What Does It Mean to "Like" Someone?

Forming and cultivating healthy relationships

Children really like me. When I’m walking around in public, kids start running around, pulling my clothes or laughing and hitting me with objects. If I’m at a beach or a park with my own kids, other children will join. After a while the parents will get embarrassed and try to pull them away, and I’ll say it’s alright. They treat me like Santa Claus. This is very flattering, and I think it reflects the purity of my soul.

Not too long ago, a female friend told me that she didn’t think a mutual acquaintance of ours liked me. This was confusing, as I told her that we talk to each other and he’s even done me favors. She replied that I was a naive idiot. To me, it’s pretty unthinkable to talk to someone and not like them. But apparently normal people do this?

This got me thinking about what it means to “like” someone in the first place. We treat this as a simple question, but the concept refers to as far as I can tell three distinct things. When we say A likes B, we could mean,

1. A enjoys spending time or communicating with B

2. A respects B and thinks highly of him

3. A wishes B well

These are not the same things. Any combination of (1), (2), and (3) is possible. Sometimes I’ll meet upstanding guys who are highly conscientious, decent citizens, and good to their wives and children. I respect them and wish them well, but I don’t spend a lot of time getting to know such people, because I find them a bit bland. Meanwhile, I’ve known lifelong criminals that I like in the sense that they’re fun to talk to, but my political view is still that the state should lock them up and throw away the key. I really respect the ethical case for veganism, but I don’t have any vegan friends.

The question “do you like me?” is therefore ambiguous. One can answer honestly and leave someone with the wrong impression.

I’ve found that low status people will often have friends who they like in sense (1) but not sense (2) or (3). If you feel like a loser, hanging out with people who are even bigger losers, or even losers at a comparable level, can help you feel better about yourself. So those will be the people you spend time with, but you may not respect them or wish them well. Think of people who love gossiping about and denigrating their “friends.” This is so common among women that we might even put it in a different category, and consider this kind of relationship the norm among them. For men, it’s much clearer that when this happens it’s a sign of bad character.

This is why relationships among low status people are so toxic. They are surrounded by those they “like” in the sense that being around them is the only way they know how to spend their time. They may not even enjoy their moments with friends and family — it just beats the alternative. But they don’t respect the people in their lives, and want to see them fail, because when they do it makes them feel better in comparison. This leads to explosions that can take the form of fighting in public or domestic abuse.

Another interesting aspect of people in low status relationships is that they assume everyone else is like them. In high school, I knew a very pretty girl who was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. Less attractive girls would call her stuck up, which was hard for me to understand. What I think was going on was that the idea that she could actually be above the silly gossiping of other girls was beyond them. She wasn’t acting better than them. She was just better. And that’s what they were really upset about.

Zarathustra teaches “Ye are not great enough not to know of hatred and envy. Then be great enough not to be ashamed of them!” I can’t pretend that I am above all forms of hate, although maybe I’ll get there one day. But I at least avoid the kinds of relationships where there might be ambiguity in whether I like someone. If I talk to you, rest assured that I at least have some respect for you and wish you well. Those I hate, I hate from a distance.

Ideally, you want to be the kind of person who is only friends with people you like in all three senses. If you’re spending time with someone you don’t respect or you don’t wish well, it’s not a good sign, and will only lead to misery. This is thankfully impossible for me. The children somehow sense that I’m not like other adults, and there is wisdom in their little hearts.