What's not to like


I have been eating a lot of brie lately. I don’t really like it. I do things like this this a lot.

I still don’t know whether I like mushrooms. But I will intentionally order pizza with mushrooms and sometimes put mushrooms in my spaghetti sauce when I make it. I draw that line at, like, beef stroganoff or risotto with mushrooms because that’s just too many mushrooms.
Coffee doesn’t, most of the time, taste actually good. Beer? Not good. Tequila? Not good. Roasted jalapenos? Actively painful. And yet.
What is this about?
In a philosophy class, if I recall correctly, we were having one of those abstract discussions of pleasure and pain. I raised my hand and sparked a discussion of how humans are the only animal (maybe?) that intentionally seeks out things that are painful to it. We eat, as I said, hot peppers, defeating eons of pepper evolution that were supposed to make them anathema to any animal foolish enough to chomp it. We sit in hot tubs and saunas in temperatures that ought to make any rational creature flee.
There might be two distinct issues here, likes and dislikes on the one hand and the experience of extremes on the other. But maybe what they have in common is intensity or uniqueness or just the thrill of being jarring. People also like bungee jumping and roller coasters and haunted houses.
For me brie, mushrooms, coffee, beer, tequila, and hot peppers all have distinct, strong, or intense flavors that are worth it, in some way, for me to experience even if they have downsides. So it’s like I like it and I also don’t like it and liking and disliking meet in the middle somewhere.
Maybe it’s just good to experience things.

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