Are You Nice?

I abstained from a Facebook conversation a while back. It started with a status that went something like, “The secret of success is being nice.” Everyone started agreeing, including some people I would not characterize as nice. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I’m conflicted. Nice is nice, but is it really the secret to success? And if niceness is yet another strategy, is it really that nice? Nice as nice might be, I wonder how many people who regard themselves as successful list “ni...