Joy Annoy

Why is it annoying when people love things you hate?

Do you dislike it when people like things you don’t like? I do.

Ever look at people doing something cheerfully that you find mind-numbingly boring and think, what’s wrong with these people? Yeah. Ever feel the frustration rising as someone goes on about some meaningless thing that they apparently find fascinating? Yep! Have you ever found yourself making that mental leap of interpreting your own preferences as external revelations about reality? Bless me, father, for I have sinned.

This is one of those things I started to become aware of as I “became an urbanist.” I put that in scare quotes because I don’t want to make it sound like converting to a new religion or something. It’s not religion, of course. But in some ways it’s a mindset or idea, as well as a collection of public policy ideas or preferences regarding transportation and the built environment.

This is the sense in which urbanism is an idea: it demands of you a certain humility, an explicit acceptance of pluralism. The understanding that there will be things in a town or city you don’t like, or have no interest in, and that that’s okay. That the whole notion of community input is in a certain sense giving the official imprimatur to the logical fallacy of “I don’t like or want this, therefore it is objectively undesirable.”