Wtf is wrong with sociologists, why must everything be so transactional?
I just fucking like being with my friends. It brings me joy. Utter joy: no fun, no career advancement, no playing tennis, no life advice, no social cohesion. Of course I also do all these things, but they're more an excuse to be together than the other way around. I don't know, hormones maybe?
> Utter joy: no fun, ...
Can you elaborate how "utter joy" is not fun?
Also later on the author suggests friends can be a mix of the types (multiplex friends).
Joy means that whatever we do, I am simply happier because I am with the person. We could be doing non-fun stuff, like filing boring paperwork or the friend could be visiting me in the hospital cause I broke my leg, and I am in a lot of pain, but the mere presence of the person brings me joy.
Another argument to be made is that, let’s say after having a positive shrooms trip, many people feel joy being with other people even strangers. But that kind of joy doesn’t seem to be a significant sociological force in the western society, which is here being examined
But why did humanity wait until the 1980s to understand that all humans always act in their self interest? Because it is simply not true. People don't constantly reassess whether such or such friendship is a net positive or a net negative. And people don't even have a grid to actually measure what "positive" mean in that context.
The issue is that you can always find a way to derive a selfless action into something self-beneficial. Warren Buffet asking for more taxes is acting in his self interest because it makes him look good and feel all warm inside?
So whatever example I give to answer your question, you'll always be able to find some form of transactional reason that explains why people do things.
If I tell you that some people willfully remain in abusive relationships, you're going to answer something like: it's because they find something in the relationship that is soothing some childhood trauma, and so their self-interest unconscious calculation is that it's better for them to stay in the abusive relationship than to leave.
But that's just taking the whole problem from the wrong end. That's stating that the model of self-interest is universal, and then shoe-horning every human behavior into that model, whether it makes sense or not. So sociologists ask themselves: "mmmmh what self-interest does a person have in going to a friend's funeral", "well surely there is some social benefit or emotional benefit from doing so". So basically, they attribute "unexplainable transactional calculations" to unmeasurable quantities like "social or emotional benefit".
It just doesn't help.
I can apply a transactional lens just to see whether it helps me to "understand" (in fact: to predict) something novel about the situation. If it checks out, none of your arguments matter. For a model, that's as good as it can get.
It's important to have more than one tool in your toolbox and to practice their flexible use. Advertising any model as "true" counteracts that - the net effect is harmful, even when the model is otherwise decent.
which is great, i stopped feeling like this in 1994, and life carried me into transactional / protocolized social life (which I don't like) .. maybe sociologist live too much in the land of stats