Jonathan Franzen's "Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts."

Jonathan Franzen's "Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts."

In this article, Franzen makes a very bold claim which states that liking and being "likable" are bad things for people to to. Franxen begins his argument by discussing what happened when he changed BlackBerries. His first BlackBerry he had for three years and liked it very much, but his liking was one-sided and the BlackBerry only acted as a "likable" object to appeal to him. When the BlackBerry lost its appeal, Franzen, painlessly, replaced it with a newer, more appealing BlackBerry. Following his discussion of hiw BlackBerries, Franzen states that the goal of technology is to replace the natural world (which does not care about who we are) and replace it with something which merely reflects the individual. From this goal of technology, Franzen shifts to love and states that due to technology (mainly Facebook) liking something has become a substitute love. Next, Franzen shifts from the problem of liking and begins discussing the problem of people who make themselves likable. According to Franzen, people who try to be "likable" to you act as mirrors of you and only make your life more pleasurable. Franzen contrasts this idea of a "mirror-friend" by stating that a friend who loves you makes themselves unappealing and acts as a "mub-splattered mirror". The friend no longer shows you through them but instead shows you how they are different. Franzen continues, by stating that "a world of liking is a lie" but that people can fully love each other. According to Franzen, love reveals the lie of technology. According to Franzen love is the complete acceptance of another being(s) (preferably one but can be multiple). Also according to Franzen, to be loved is more difficult than to be liked, because to be liked a person can hide his unlikable qualities and can easily be accepted by everyone, but to be loved a man must show his whole person, perfections and imperfections, and will easily be rejected by most people. Franzen shifts from this point of painful love and states that it is good because it shows that you are living. According to Franzen, men love and make themselves loved have more value than others and those men who refuse love, are "worthless resource wasters." Franzen conludes his article by talking about how he used to "like" nature, but then he found a "love" in birds and left his self-centeredness and changed.  Through this Franzen makes a conclusion that love forces men to turn away from inward thinking away from everything, toward outward being.

Jonathan Franzen and Carr seem to have similar problems with technology. They both fear that it is dehumanizing people. Carr makes this claim against Google when he talks about Google's mission. According to Carr the problem of technology is that it changes the way we think away from a complex  decision making process into a more definite and efficient process which gives no reason for thinking deeply. Franzen states that technology dehumanizes men in another manner, in which it make it harder for them to love, therefore weakening their ability to feel pain and finally taking away their worth as living human beings. According to Franzen pain shows both caring and humanity through the change in devotion of oneself to another being.

Is a man's humanity valued by his ability to love and feel pain?