So... this isn't ground breaking philosophy or anything... but here it goes.
A coworker who hated last week's episode of Lost asked me if I also hated it. I told him I did not and asked what he hated about it. He rattled off a list of things I could understand even if I didn't ultimately agree... Then he turned the tables on me and asked what I liked about it. I felt like a deer in headlights. Actually, more like those kids on Apple Jacks commercials in the 90s that were just confronted with the fact that the cereal doesn't, in fact, taste like apples (or "jacks" presumably). I, like the kids in the commerical, eventually setteled on "I just did, alright?! ALRIGHT!?!?". Since this guy kind of works for me, he noted my raised voice and agitation... agreed with me... apologized and then bowed and backed down the hallway back to his desk.
It left me thinking for the rest of the day, however: if you can't justify why you liked something... can you really say you liked it? And, to cut to the chase, I think you definitely can. I think we "like" things, generally speaking, based on the degree of our emotional response. It's often hard to explain or describe our emotional responses, so it's easier to list the ways we "rationally" responded to it, and so we often do that in it's place. Regarding the Lost episode (or Star Wars, or my wife, or the 100 other things I like but can't quite explain why) there were definitely things I liked ABOUT it, and things that I admired and thought were well done... but when tempted to offer these items to my obediant underling as some kind of "cause" for my emotional response... well... not one item or combination of them felt like proper justification. Just like his litany of things he didn't like didn't compell me to fall on the "didn't like" side of conclusion.
It did make me think that I like everything unless I don't. What I mean by that is that I'm emotionaly expecting to like something and I will as long as I don't have rational reasons not to.
ASIDE: I used to work shifts with a guy (we'll call him Joe (for that was his name)) who wanted to know what we had in common. I told him I liked movies and he decided that was it! He liked movies too! Since that was out of the way, we then started discussing what movies we both liked. It was 2004 and I ran down some of the geek favourites: Star Wars, Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Terminator, Aliens, etc... He just stared at me and told me they were all aweful and he couldn't believe I was part of "the unwashed masses problem" and I was part of the reason theses movies made money AND his life miserable. I continued to offer up other movies I liked and he shot them all down. Eventually I asked him what movies he liked... He named some older movies, all prior to 1980 if I remember correctly. I asked him to name a movie produced within the past 10 years that he liked. He racked his brain and came up blank (that's actually not true. We both really liked Matchstick Men, but we had already covered that at this point in time.) He concluded: "In the past 10 years? I didn't like any of them! They were all terrible!" At this juncture, I recommended to Joe that he cease telling other people that he "liked movies." He may like a movie, here and there, but on the whole- he, in fact, did not like them. I, on the other hand, like movies. There are many that I don't like. But, in gerenal, I like movies.
(back to my previous paragraph)
It did make me think that I like everything unless I don't. What I mean by that is that I'm emotionaly expecting to like something and I will as long as I don't have rational reasons not to. So, when I actually come out of something thinking/feeling that I did not like it- I can list the rational reasons that kept from my default behaviour- "liking it." But I've decided that's not true either. I think it goes back to the raw emotional response. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's bad. But I think it's somehow easier in our minds to list the negative rational things about something/someone we don't like and call that the "cause" of our dissatisfaction than it is to do the converse.
Ultimately, this is my review of RedLetterMedia's Phantom Menace review. He goes into insane detail to rationally pick apart the logic, story, sense, etc. of the movie. 90% of what he goes into, I never considered. Once he brings it up, I readily agree with his point and throw it on the pile of my grievances against the movie... but it's really all unneccesary. I simply hate the movie.
And I don't have to explain why... even if it doesn't taste like apples... I JUST DO.
