{"id":1771,"date":"2020-12-15T21:22:44","date_gmt":"2020-12-15T21:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=1771"},"modified":"2020-12-15T21:42:55","modified_gmt":"2020-12-15T21:42:55","slug":"you-cant-choose-your-friendships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/15\/you-cant-choose-your-friendships\/","title":{"rendered":"You Can’t Choose Your Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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You Can't Choose Your Friends<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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In a culture obsessed with choice and individual responsibility, the persistent realness of friendship denies our persistent attempts to define and contain it.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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By Philip Harold<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Axiomatic in our times is the foundational nature of choice. Our politics, economics, and law are all based on the idea that individuals make choices that can be good or bad. When asked, this is what we mean by \u201cresponsibility\u201d: we are responsible for our own choices. After all, we can\u2019t be responsible for other people\u2019s choices. Responsibility, therefore, implies personal responsibility. It only exists when we choose something.<\/p>

Even friendship with others is reduced to choice. As the adage has it, \u201cYou can choose your friends, but not your family.\u201d But is friendship really a choice? After all, a friendship cannot be accomplished unilaterally. I cannot just choose to be friends with whomever I wish, and if I just \u201cchose\u201d to be friends with someone, I would be labeled a stalker. Mutuality therefore seems to be at the core of friendship. It\u2019s not just individual choice, but rather two people choosing each other. Like a business contract, there are two sides entering into a mutually beneficial relationship.<\/p>

But actually friendship is clearly something more than expedient cooperation. What is this element that makes a friendship deeper than my relationship with my grocer? With this question we reach a paradox. The more we try to nail down intellectually what friendship is, the more it slips through our fingers. Friendship is not something you can know, it is only something you can experience\u2014because it\u2019s a matter of persons and not things. There is no essence of friendship, and the only way we can actually be friends with someone is if we drop our preconceptions about what we think \u201cfriendship\u201d really is. \u00a0<\/p>

Consider what happens when two people choose each other as friends: they will do things together, spend time together, enjoy each other\u2019s company. If anything is of the \u201cessence of friendship,\u201d it is this. Of course, these expressions of friendship involve trade-offs and opportunity costs. Being friends with someone means expending one\u2019s time and energy with them and not with someone else. So it is necessarily exclusive; to be friends with one person means not being friends with another person. But what happens when one person becomes friends with someone else? Jealousy is never far off. Friendship is about both possession and being: I am a friend when I have a friend. It is also about appearances: we are friends through doing the things friends do. Without appearing to be friends to a third party, how can we say that we are friends?<\/p>

Only problems come from thinking that we know what \u201cfriendship\u201d consists in. The paradigm of mutual choice, of possession, of being, of essence, of appearance\u2026 is all insufficient, unstable, structurally flawed. Sitcoms show the humorous side of this futile desire with characters like The Office<\/em>\u2019s Michael Scott or 30 Rock<\/em>\u2019s Kenneth Parcell, who want to be everyone\u2019s friend. Meanwhile, crime dramas portray the dark side of possessive, desirous love: \u201cIf I can\u2019t have her, nobody can.\u201d<\/p>

It is not that friendship goes horribly wrong when it turns possessive. It is rather that thinking in general terms about \u201cfriendship\u201d at all is inherently possessive. If we think in terms of the meaning of friendship and try to act according to our best understanding of what it involves, we will inevitably miss the mark. We can only admit that we don\u2019t know what friendship is, that we don\u2019t know what it means to be a friend, and simply respond to others. In other words, friendship arises naturally when we are not looking for it, when we do not seek to capture it, when we do not know what we are doing. The more we think about friendship and turn it into an object of desire, the more we miss the real possibilities for it in front of us.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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The whole modern tradition of ethical and political thought studiously avoids coming to terms with friendship for a reason.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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But friendship cuts more deeply even than who we are or who we want to be. We do not choose our deepest loyalties, but rather, they choose us. Our responsibilities for others find us, rather than coming about because of our choices. We are not responsible for ourselves as individuals, but for others, and this is not something we can choose. How could we? Why would we? We never really choose friendship. If we did, it would be only an economic exchange: two friends agree to be together because it is mutually beneficial. That ends as soon as one of the parties finds someone better.<\/p>

Friendship, on the contrary, involves loyalty and responsibility, and this means it is not an object of choice, since we can never know in advance where friendship is going to take us. Friendship is never scripted, never goes according to a plan we can implement, so we never know what it has in store for us. Rather, as in any encounter with something that is real and not the product of our own desire, we can learn something new from the course friendship takes. With friendship, we don\u2019t know what we\u2019ve bargained for. We can\u2019t choose it, because we can only choose things that we know ahead of time.<\/p>

This throws a wrench into the way we conceptualize our social and moral nature. The whole modern tradition of ethical and political thought studiously avoids coming to terms with friendship for a reason. If we are not primarily responsible for ourselves first, and only secondarily and superfluously responsible for others\u2014if instead our personal responsibility consists in living out solidarity for others not of our choosing\u2014then our default conception of human sociality is turned on its head, and a fundamental reassessment of our modern tradition is in order.<\/p>

But it is not just a matter of assessing modernity and its narrow focus on certain knowledge. We all like what we know; knowledge brings us control and comfort, and it\u2019s always easier to stick to the things we\u2019re used to. But friendship is a reality that we cannot control. We are only a part of any friendship\u2014we can\u2019t completely control it and are therefore always to some degree at the mercy of others. To be a friend is not to get what you bargained for. Friendship is real. Friendship is actual, genuine, authentically existing to a much greater degree than physical reality. It is not an aspect of reality, reducible to a set of attitudes or subjective friendly feelings, as we often tend to think.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Reality entails being disappointed in others, being a disappointment oneself, forgiveness, pain, betrayal, loss. No one is perfect, and no one lives forever.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Friendship is real. Like anything real, I fundamentally cannot \u201cchoose\u201d it. The realm of choice, outside of our experience as consumers, is only a small part of our life. \u00a0Consider things that are real: can I go outside and \u201cchoose\u201d that tree there, that lamppost, that hill? Likewise, friendship is no pre-packaged product I can take off the shelf and bring home. Rather, like anything real, friendship has to be respected in its integrity. I am part of it, it is greater than me. If I am uncomfortable with any reality greater than me, I can try to avoid friendships and restrict my relationships to certain boundaries and certain levels of interaction\u2014and so live in a petty fiefdom of certain knowledge. But I will be plagued by a lingering suspicion that I\u2019m missing out on the \u201creal world.\u201d<\/p>

Reality entails being disappointed in others, being a disappointment oneself, forgiveness, pain, betrayal, loss. No one is perfect, and no one lives forever. But stronger friendships and stronger character can grow from these defeats. Over time, friendship always calls for more and more of a personal connection, more loyalty, more responsibility, more openness to a shared life and the common good.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Philip Harold<\/strong> is Associate Dean of the School of Education and Social Sciences and Co-Director of the Honors Program at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh. He is the author of<\/em> Prophetic Politics: Emmanuel Levinas and the Sanctification of Suffering. \u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a culture obsessed with choice and individual responsibility, the persistent realness of friendship denies our persistent attempts to define and contain 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