Being Nice

So my philosophy in life is pretty much just to "be nice".

Maybe 'karma' and 'what comes around, goes around' and 'do unto others as you want to them to do unto you' want you to do the same thing ("be nice") but they try to make you fear what might happen if you don't. Really, they're just slightly nicer versions of 'an eye for an eye' (the way most people interpret it).

Douglas Adams pointed this out in in the beginning of two of his books,
"nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree
for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change"

So maybe the above is an appropriate quote for this weekend, but it's stuck with me for the last 20 years since I read it. It's a pretty simple concept, be nice. all that confusing dying for our sins and betrayal really can confuse the whole simple concept.

I'm not pushing religion or any deep philosophies. I'm not even trying to figure out why we decorate and eat hard boiled chicken embryos or chocolate shaped in their image. I'm just trying to get people to think about being a little nicer, if for no reason other than they can.

A character of Neil Gaiman (another British author) one said something like 'It's not any harder to be nice than it is to be mean and it's not nearly as fun.'

Technorati Tags: be nice, Douglas Adams, Neil Gaiman

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Posted by Gary on Sunday at 12:31 PM on March 23, 2008.
Related categories: books, general, me + myself + i
Thanks for the 1 comments/trackbacks from: Stef
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