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For liberals, GWB is a good litmus test. Yes, WMDs, Iraq wars, and various illiberal governance things. But if you can't find a foothold for likability even in his earnest and not-terrible paintings of people and pets... your liking-ability needs work.
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Most of getting better at this is things NOT to do -- Don't try to understand people too much -- Don't try to have a single integrated mental model of them, let it be a pile of junk -- Respond to fragments of behaviors and little tics, not theorized "personality traits"
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What makes people likable is a little bit of human aliveness peeking through the layers and layers of strenuously maintained dead self-presentation... look for that, respond to it, ignore almost everything else.
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This extends to yourself. Liking yourself is more important than "self-esteem" or "loving yourself." Being able to like others is actually dependent on that. When you dislike something about someone, it's a sign you're too attached (in an integrated way) to a part of yourself.
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And don't make a project of this. Don't expect to like everybody. But you can go from liking 1% of the world (a typical subcultural tribal snob) to say 2%, or even 10%. Even 25% is not unreasonable. You just have to lower your standards for how coherent you need people to be.
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I find it helpful to focus on my personal agency in a relationship. Unless you're in some sort of Saw movie or locked up by Hannibal Lecter, you always have some agency in a relationship, including the agency to leave.
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Replying to @vgr
I was asking the tradeoff between "like" and mental burn out from say passive-aggressive statements. I can still like the person but I have skin the game. Liking trump abstractly for a few seconds is all good, but might also imply less skin in the game?
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There was a book that was doing the rounds a while back, "the courage to be disliked." It was okay, but I felt meh about it. Too hedgehog. Some sort of humorless, lofty, heretic-contrarian posture of weathering a world of dislike.
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Fine, sure. Do that if you feel like playing martyr. I think it's much more important to cultivate the "courage to like and be liked." And the trick to that is to do it piecemeal. No integrated posture.
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Replying to
Fair, they are quite explicit about it (ch 34: The Goal of Interpersonal Relationships Is a Feeling of Community) but it introduced quite far along. The book both benefits and suffers from its title; it's a pop-philosophy take on mid-century psych parading as self-help.
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Perhaps a lot was lost in translation. I did finish it, but found it tedious and overwrought and weighed down by early 20th century theory. I was left with "teleology good etiology bad"
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