occasions 
where being judgmental--i.e. making some kind of judgment--is skillful. I 
suspect that people who have defeated slavery to the three poisons to some 
extent are also non-discriminative in the Buddhist sense of the term, 
therefore, they are "truly nice."
Joanna