I used to be a very happy, optimistic person. I believed in such positive ideas as democracy, human kindness and salary caps. Unfortunately, I've had a sudden change of heart. Actually, it's not that sudden. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I've always felt this way, I've just been in denial. And even though I still believe in democracy and salary caps, I've come to accept the death of human kindness, specifically the death of the congenial male, a.k.a. the "nice guy." I still don't buy the age-old adage "nice guys finish last," but I can safely say that in today's society of misplaced values, acerbic ambitions and hidden agendas -- nice guys can not possibly finish first. In some cases they are lucky if they get a bronze, and usually must settle for a distant fourth and a ribbon of honorable mention. What has provoked this somber sentiment of simple cynicism upon me?
Last term I witnessed the transformation of one of the nicest guys I've ever known into a selfless shell of a man. "Evan," one of my closer friends here at Dartmouth, is still alive and very well, but the change in his outlook on life was so dramatic that the Evan I once knew is essentially deceased. Evan was a person who would have given his right lung to see his friends happy. He used to argue to his last breath the necessity of hope and happiness for a successful future, that things are better today than they were 25 years ago, and they're getting better. But reality finally caught up with Evan. "Yeah," he confessed to me over his chicken tenders from Food Court late one night, "life might be better for big business, for the economy and stock market, but not for me. Am I better off today then I was three years ago? No. With every passing day I became more invisible. They take me for granted." Just two days before Evan had argued endlessly for the importance of welfare, universal health care and the need to help others. But now he is obsessed with his new found pessimistic egotism. The nice guy has lost hope. He no longer seeks to help his friends when they need him. He is too busy. He needs to "study." He has no time to be nice anymore. The payoff is too little, anyway. All he sought in return was a simple "thanks," but even that is too much nowadays. No one cares.
Niceness has no place in this fast-paced world where every lane is the express lane. Being nice means yielding the right-of-way to pedestrians, and you can't do that in the fast lane. If you do, you'll just get rear-ended. Being nice means going out of one's way to take other people's feelings into one's everyday decisions. This takes time. Time is money. Money makes the world go round. Hence there is no longer room for niceness in this world. This is evident in e-mail, where friendly greetings and personal sentiments have been replaced by punctuation smiley faces and blind carbon copies.
Even the acts of kindness are getting a makeover. For high school students who wish to go to college, and even for students at this college, once cherished acts of volunteerism have become compulsory service -- just another thing to add to their resumes. Evan has worked every summer since middle school, but has yet to earn a dollar. Working for nothing at schools, hospitals, and local political campaigns took up his precious vacations, while his friends waited till the summer right before their senior year to scrounge the necessary community service points to graduate. "I used to think I'm a better person for it," he says solemnly, "but I should have just gotten a real job."
As far as I'm concerned, Evan was the last of the nice guys. He was far more thoughtful than I could ever hope to be. He was actually a gentleman. He opened doors for other people. He was old-fashioned and proud of it. I even saw him open a car door once for a girl he just met. If you needed help with absolutely anything, he'd be there for you: homework, moving furniture, or just keeping you company at lunch even though he already ate and has some work he could be doing instead. I could never devote so much time to other people.
He used to give me hope that there is still good in this world. His generosity and lack of ego made me very optimistic. His metamorphosis into a shallow, selfish, petty person has now made me into an eternal pessimist. Looking at all the that could have possibly led to his reversal of thought -- the many shades of rude rejections, the professor who never learned his name, or is maybe the pressure by his peers to conform to their standards (which includes myself)-- I am no longer surprised by his newfound depressing demeanor. At first I asked myself "What changed him?" Now I ask myself: "How did he last so long?"
