No Stupid Questions

Because the world is run by narcissists and psychopaths

Due to the inherently competitive nature of living in a society that competes for resources, many people assume that a kind, upbeat person will be easy prey for someone tough and pushy. They lack the emotional intelligence to understand that you can be both kind and assertive.

In reality, you catch more flies with honey. Pretty much every study of game theory concludes that nice but assertive is the optimal strategy in any ongoing interaction. A nice person with a backbone is likely to be healthier boundaries, lower stress, and better relationships with people.

I treat people being overly kind as deceptive.

IMO it's just propaganda, it's as simple as that. Evil people with no empathy want everyone to turn off their own empathy, so they can use their positions of power to exploit everyone else.

If people (sensibly) think that we should strive to be as kind as possible, it exposes the evil people as being obviously evil when they exploit others, and because we're trying to be as nice as possible we then wouldn't tolerate that and we'd take away their power so they can't exploit people any more.

"Do not mistake my kindness as weakness"

Some of it is setting boundaries. If you don't stop certain behavior at the start, it just builds up, unintentionally aslo.

For example if your name is Robert, and you prefer Robert, correcting someone who called you "Bob" is the first action, otherwise they will keep doing it not knowing any better. Because if you wait til you're trusted with it, they're going to take it as hostility because "you never said anything before" and you're probably pissed when you do correct them.

Because many people mistake selfishness for strength and intelligence.
However, not matter how wrong they are and how deep in denial they go, at the end of the day mean selfish people are bad people and kind people are good ones.

And these bad people look very stupid when they think they can get away with their bad behavior and the kind not naïve person, just say no and don't back down.

There's also the stupid belief that being mean = intelligent, which kinda overlaps with this. I somewhat blame House MD for that; that show was popular around the time when the idea got normalized in media, and now it just keeps going and is repeated in multiple ways in movies, series... etc. Rick and Morty is another great example of what that type of portrayal can cause, it's done terrible damage in making it's target audience associate meanness and assholery with being intelligent.

You can be both kind and intelligent, these qualities are not linked in real life, just like being naïve and kind are not. This means that being mean doesn't make anyone look any smarter; it just makes you look like a mean asshole. This also seems to escape a lot of people and worsen the hateful shit both irl and online

It makes people feel better and more in control of themselves to think that their compassion fatigue is maturity instead of an injury that has been inflicted on them. I've spent a LOT of time working in inpatient psychiatry for a decade now wondering why people keep hurting each other. Why patients lash out at staff members, why staff members lash out at patients and why either does the same to their peers. This is just one of many common manifestations.

Because the world is ruled by sociopaths.

People think you are either (a) nice and let people walk all over you, or (b) you have to be evil to be strong. But the truth is you can be in between, you can be both nice and retaliatory in case others are evil to you first.

Its actually the best game-theory strategy, called "Tit-for-Tat", you be nice to others, but don't be afraid to retaliate when they start being evil. Because if you don't retaliate, they will take advantage of you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScpHTIi-kM

you will be seen as too trusting and people take advantage of it, and it can be your downfall. i know some people that are pushovers like that, can barely afford bills at this point.

People sometimes have difficulty walking the line between being nice and being a doormat and let people take advantage of their kindness. This bitters some people and they start to see their own kindness as a weakness.
When this happens they tend to think people who are kind just haven't had that bad experience yet and that they're naive about the way the world "really works".

They see it as a vulnerability they can exploit to get what they want. This is a reminder to use strong boundaries. You can be kind but also strong.

I'd say it's seen more as a sign of insecurity and some people thrive on that. You need to set boundaries or they'll keep trying things.

Some people were taught that being an asshole is good; hence, being nice is bad.

I'd bet that there is a lot of overlap between "people who are kind" and "people who are easily taken advantage of".

You seem to be a nice person. Don’t give up. I hope you find your people and I’d be happy to have positive people like you around me. Do you read about Buddhism and metta at all? When the whole world can show love and respect to themselves and others it will be a better place, and you seem to be there already.

Assholes like to rationalise their assholery by painting their victims as weak and somehow deserving it. You can very much see that in present day politics but you'll also meet people like that in real life.

Rudeness is merely an expression of fear. People fear they won't get what they want. The most dreadful and unattractive person only needs to be loved, and they will open up like a flower.

Likely because they were once upbeat and positive people too and it didn't get them what they want so they have changed their ways to be less positive.

So anybody who is still positive, in their experience, hasn't learned yet that that isn't going to get them what they want.

It might be a defense mechanism. They were taken advantage of when they were more open and positive.

It might just be bad learned behavior. The people who have what they want aren't very positive to them.

It is also not easy to stay positive so a lot of people choose not to. Sometimes we like to make excuses for why people are able to do the harder things that we're not doing. "Oh I would volunteer too if I had as much time as them.". "Oh I am just not naive enough to be that positive"

Because the world is a horrible place full of horrible people that need to convince themselves that they're not horrible people.

I mean the reason you have to ask is kind of... why

We're in mostly a capitalistic world. Capitalism makes utilitarianism seem easy since it becomes easy to assign a "value" to everything. That kind of thinking quickly gets you to naive cynicism. We're conditioned to think certain things are more valuable than others - mental wellbeing and community have been steadily devalued.

There's a saying "behind every cynic there's a disappointed idealist". We're in a world where a lot of people grew up in a time of amazing technological advancement, but have been bitterly disappointed by how the world is today. These people are now getting to that age where they may have been working the same job for a while (if they got lucky with job security) and they just want to get the job done and not exert any more effort than necessary (since by their experience, it doesn't "pay off").

Let them be them, you do your thing. They don't owe you any kind of behavior really, though it would be expected and polite of them to keep things at professional level of course. You don't owe them either so you don't have to let them bring you down. Don't take it personally though because it really, really isn't.

Obvs just my view. If you really want to know, you can try to just ask what they value and if you can work in a way that aligns with that while not disregarding your own values.

That's just some Murican bullshit, it's what happens to people raised by reality tv

It's harder to do the right thing, it's tough to be truly kind.

Follow your heart and try to make a better world around you