You can try to like stuff

to probe human nature

dynomight.net/liking

Here’s one possible hobby:

1. Take something you don’t like.

2. Try to like it.

It could be food or music or people or just the general situation you’re in. I recommend this hobby, partly because it’s nice to enjoy things, but mostly as an instrument for probing human nature.

1.

I was in Paris once. By coincidence, I wandered past a bunch of places that were playing Michael Jackson. I thought to myself, “Huh. The French sure do love Michael Jackson.” Gradually I decided, “You know what? They’re right! Michael Jackson is good.” Later, I saw a guy driving around blasting Billy Jean while hanging a hand outside his car with a sparkly white Michael Jackson glove. Again, I thought, “Huh.” That day was June 25, 2009.

2.

I don’t like cooked spinach. But if I eat some and try to forget that I hate it, it seems OK. Why?

Well, as a child, I was subjected to some misguided spinach-related parental interventions. (“You cannot leave this table until you’ve finished this extremely small portion”, etc.) I hated this, but looking back, it wasn’t the innate qualities of spinach the bothered me, so much as that being forced to put something inside my body felt like a violation of my autonomy.

When I encountered spinach as an adult, instead of tasting a vegetable, I tasted a grueling battle of will. Spinach was dangerous—if I liked it, that would teach my parents that they were right to control my diet.

So I tried telling myself little stories: I’m hiking in the mountains in Japan when suddenly the temperature drops, and it starts pouring rain. Freezing and desperate, I spot a monastery and knock on the door. The monks warm me up and offer me hōrensō no ohitashi, made from some exotic vegetable I’ve never seen before. Presumably, I’d think it was amazing.

I can’t fully access that mind-space. But just knowing it exists seems to make a big difference. Using similar techniques, I’ve successfully made myself like (or less dislike) white wine, Ezra Klein, disco, yoga, non-spicy food, Pearl Jam, and Studio Ghibli movies.

Lesson: Sometimes we dislike things simply because we have a concept of ourselves as not liking them.

3.

Meanwhile, I’ve failed to make myself like country music. I mean, I like A Boy Named Sue. Who doesn’t? But what about Stand By Your Man or Dust on the Bottle? I listen to these, and I appreciate what they’re doing. I admire that they aren’t entirely oriented around the concerns of teenagers. But I can’t seem to actually enjoy them.

Of course, it seems unlikely that this is unrelated to the fact that no one in my peer group thinks country music is cool. On the other hand, I’m constantly annoyed that my opinions aren’t more unique or interesting. And I subscribe to the idea that what’s really cool is to be a cultural omnivore who appreciates everything.

It doesn’t matter. I still can’t like country music. I think the problem is that I don’t actually want to like country music. I only want to want to like country music. The cultural programming is in too deep.

Lesson: Certain levels of the subconscious are easier to screw around with than others.

4.

For years, a friend and I would go on week-long hikes. Before we started, we’d go make our own trail mix, and I’d always insist on adding raisins. Each year, my friend would object more loudly that I don’t actually like raisins. But I do like raisins. So I’d scoff. But after several cycles, I had to admit that while I “liked raisins” there never came a time that I actually wanted to eat raisins, ever.

Related: Once every year or two, I’ll have a rough day, and I’ll say to myself, “OK, screw it. Liking Oasis is the lamest thing that has ever been done by anyone. But the dirty truth is that I love Oasis. So I will listen to Oasis and thereby be comforted.” Then I listen to Oasis, and it just isn’t that good.

Lesson: You can have an incorrect concept of self.

5.

I don’t like this about myself, but I’m a huge snob regarding television. I believe TV can be true art, as high as any other form. (How does My Brilliant Friend only have an 89 on Metacritic?) But even after pretentiously filtering for critical acclaim, I usually feel that most shows are slop and can’t watch them.

At first glance, this seems just like country music—I don’t like it because of status-driven memetic desire or whatever. But there’s a difference. Not liking country music is fine (neurotic self-flagellation aside) because there’s an infinite amount of other music. But not liking most TV is really annoying, because often I want to watch TV, but can’t find anything acceptable.

I see three possible explanations:

1. Almost all TV is, in fact, bad.

2. Lots of TV is fine, but just doesn’t appeal to me.

3. Lots of TV is fine, but it’s hard to tell yourself stories where you’re hiking in the mountains and a bunch of Japanese monks show you, like, Big Bang Theory.

Whatever it is, it seems hard to change.

Lesson: Some things are hard to change.

7.

On planes, the captain will often invite you to, “sit back and enjoy the ride”. This is confusing. Enjoy the ride? Enjoy being trapped in a pressurized tube and jostled by all the passengers lining up to relieve themselves because your company decided to cram in a few more seats instead of having an adequate number of toilets? Aren’t flights supposed to be endured?

At the same time, those invitations seem like a glimpse of a parallel universe. Are there members of my species who sit back and enjoy flights?

I have no hard data. But it’s a good heuristic that there are people “who actually X” for approximately all values of X. If one in nine people enjoy going to the dentist, surely at least that many enjoy being on planes.

What I think the captain is trying to say is, “While you can’t always control your situation, you have tremendous power over how you experience that situation. You may find a cramped flight to be a torture. But the torture happens inside your head. Some people like you situation. You too, perhaps could like it.”

That’s an important message. Though one imagines that giving it as an in-flight announcement would cause more confusion, not less. So the captain does what they can.