What Is Your Favorite Color?

I get a twisted high whenever I realize how complicated “simple” things can be. We, as human beings, are socialized to make mental shortcuts that allow us to deal with life with as little fuss as possible. Faith and stereotypes, to name two, are examples of how we get to “truths” without going through all the hassles of understanding what these are about. Instead, we claim to accept these things for what we believe them to be. See below,

Faith My parents, my teachers, the Church and most everyone worth respecting tell me there is a God and He sent His son Jesus (who is also Himself) to wash away our sins by dying on the cross… so I took their word for it.

Stereotype Most blue-collar workers I encounter are not very intelligent so I surmise that the next blue-collar worker I meet will no nothing about derivatives or M theory (or common sense).

Not all of us have had the benefit of theological (or philosophical) training that would allow us to discuss categorically how faith is to be understood (or is it not supposed to be?) nor do we possess enough socio-psychological creds to digress about stereotypes, but we all know that any idiot could see from the examples above that conceptual shortcuts can either be good or bad, depending on how we use them. This bit is about neither faith nor stereotypes. Those two are just examples of things that we pretend to understand and accept as “simple”.

Let’s take the verb “to like”. What does it mean? Where do our preferences come from? In what are they rooted? Try this simple exercise… Think of your favorite color (the one you like the most). Now think of why you like that color. Think hard. Is it simply because it looks good on you? Or maybe your parents decorated your room with it when you were a kid. Or probably it was the color of your favorite Teletubby (but then that would be begging the question, “Why is ______ your favorite Teletubby?”). Think of anything or anyone (or any place, for that matter) you like. Can you say honestly that you, as a thinking creature, know why you like that thing or person (or place)? Why do you prefer rock music over soul? Why do you like adobo but hate sinigang? Why do you like girls and not guys? Why do you like this person? Why do you prefer to like this person rather than not like anyone at all?

I came across this in Wiki…

“Preference is a concept, used in the social sciences, particularly economics. It assumes a real or imagined "choice" between alternatives and the possibility of rank ordering of these alternatives, based on happiness, satisfaction, gratification, enjoyment, utility they provide.

I take it that to “like” something is it to “prefer” it over something else and that the ordering we use to prefer things over others is based on how happy/satisfied/gratified they make us feel, how much we enjoy them, and the use we derive from them. And by the way, they can be real or imagined.

So how does yellow do all that for me?

It’s okay. What’s important is we agree that “to like” (like a lot of other simple concepts) is not simple at all. Let’s not pretend that it is.


Coming up soon… “taste”