Be Nice To Everyone. It Just Might Save Your Life.

This is a post about that old adage about being kind to strangers, but with a twist. This time the focus won’t be on why being kind is a thing you ought to do — it will be about how it just might save your life.

As much as we don’t like to admit it, the social contract is everything. We live in a world where, in order to survive, we have to interact with other people.

Fortunately, this doesn’t mean we have to please everyone. Pleasing people just means doing exactly what they want to make them happy. But our happiness doesn’t depend on other’s happiness! We just need to focus on getting our own needs fulfilled, and interacting with people just enough to get those needs.

There’s just one problem. You can’t just demand things of other people and give them nothing in return. In this case, the social horde really will go against you — perhaps not by bashing your head in with a boulder and throwing you off a cliff like they used to do in the old days, but the more civil equivalent of that is a possibility. So, we need to hit a middle ground: one where we cannot really concern ourselves with the wants and needs of others, but still accomplish our own.

Now, let me introduce you to something radical: the strategic value of kindness.

I’ve never been a fan of the belief that anything “goes without saying”, and that includes kindness. When teachers always told me to “be kind” to others — especially when they told me to be kind to people I just did not like — I never got it. I think that’s because I was never told the practical reason behind being kind to others.

Being nice to someone — smiling at them, saying hello, laughing at their jokes, being all around pleasant in their vicinity — confers some nice advantages in social game theory. The first is that it allows you to take asymmetrical reward. This is best illustrated by an example: let’s say you have a group project, with three other people in tow. If you are a classic lurker — not contributing to the project in a meaningful (positive or negative) capacity — you will likely just be assigned a chunk to work on and have to finish that chunk else face social boulder-smashing. However, let’s say you approached things with a bright, friendly, optimistic angle. You kindness, despite not requiring much effort, will allow a certain leeway in which you could negotiate less work. Hence the term asymmetrical — you get more free time while also contributing less. Of course, the kindness itself is seen as the reward here — but as I mentioned, its a lot easier to be nice to people then to spend 60 minutes putting together a slide.

The second benefit — and arguably the most important — is that it helps you acquire allies. I mean this in no strict sense, but rather just people who will have your side on things. People who you are nice to will begin to see you positively, and even if they are not outrightly your friend, they will respect you and, in the case of spats or controversy, they will take your side if they have a preexisting positive opinion of you. Kindness as a tool for allies has been used historically with huge success — both for benign purposes of personal success (such as Winston Churchill or Lyndon B. Johnson) and the malicious purposes of obfuscating a greater evil (such as Jimmy Saville or Carl H.). I will hope that you will use it for the benign, and have some genuineness behind your kindness as well.

So, how might kindness save your life? Here’s a real kicker: people who are kinder tend to live longer. Medical experts explain this at a surface level by saying its due to a decrease in cortisol (friendly people don’t tend to be in as many stressful situations). But as a reckless opinionated writer and not a medical expert, I will suggest the following: that perhaps the community that the kind person surrounds herself in desire her to keep living. Who do you think gets the best medical care: the town grouch, a random nobody, or a well-known saint?

If you’re one of the best of us, you have already been nice to others just because you’ve been told to. But hopefully now you feel even more motivated to make the world a better place, as it might just be to your own benefit.

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