I am terrible at making lists of "favourite" things. I've always thought it's because my opinions were not strong enough, or perhaps my personality wasn't defined sufficiently. I still don't have a favourite colour (it's buried somewhere amidst the changing colours of the sky); I'd be hard pressed to list my favourite books (there are so many and for so many different reasons); and I maintain my permeable status as both a chugger of coffee and a sipper of tea.
I once asked a good friend the usual banal barrage of 20 questions - what was his favourite food, his favourite colour, blah blah. His response was strangely affirming. He liked most food, and his favourite colour used to be, in principle, red, but now he finds he gravitates towards blue. I suspect I would have gotten a more spirited reply had I asked - what was his favourite virtue, or his fondest childhood memory, or his favourite piece of music to listen to when he was sad. But really, he wasn't a "favourites" kind of person, nor a type to make lists and commemorate themselves thus.
He had no preconceived notions of hierarchical structure. He wasn't going to allow experiencing the world as it comes be him, sweeping and fragmented, be forced and bent out of shape by too many value judgments. He had strong opinions, but on things that actually mattered. Things that were Right or Wrong. True or False. And it wasn't that he didn't think it important to talk about the respective merits of tim-tam originals and the new flavours, or Bach vs. Beethoven (who will knock each other out in 3 rounds?!), he just didn't hold to those ideas so tightly, and was happy to adapt, or have his opinion swayed. It wasn't symptomatic of a man lacking in passions, or a weak personality.
It reminds me of the confusion of conflated categories that CS Lewis famously described in the Screwtape Letters. On the modernist thinking clouding the mind of Wormwood's patient:
He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "true" of "false", but as "academic" or "practical", "outworn" or "contemporary", "conventional" or "ruthless". Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about.
Conversely, we seem to take singular pride in having strong opinions on such trivialities as TV shows, favourite actors, favourite ice-cream flavours, as if our character, our personalities, are defined by merely these tastes. In our topsy-turvy world we place defined ideas where a string of adjectives might better go. We argue naive matters rather than weighty truths of eternal import.
And then we judge each other by these: he's very cool because he's into entry-level Indie music, she's nerdy because she praises the inside of the Bodleian library... and so on.
I like Chesterton on this too:
"What we suffer from to-day is humility in the wrong place ... A man was meant to be doubtful about himself. but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert - himself. The part of doubts his exactly the part he ought not doubt - the Divine Reason. Huxley preached a humility content to learn from Nature. But the new sceptic is so humble that he doubt if he can even learn ... The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping' not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility mad a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether."
(Altho' this is moving us into the mountains of epistemology, which wasn't where I was intending!)
I don't mean to say, let's not ever have silly conversations. We need to laugh, to play at argument simply for the joy of flexing intellectual muscle (and helping me exercise off the flab of mine!). But a balance must be struck. And judgment remains with God, not with us.
Next time someone asks me whether, stranded on a deserted island, whether I'd like to have Fuji apples or Granny Smiths with me, I shall smile, and say both. They will frown. They will say: but if you had to choose one. Ah, but I like them both. One is honey sweet, the other tart with skin glossy and gorgeous. I shall reply. I feel no need to have a strong opinion on this. They will judge me bland, and the topic of conversation shall move elsewhere. I shall sling back my wine, thus adding to my beverage options, and move on too.
