There was a revelation that hit me today.  I was thinking about people being nice to each other, & what the exact payoff might be for doing so.  I forgot my water bottle at a meeting last week, & someone asked me about it at the end of the day.  She said she'd leave it with someone else because she was going to be out the next day, & then unexpectedly the next morning it was delivered to my office door.  I was somewhat effusive in thanking the people involved in finding & returning the water bottle to me.  I could have not been very thankful at all, but that's when it occurred to me that showing gratitude might have made the people involved feel validated in helping me out, & possibly in helping others out in the future.

If I'd just left it with "thanks", that would not just paint me as a bit of a jerk, but might discourage these people helping others in the future, because they might receive more jerkish "thanks"-type responses. These people might still help others in the future, & helping others should be the end in itself regardless of the "thanks" you receive in return, granted.  But showing gratitude, & being nice, helps restore and maintain others' faith in humanity & the good in other people.  That's the good in it, & it's good for everyone.

Now that I think about it, this is something severely missing from the current dialogs in civility in politics & society -- that message that engaging classically accepted etiquette is really good for everyone.  And if there are people who are too small-minded to see that, then they're the ones who lose out.  Unfortunately I think a lot of us have been brought up as if rules of etiquette are baseless, or just something for snobs to use to feel better than everyone else, and that you can be more successful if you're more willing to be impolite & assert yourself over others.  And I saw the logic of that & was a proponent of such thinking, at least logically, long ago, though I've noticed that I never really took to it as a life approach.  Probably because I knew, deep down, that there was a larger purpose to civility & being nice.

This kind of thinking has been with me for some time, and today's revelation made this blog a reality starting today.  The Don't Be A Dick Foundation is a reality, starting today.  Because people really need to be nice to each other, to feel empathy for & show compassion to others.  If you can't do that, at the very least, don't be a dick.