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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"i was thinking nice guys don't want rewards... everyone wants rewards otherwise they wouldn't be on this site "
ooh, this one is even better:
Two ingredients need to be present for a nice guy (or gal) to get rewarded:
1. a genuinely nice guy needs to take action because he genuinely cares, not because he expects a reward.
2. the receiver needs to be the sort of person who feels grateful for the help received from the nice guy, and he also needs to be the sort of person who expresses his gratitude.
It's easy to spot a genuinely nice guy getting rewarded. He reacts with surprise and humility. He wasn't expecting a reward and he may even be embarrassed to get one. He was just doing what was natural to him--what he believes anyone would have done if they'd seen someone else in need. (This sort of surprise can be faked, but most people aren't good-enough actors to fake it well or repeatedly.)
It's possible to expect a reward and get one, but people who always expect rewards tend to make that obvious, even if they think it's their secret. It's hard to feel gratitude towards a person who is helping you because he wants something in return. That type of "nice guy" becomes bitter in the end, because people don't reward him (because they suspect his true intentions), and so eventually stops being nice. And then he complains that "nice guys don't get rewarded."
While there are plenty of folks who don't expect to be rewarded, there's a threshold of ingratitude that feels shitty to them. If they give and give and give and never get so much as a thank you, they will feel hurt. It's not so much that they expect a reward. It's more than they want to live in a world in which people respect each other, help each other, and are grateful when they're helped.
Some of them so want to believe that there's gratitude inside everyone, they make the mistake of continually giving to ungrateful people. A certain kind of "Taker" is good at seeming to be in need and preying on the helpful.
Most folks want the world to be way simpler than it is. They want there to be easy rules to follow. They want to believe that either "nice guys get rewarded" or "nice guys are chumps who get taken advantage of."
The truth is that when a genuinely nice guy meets another genuinely nice guy, there will be niceness and rewards.
1. Nice person -- Nice person = good outcome.
2. Nice person -- Taker = bad outcome.
3. "Nice" person -- Nice person = bad outcome.
4. "Nice" person -- Taker = bad outcome.
In the above list, the bad outcome will be for at least one party involved, sometimes but not always both.
It may look as if being nice is a sucker's game, because it only works out well in one of four of the above scenarios. But that's an illusion. The world is mostly populed by folks who are grateful when they're helped. The trick is to avoid the takers. That's sometimes hard, because it's in their interest to pretend to be nice. They'll fool you, so your best bet is "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."
But that's just when it comes to interactions with a single person. The rational takeaway from "Bill is an ingrate" is "don't keep on helping Bill." It's not "nice guys never get rewarded." But that's complicated. It's hard to think about Bill and Jane and Fred and Charles and Mary and ... each with his or her own level of gratitude. It's easier to caricature the world into a generally grateful or generally predatory place.
There's something a little odd about saying, as I did above, that "being nice is a sucker's game," as if it's a choice. Perhaps one can very gradually be trained out of niceness (or into it), but, in general, one is nice or one isn't. It's not a costume you can put on. That's "nice" not nice. People who are genuinely nice help others because it's in their nature to do so.
If you're nice, you'll wind up being rewarded, even though you're not asking for it and expecting it, as long as you don't latch onto a Taker.
If you're "nice," you may get rewarded once or twice, but, in general, people will see through you. They'll see that you're in the game for a reward, and they won't give it to you. |
