This item was located on an old drive and is being inserted into the blog for archival purposes.
The Cost of Being “Too Nice”: A Personal Reckoning
There’s a harsh trade-off in modern existence—a tax on autonomy charged in the currency of conformity. To get in the door, you yield a piece of your will, and in return, you’re handed the legal minimum: a salary just above drowning, benefits dictated by those who’ve never sweated at your level. Every dollar is stretched across the real cost of staying operational: food, shelter, medicine, sanity. It’s a balancing act demanded by all forms of hierarchy—corporate ladders, political clubs, government bureaucracies, military ranks. They’re all cut from the same cloth, and so are the servile industries propping up these empires.
The world’s been too nice about it. Meanwhile, the machine cranks forward, profit-glutted and heedless, shoving the planet—and all of us clinging on—toward an existential brick wall. At this point, I have little left to lose and, apparently, plenty to teach about why it doesn’t mean a thing. We are all screaming into the void, hoping the echo outlasts us.
Once, being “too nice” was my secret strength—a quiet reminder that kindness is always a choice, not an obligation. A gentle nudge that decency still mattered, even if nobody asked for it. Now, those gestures get weaponized. Pleas for pity, donation links, and subscription requests clutter every feed. This sympathy economy feeds on itself until nothing is left but the bones of our collective spirit.
Meanwhile, here I sit, trying not to die of a preventable infection—the system’s “urgent” resources withheld because the beds are stuffed with the COVIDIOTS who ignored the science, but now expect their turn at salvation. There’s no contest for who endures the worst cruelties; humanity always finds ways to justify its meanness, and those labeled “nice” carry the heaviest burden, at least until we fracture.
I broke. Decades and generations of serving others, giving beyond what was healthy, sacrificing for companies, for “communities,” for cannibalistic systems with no loyalty but to their own gargantuan appetites. I was always “too nice,” and it left me alone, empty, and hurting. Corporate machines, government red tape, capitalist grind—none of these entities give a damn about me — a disabled, older, autistic individual. My age and identity? They made them liabilities. I am supposed to take the hint and vanish quietly into the background.
I got the message. But it did not have the intended effect. More like pusugi – the swift kick to the head – I saw clearly: in this system, designed by your will and whim, if you’re not with me, you are, by default, against me.
For the first time, I understood that for what it is, what it means… and my interest in pleasing people evaporated—there’s no comfort in self-abnegation when your reality is unlivable, your pain chronic, and your support system nonexistent. If the world resents my anger, my “improper” tone—good. I don’t much like living this either, but it’s what I’m forced to wake up to. I won’t soften the truth to fit anyone’s palate; I literally can’t afford to give you that luxury anymore.
For fifty-six years, I took pride in being the dependable fool, the pillar, the helper. Now, on the other side, I see how quickly society labeled me “disposable”—how easy it is for the system to insist the vulnerable to step aside and make room for the privileged, the reckless, the deniers. My pain is real, my medical history proved and ignored, my exhaustion justified. The capitalist myth of “too big to fail” is a sick joke; meanwhile, people like me are shunted aside, left behind, disregarded… sub-human.
What happened to ‘nice’? That state is now appropriately and correctly reserved for kin – be they blood or chosen. The self-sacrificer, the self-destructive? The one willing to die on the altar of other people’s comfort?
Hah. You wish. Survival is a primal kindness and I pay it only to myself.