The Work it Takes to Dislike Someone

 

Originally written 04/17/2018

Transcribed and edited 9/2/2018

I always found it interesting how easy it can be to dislike someone, and that for a notable amount of people this seems to be the default setting for the way they interact with others. Now, in this respect, I don’t exactly want to delve into the unfortunate life circumstances of rape victims, abuse victims, mental disorders, or other psychological disorders as they constitute an entirely different set of rules and principles that guide their behavior. I only want to investigate the typical person you would find at the grocery store, work with at a job, or go on a date with. However, I want to get the point across that disliking someone takes a lot more work than people realize. I will take the next few pages to explain why I think so and give a couple of examples of the principles I lay out in action.

Basic Definitions to Establish our Premise

Imperative to understanding the position I take is to define the terms I will use to describe how to best examine the work it takes to dislike someone.

Scenario: The current location, set of people, and events that define what we are examining

Actor: The person of interest who commits an action

Action: An event or interaction that an actor does to an object or person in our scenario, respectively

Observer: Actor that knows the action of another actor

Bad: The definition of offensive to an observer

Important Considerations

A main assumption that underlies my entire perspective on this issue is that an actor and their actions can in essence be separated from each other. In the case of any action, such as pulling a lever, anybody with working arms is capable of pulling the lever. Meaning that once the lever was pulled, we know that the lever moved, and without further information, we know that any type of person with capable arms could have pulled the lever down. On the other hand, any person that can think of a lever can easily think of pulling down a lever as something they are capable of doing although not everyone will pull down a lever. Therefore, an actor and their actions aren’t necessarily bound to one another. A second assumption that I make throughout this claim is that an observer either watched the actor perform an action, or at least has correct indirect information of an actor’s action. As such, I do not account for gossip, rumors, or “walking in at the wrong time.” I do acknowledge that these type of events influences a person’s like or dislike of another person, but I think that is outside of the scope of this writing and may be interesting to examine in a follow up writing.

The Beginning of our Examination

I think an interesting way to begin our examination of dislike is to recall a recent situation that you were in that fits into the following categories: 

• Think of a time when you going about your daily business
• Another actor comes along and performed an action you did not like or agree with
• Stop right there before you think about this scenario and what you did any further. I did this because this is the perfect premise to begin our analysis. Once somebody has “wronged” you or performed an action you did not like, we began a series of decisions as observers that we should stop to think about. The first thing that we should be thinking about right now is the separation of actor and action. We can see that where this started is with the action and not the actor. When presented with an action that we as observers have defined as wrong due to our opinions, philosophies, or values, we are essentially given three directions of how to approach the action.

A. We can ignore the action and continue on with our business

B. We can correct the bad action

C. We can decide that the actor performing is bad because the action they performed was bad in our view.

From here we will explore each of our scenarios in more detail.

Ignoring Bad Actions

Upon picking option “A” your involvement with the actor who committed the bad action ends there until another bad observed that will begin the decision process again.

Correcting Bad Actions

If you pick option “B” then you will continue your involvement with the bad action until the action is repaired. The typical stages of repairing a bad action as I can intuitively put them are:

·      Identification

o   Recognizing the action that is bad

·      Confrontation

o   Informing the actor that there is an action that you consider bad, and announcing that you wish to repair the issue.

·      Solution Proposal

o   Creating a plan to resolve the bad action with the actor

·      Negotiation

o   The likelihood that your original proposal will make it to the end is unlikely. Be prepared to make concessions in order to repair the bad action.

·      Resolution

o   When the final agreement is made between actors and the bad action has been repaired for further instances.

After resolution, it is possible that you may never deal with the particular bad action you chose to repair and resolve. The middle road is that you may not deal with the bad action for a very long time. The worst-case scenario is that the resolution does not really last. And in that case, I don’t really know what I can recommend from there.

Deciding an Actor is Bad

Picking option “C” invokes extra decisions to be made on your part as an observer. From this point forward is where we see what a lot of people will do in everyday life. Here, we make the choice to ascribe the bad action to a bad actor. In this sense, you not only take offense to the action but now you become offended by the entirety of the person who performed the bad action. This option often eliminates the chance of choosing option “B,” or repairing the action because dislike tends to be concordant with reluctance. Simply put, you do not like talking to people you do not like.

But That’s Not All Folks

But mere observation of everyday life and many anecdotes that we all have tell us that dislike for a person isn’t static. We know that dislike builds and builds over time as new scenarios and interactions between people form. But why? Doesn’t intuition tell us that we should avoid people that we don’t like? So how can dislike build if intuition tells you to ignore those that we dislike?

Counterintuitive

The answer to the previous string of questions can be explored by thinking about a couple of conditional statements below:

IF one needs a bad action to dislike a person

AND

IF one needs a bad action to ascribe to an actor to fulfill the ability to dislike an actor

THEN in order to build dislike for an actor, one needs to have offending actions ascribed to that person

So, to keep building dislike for a person, you realize that you need to do a lot of monitoring of an actor you defined as a bad actor. In other words, to keep disliking someone, you have to keep finding more bad actions to ascribe to that actor.

Ending Remarks and Diagrams

To finish this essay off, I think it’s best to end with some diagrams. I find it particularly useful to see how many extra steps we have to go through when we decide that we dislike a person compared to ignoring the bad actions of others, or attempting to fix the bad actions you come across.

Diagram: Option A

Diagram: Option B

Diagram: Option C