FROM THE EDITOR

Iam not always a nice person. In fact, truth be told, I would not say “nice” is one of my great virtues. I forget birthdays. I don’t call when I say I will. I can be hotheaded, prone to sudden, great billowy clouds of anger that come from nowhere… and then pass just as quickly. It has taken me a while to process this. After all, nice is what women are supposed to be. It is what little girls grow up being told they should be. And nice is what most people say they want in a colleague, a partner and a friend. “Nice person and all-round good egg,” I see hoisted high on Instagram bios. “Just try to be NICE!” I hear parents scream at screwy-faced toddlers.“My problem is… I’m just too nice,” I’ve witnessed young women lament to sympathetic friends late at night on last trains home. And nothing, nothing stings like an argument where the final coup de grace is: “You’re just not a very nice person.” Ouch. A blow to the heart. A metal-toe-capped kick to our sense of who we are. But what if we have it all wrong? What if, instead of spending our entire lives elevating our virtues, we gave more air time to the darker side of who we are? Because we all have a dark side, you know. A hot snap of anger. A glowering mood. A mean word, glistening with spite that comes from out of nowhere. We surprise ourselves when it emerges. After all, we are nice people. Or at least that is what we tell ourselves. And so we make excuses:

we were having a bad day. We didn’t mean to say that. We don’t know what came over us. And so we push that most secret part of who we are underground, where it will rumble and wait… wait to catch us off-guard. Being caught off-guard by your dark side is not wise, for it strengthens the blow when it eventually comes. And come it will. Far better to admit to a hot temper or a bitchy competitive streak than languish forever with the naive assumption that you are simply a nice person. Because if you can recognise it, you can contain it. Acknowledging who you really are, rather than who you want to believe you are, is ironically the only way to become who you aspire to actually be. Understanding where monstrous ideas and behaviour come from, then, is crucial to understanding life, and it is something one of the most controversial figures of the last few years, Dr Jordan B Peterson, talks about at length. Dr Peterson has been denounced by many as a misogynist and a far-right agitator, and yet he has also amassed an almost cult-like male (and female) following. These people, by the way, do not all have far-right beliefs or questionable morals. In fact many of them are our partners, friends and colleagues. Which is why we dispatched associate editor Amy Grier to meet the man himself and those who follow him. After all, far better to acknowledge and understand those who we are told to fear than to simply deny their existence. Which, quite frankly, wouldn’t be very nice at all.