> The message I took from the writing wasn’t “like everything indiscriminately”, but closer to “stop making hating stuff a part of your identity”. The difference is subtle but critically important.
I'm not sure where you got that from the article. The author seemed pretty clear: "Perhaps it’s a passionate interest of someone you care about, and you’d enjoy having common ground there. Or maybe it’s something you have to do for social or societal reasons, and you’d prefer that it wasn’t such an unpleasant experience for you."
> I’m curious why you feel this way? I didn’t take this from the writing at all, and writing is often the least reliable way to detect a lack of authenticity.
For example: "With TV shows I don’t want to watch — which is almost all of them, because I’m really not a TV person — my focus is on lighting design, and shot framing, and blocking." So the author doesn't really learn to "like" (in the real sense) the content of the TV shows, maybe not even appreciate (the author's synonym for like) the content of the TV shows. He's just looking at them in some kind of anthropological way, it seems, as a detached scientific observer.
> From the perspective of whom?
From the perspective of people who have real enthusiasm and can sniff out fake enthusiasm.
> For the person who lacks enthusiasm, faking it for a time can be the key to unlocking the real thing.
I don't know. I'm not convinced that this is a real psychological phenomenon.
Having said all that, it's of course important to be supportive of the interests of your loved ones, don't complain about them to your loved ones, and be willing to spend mutual time participating. That's just plain common sense and doesn't need a long-winded article. None of this requires that you must "like" (appreciate?) the thing, or even fake enthusiasm for it.
> and you’d prefer that it wasn’t such an unpleasant experience for you. In these sorts of circumstances, the challenge is to find a way to like the thing that you don’t already like.
To your point, he also speaks about wanting to like things for other reasons, but in my experience, the reasons people often don't do that still boils down to aversion. Admittedly this is not universal.
> He's just looking at them in some kind of anthropological way, it seems, as a detached scientific observer.
That's one way to interpret it, but what he describes also sounds closer to Buddhist and similar philosophies that encourage a more direct experiential outlook on life instead of an existence controlled/clouded by thoughts and concepts. Put another way, there is beauty to be found in even the lowest quality TV shows when viewed experientially instead of critically/intellectually. The experiential view stems from a more fundamental reframing of what you see around you, and is the opposite of an anthropological/detached stance.
I could be reading too deeply into what he's saying, but detachment isn't the only way to interpret this advice.
> From the perspective of people who have real enthusiasm and can sniff out fake enthusiasm.
What is the purpose or utility of doing so? If the enthusiasm benefits the individual practicing it, it seems the ultimate conclusion of such a stance is self-defeating.
There are various studies that explore the effects of one's mentality and how it can modulate experience [0]. As someone on a long journey out of a depression fueled by a lifetime of learned pessimism, there is a stage of the journey in which one must choose how they feel, and persist in those choices until they start to become real. This happens in conjunction with other forms of therapy, and CBT plays a big role in rewiring the problematic thought patterns.
The placebo effect lives somewhere in this realm, as do notions of learned helplessness and the opposite mode of an optimistic mindset and the resulting cascades of positive and negative effect that are left in their wake [1].
I think the use of the word "fake" is really the issue. It brings notions of wrong-ness to the forefront whether or not such notions actually make sense. If you find that you cannot tolerate enthusiasm that doesn't meet certain criteria, that's understandable, but I'd caution strongly against the inclination to rail against it, especially when to do so is purely at the expense of the happiness of others.
> it's of course important to be supportive of the interests of your loved ones, don't complain about them to your loved ones, and be willing to spend mutual time participating. That's just plain common sense and doesn't need a long-winded article
As someone who grew up in an environment that is the opposite of what you describe, and having spent years undoing the damage of that environment while meeting countless folks who lived through a similar experience, the prevalence of the kinds of problematic behavior an article like this tries to discourage is much higher than you may realize.
I feel you're projecting things from yourself into the article that aren't there.
> the reasons people often don't do that still boils down to aversion.
I'm not sure what you intend by this, but the author says, "Often in life, you’ll find yourself in the position of either disliking something or just not having strong feelings about it. That’s normal and fine."
> That's one way to interpret it, but what he describes also sounds closer to Buddhist and similar philosophies that encourage a more direct experiential outlook on life instead of an existence clouded by thoughts and concepts.
Well, the author never mentions Buddist and similar philosophies, so I don't interpret it that way.
> I could be reading too deeply into what he's saying
Yes, I think so. :-)
> What is the purpose or utility of doing so? If the enthusiasm benefits the individual practicing it, it seems the ultimate conclusion of such a stance is self-defeating.
I'm confused by this whole discussion. The article suggests that the reason to "like" things is social, to fit in with your loved ones or maybe just business associates. Not as some kind of journey into self-improvement or recovery from prior trauma. So again, it seems that you're projecting and reading a lot into this that's not in the article.
I saw kernels of advice that seem relevant to people who tend to struggle with some aspects of social life (like me). Trauma is just a single factor that tends to complicate social life, but is far from the only reason someone might find value in the advice.
You concluded that the article didn't need to be written, which suggests that perhaps the content is just not relevant to you. But that's the value of discussion threads like this - to reflect back what we heard, to read each other's reflections, and to take those into consideration as we contemplate the content and decide how valuable and relevant it is to each of us, individually.
Sometimes perspectives will differ, and within those differences you'll find the entire value of a discussion thread.
> You concluded that the article didn't need to be written
That's my opinion, but we can legitimately disagree about that. I have no wish to argue it.
My argument with you was with your interpretation of the article:
> The message I took from the writing wasn’t “like everything indiscriminately”, but closer to “stop making hating stuff a part of your identity”.
You may have taken that message from the article, but you apparently already had that idea before you read the article. As far as I see, there's nothing in the article text that says anything like that.
In any case, my original comment wasn't arguing with you but rather with someone else: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35122226 You replied to me, but I don't think your reply was very relevant to mine.
I'm not sure where you got that from the article. The author seemed pretty clear: "Perhaps it’s a passionate interest of someone you care about, and you’d enjoy having common ground there. Or maybe it’s something you have to do for social or societal reasons, and you’d prefer that it wasn’t such an unpleasant experience for you."
> I’m curious why you feel this way? I didn’t take this from the writing at all, and writing is often the least reliable way to detect a lack of authenticity.
For example: "With TV shows I don’t want to watch — which is almost all of them, because I’m really not a TV person — my focus is on lighting design, and shot framing, and blocking." So the author doesn't really learn to "like" (in the real sense) the content of the TV shows, maybe not even appreciate (the author's synonym for like) the content of the TV shows. He's just looking at them in some kind of anthropological way, it seems, as a detached scientific observer.
> From the perspective of whom?
From the perspective of people who have real enthusiasm and can sniff out fake enthusiasm.
> For the person who lacks enthusiasm, faking it for a time can be the key to unlocking the real thing.
I don't know. I'm not convinced that this is a real psychological phenomenon.
Having said all that, it's of course important to be supportive of the interests of your loved ones, don't complain about them to your loved ones, and be willing to spend mutual time participating. That's just plain common sense and doesn't need a long-winded article. None of this requires that you must "like" (appreciate?) the thing, or even fake enthusiasm for it.