This is a rant about human relationships. By that, I mean “relationships” in its general definition – the way in which you are connected with someone else. Since the word is commonly used to mean just romantic relationships, I have to clarify that I am using the term to also include all the other possible relationships you can have with other people, like friendships, relationships with family, coworkers, etc.

Table of contents

Sufficient condition

We all judge people based on our/their beliefs and actions. It is quite easy when that someone is someone we have never met or have very little connection with. Answer this:

Do you think Donald Trump is a good person? Why?

Whatever your answer might be I am pretty sure you have reasons. It might be even that these reasons are supported by facts and evidence, and you will probably be right because there are some general moral rules that we have agreed on like killing is usually a pretty bad thing, donating to a charity usually is a good thing, and yada yada. When it is a cold calculation of such facts I guess you can make a decent judgement about someone.

However, if you are reasonable enough, you realize that your opinion is only based on the information available to you. Everything you know about Trump might be deliberate propaganda to present him in a good light, or straight-up misinformation to put a stain on his name. You are never going to get the true impression of the man if you don’t know him personally, and this is true for all people. Most of us recognize this fact, but in everyday life, it is just easier to blame them and move on.

When it gets personal though, when it is someone you know – I think it is quite different. Would your answer be different if Trump was your best friend? What if he was your father? Or your son? What makes it different?

I have long noticed that a sufficient condition for any relationship to exist is a positive answer to these two simple questions:

“Do you like them?” and “Do they like you?”

And nothing else really matters. You don’t even have to talk or see each other!

You would think that your answer to these questions will be based on your judgment about them, and that to have a relationship with someone you would necessarily think that they are good people. However, if it is the case that you liked them first – I think it might be bad news and I will try to explain why I think that.

Emotional bias

Your judgment of someone on a personal level does not depend on what kind of a person they are, meaning you are biased towards them no matter what they believe, say, or do. For any person who doesn’t live in a cave that would seem like a reasonable social norm, but it is not rational at all, and I think that might be a problem.

The reason is that this implies two important points:

First, this bias allows for a situation where you end up in a bubble where you are never wrong. No matter how much of a dicks you guys might be – if you both like each other – you’ll find a way to defend any wrongdoings of each other, at least for yourselves. Usually, that doesn’t matter that much, until you start throwing Nazi salutes or join Al-Qaeda. So that is pretty dangerous, and it happens.

Second, you become more forgiving in a relationship. You kinda have to since even though it doesn’t really make any logical sense – it is a necessary condition for the existence of a relationship. Family members get this kind of advantage over other people by default. That one actually does make sense, because I suppose it raises your chances of survival. We are biologically hard-wired to love and protect our family.

Maybe the reason why confronting your family is so hard is because it is literally going against nature.

But what is the problem with forgiving?

It becomes a problem if people in your family are really bad people, or they do something really wrong. I think it is fair to assume that if you are born and raised in a very conservative family the chances of you being conservative are on average higher than if you are from a gay family from California. Since your parents set the example for the “right way” you can’t really break free of your nurture. Moreover, I can imagine a scenario where I would defend my brother even if he killed someone. That is not rational.

And when we generalize this to all the relationships we have, the problem becomes clearer. This might be one of the reasons people get stuck in toxic relationships (again, not only romantic). Even when there is a clear reason to end a relationship people still find a way to forgive. Another example from a workplace environment: as a worker, it is better for you if your boss likes you. As an employer, someone you like will seem to be better at their job than someone you don’t. Call it nepotism or networking, it is what it is.

The thing that was designed by evolution to help us connect becomes destructive if logic and reason are biased.

Is liking someone an emotional thing then? Does that mean that all of your relationships are constituted by your emotions? That sounds uncomfortable at the very least.

Rationalizing away the responsibility

Acting on emotion is usually considered a bad thing, and to some extent, I agree with that. Impulsive decisions can get you into trouble, and the backlash from them might be devastating. Emotions are something that we cannot start or stop feeling on demand, we can only control them by hiding or ignoring them. Or we can get rid of the reason for feeling that emotion.

Another thing is that your emotions are tied to only yourself. If your line of reasoning for some action ends on you “feeling a certain emotion” without any further reason that explains why you are feeling it – you are solely responsible for it. Therefore, whenever you get emotional and tempted to do something it feels far safer to think about it first, because then at least you can explain “why” you did it basing it on something else other than your own emotions that are only yours. But it doesn’t help.

Blame has to be placed somewhere.

Having a deterministic view on the world, I believe that we have no control over our decisions, hence, personally, I think that blame also doesn’t make sense. However, since we do live with a feeling of free will, or rather with the illusion of it, someone has to take responsibility. The problem with that is:

No one actually blames themselves.

It is easy to say “I did it!” when it is something good, something praiseworthy. It is not that easy to claim responsibility when it is not in your best interest to do so. You always can come up with excuses.

In such a world “rationalization” is just a tool that puts the blame away from the individual. Emotions are tied to only yourself. Saying “I did it because I felt sad” or something makes you solely responsible for it.

If people really took the shit for themselves there would be no such a thing as therapy. Because if they did, you would be a weak ass bitch not because you were bullied in school, you would be a weak ass bitch because you are a weak ass bitch.

Some people don’t mind acting on emotion though, and I am genuinely fascinated by them. Like, how can you go on with your life without even knowing why you are doing the things you are doing? Because “you feel like it”? That is brave, I wish I could do that.

So if there are reasons for feeling certain kinds of emotions, is there a way to explain liking someone too?

Can you even “like” rationally?

By this, I mean that if there is a rational reason to like something – every rational person should like it. In other words, is there a thing that everyone should like? If there is – what is it?

What is your favorite color?

Cool, cool, cool. Why?

Can there be any objective reason to like any particular color? I guess you could appeal to the utility of wearing white in the summer. Or wearing muddy green when going hunting. Should white soon be the favorite color of all people because of the inevitable consequences of climate change? Or should muddy green be the favorite color of all hunters? That’s not what we mean when we answer that question, isn’t it?

So it is a subjective matter. Maybe a color invokes some positive emotion or memory. Or maybe you just look good in clothes of that color. Either way, it is necessarily something personal.

Here is another one:

Do you like spicy food?

Now your answer for this one might have an objective physiological reason behind it. (If, of course, spicy food doesn’t remind you of the death of your dog or something.) However, this doesn’t change the picture because at the end of the day, your physiology is only your physiology, and it would be weird for me to expect that in a room full of people who like spicy food you will necessarily like it too.

So even if your preference is explainable without emotional involvement, it is still subjective in the sense that it concerns only you and can’t be generalized.

And the last one:

Do you like to exercise?

The difference with this one is that it carries an implicit normative expectation that the answer should be “yes” because, generally, exercising makes you better off. But what if you, supposing you are completely healthy otherwise, really dislike exercising? Should I judge you for that? Is it fair for me to suspect that you can lie and say you do like it just to avoid that judgment?

The point I am trying to make is that you cannot like with reason, and even if you can find a reason that is not emotional – you cannot expect other people to have that reason too.

If we extend this to human relationships we can clearly see that human relationships are not rational at all.

Is it okay to hate your mother? Why?

Just because there are a lot of reasons that a lot of people agree on to like something or someone doesn’t make them universal in my opinion. Having a reason to be liked (or disliked) does not entail being liked (or disliked), therefore, “liking” is not rational.

Coming back to the point made earlier, in the context of human relationships who they are does not really matter if you like (or dislike) them.

How do you rationalize a relationship?

We all want to surround ourselves with good people.

Approach #1: Connect with good people, and disconnect with bad people.

Now the question is who is a “Good Person”? If people knew the answer I wouldn’t have had to take an ethics course for a whole semester. I personally believe that there is no “good” and “bad” at all. Which leads me to conclude that:

“Good Person” does not exist.

As well as the “Bad Person” doesn’t. It is a matter of personal preference. It is a whole other loaded topic to discuss, so I am just gonna leave it here for now.

We can define a relationship as an act of mutual fulfillment of needs because if you had no needs at all, you wouldn’t need any kind of relationship.

Approach #2: Connect with people who fulfill your needs, and disconnect with ones who don’t.

That sounds overly egoistic and materialistic. In a good relationship, we don’t usually actively think about what the other party can give us in return, do we? What about unconditional love? (Ignoring the fact that “love” is even more problematic.)

Maybe we can rephrase the question a bit to make it sound less depreciating. What if we appeal to hedonism and say that the thing all rational people should like is – happiness? Then we could take:

Approach #2 (Hedonistic Version): Connect with people who make you happy, disconnect with ones who make you unhappy.

This one is the most convincing so far, however, it doesn’t help in rationalizing it. Instead, it poses even more issues to solve. Even if hedonism was a flawless ethical view and happiness was the only thing that we should pursue just for its own sake  – what makes me happy would not necessarily make you happy too. The matter remains subjective, and hell, happiness is just another emotion!

Maybe the answer is in the amount of time you spent or experiences you had together?

Approach #3: Connect with people you spend the most time together.

Unfortunately, this fails too; “seeing each other every day” is not the start of a relationship, as well as “not conversing as much” is not the end of it. The existence of a relationship doesn’t depend on the time spent together or amount of conversations. People talk usually because they happen to be in the same place at the same time, but do not develop relationships with all the people they meet, only with the ones they like. On the other hand, the reasons people stop talking are usually their geography or busyness, but their relationships do not end – they resume when they get together if they still like each other.

My theory is that a relationship only starts if people mutually like each other, and ends when one of them stops liking the other. And since liking, again, is not rational –

You can’t rationalize a relationship.

In other words, the reason for starting or ending a relationship is always emotional, ergo, personal. Trying to rationalize such a decision is an attempt to make it less personal and less emotionally demanding, which is not possible by design. And we saw the problem that emotions entail. So what should we do then?

Fok julle naaiers!

All of the above leads me to a logical conclusion that a good relationship should not start from liking each other. But that would mean the best relationships you will have will be with people you hate, which is nonsense. It is not how that is supposed to work!?

Aside from that, I came to this question with the supposition that we all need relationships. Without it, the solution would be trivial. A totally self-content person wouldn’t have to worry about this at all. But I believe we call such people psychopaths and I have heard that these are not the best people to be around.

It seems like the only thing we can do is to be aware. Accept that the reason is really only emotional, and instead of trying to rationalize a relationship, we should try to find the reason for feeling this emotion itself. In other words, try to find the reason for liking or disliking someone. At least then you will have some control over your actions concerning your relationships. Then it becomes a matter of your ability to think. The nice thing about that is that it is far easier to get away with being stupid rather than with being bad 🤠