Of Frogs and Horror

Last week a new reader (found through a link on one of my Aminus photoblog posts) left a comment on the photo site. Seeing that someone has left a comment is certainly a pleasant moment, but obviously I don't compose something about every single comment left (only about 75% of them).

This one was different. It was not a comment about the post in question (which was merely a photo taken a few weeks ago). It was a comment about my Blogger profile.

Oh yeah. I did spend a small amount of time a few years ago entering some items in the various fields that are on the profile. I didn't make much of concerted effort to paint a complete picture (as it were), but I felt some compulsion at the time to have something there if someone looked. I have left it as is for all this time.

His comment was a clever and amusing remark on the inclusion of two films I listed in the "Favorite Movies" category: The Muppet Movie and Apocalypse Now. He gave me an award for liking the two most diametrically opposite films ever (or something to that effect). (In response I made a joke about how "The Rainbow Connection" was going to be the ending of the latter until Paul Williams sold it to the former.)

(1979 was apparently a good year for me, movie-wise. Although I didn't see the latter movie until many years later, being only 11 at the time.)

I can see as how it could seem incongruous to like what is regarded as light, family fare, and a heavy meditation on the depths to which the soul can sink. Of course, I'm someone who in a single CD-buying trip purchased albums by the Glenn Miller Orchestra and the Dead Kennedys (both of which I still have), so clearly I'm not one who feels any need to conform to one prescribed genre.

I imagine the issue (to the extent there is one--and really there isn't one, but let's go with this anyway) is more that we are inclined to look for patterns, to be able to find similarities that reveal whether we specifically like the same sort of things as someone else or if we specifically dislike the sort of things that some else likes. And if we can easily conclude that we share likes we can eschew the difficult and protracted process of figuring out who the person really is and jump straight to giving him or her the benefit of the doubt, and choose to be more inclined to give a crap about what he or she says, thinks, and what else he/she likes that we don't already like. Or conversely, if we actively despise the likes of someone, we can feel a bit more justified in dismissing whatever he has to say or think or whatever other crap he's into. Not that we intrinsically will dismiss him, but if we don't have the time to devote to making an informed decision, we can use our knowledge of certain preferences on his part to assuage any guilt we may subconsciously inflict upon ourselves about doing so.

However, if there's no obvious pattern one way or the other (perhaps some of the likes are okay and some are very not okay), that makes for having to make a conscious decision, judging which ones seem to carry more weight, rather than being able to rely on subconscious conclusions.

Of course, if you're not the sort of person who can enjoy equally the work of Jim Henson and of Francis Ford Coppola—not necessarily simultaneously, but when the mood strikes—then you probably haven't kept reading this far. Which would more or less be proving the pseudo-theory about why such things matter in the first place.

And just so we're clear: It's absolutely fine that someone who doesn't like the same things I like gave up on this long ago. I'm not kidding. I do not mean to imply that people wanting to take this route is bad. It's not necessarily ideal, of course, but it's certainly preferable (in my opinion) that someone factor in at least some hint of someone's personality (to the extent that what one lists as favorite movies qualifies as revealing deeper personality traits) in deciding whether to regard or disregard another, rather than do so based on cosmetic similarities or dissimilarities (such as if the other looks the same or different).

Whether I seem to condone this or not, it's what's happening anyway; undoubtedly we're acting on unconscious or subconscious cues all the time. With this, there's some modicum of cognition involved, so it approaches more of a "reasoned" response.

It is entirely possible that you could enjoy both Kermit and Kurtz as well, but you think that this theory of mine is crap. It probably is. I make no claims to the contrary. Frankly, I prefer the notion that just because we may share certain entertainment preferences that we are not mere carbon copies of each other personality-wise.

I assure you: I am far more disturbed by the thought of a world where everyone is just like me than by a world where virtually no one is. How dull.

I suppose I should take a moment to clarify that, to the extent I am able to be aware of what motivates me to like something, having tastes that seem "diverse" by some relative standard does not make me better than someone in whose tastes a pattern may be more easily discerned. It makes me different from that person, but no better, no worse. At least not on the basis of that alone. Taking into account all aspects of us as people, I'm almost certainly worse (or at least I must assume so, because I know my flaws and shortcomings intimately).

But the thesis here is focused on not making an overall determination of another human's worth but on whether we should choose to spend some of our valuable free time reading his inane ramblings or glancing at the photos he took. Even limiting the scope of this to the web, there's more of that than anybody could peruse if that's all one did day and night, every day one was alive. Choices must be made.

And if you chose to read this all the way to the end, that's a far better determining factor in whether I'd give a crap about what you have to say or think than if your two favorite movies of all time happen to be, in fact, The Muppet Movie and Apocalypse Now.

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(The above completely ignores the more important element to the equation. It's not merely enough to like the same things, but to like them for the same reason. There's lots of different reasons to like something, and some of them could be almost incompatible. But we're not going down that path.)

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As always, thanks for reading all the way to the end, for those of you who did.