Quote Originally Posted by Bartmanhomer View Post
Well, my definition of good that nice is part of good but I guess it isn't.
To be fair to your original definition, goodness and niceness often go hand in hand. And actually I would go further and say that you are mostly correct. Being nice is one part of being good. At least under most common ways of thinking. If you had two people who are otherwise identical in their behavior but one of them greets everyone with a smile and the other just ignores them. Well most people would reckon that the first person is a better person. After all he is making other peoples lives better (or at least attempting to) while the second person isn't. However niceness isn't necessarily a good thing in and of itself and it can get very murky very quickly. Going back to those two people if the first guy was smiling and greeting those folks because he wanted to con them later, that's definitely bad. Even if he was just doing it because he wanted to be on their good side and thought he might get treated better if he was smiling, it's not necessarily bad but I would certainly hesitate to call it good. So you can see how quickly the situation can become foggy especially when taking into account things like motives which might not even be clear to the person doing the action.
Also as some other posters mentioned sometimes niceness needs to take a back seat in order to do what's right (such as when a person needs to fight a villain or when a fire fighter needs to break down a door). Furthermore all people in real life and most characters in fiction are complex creatures who do not embody goodness but rather exist on a spectrum. Some characters are mostly good (they put themselves in harms way to help others and protect the innocent) but might be mean and surly with everyone including their friends (like Batman). Others are good characters who are nice to everyone (like superman). I would argue that the former is a more fun and interesting character but the latter is a better (in terms of goodness) character.
Long story short I think you are right overall to associate goodness and niceness but it's a lot more complicated than simply good=nice.