I was thinking the other day about what it takes to be friends with someone, and consequently, what it takes for a person to become your enemy. There are a host of socio-economic and cultural factors at play (if you don't speak the same language it's not going to work too well), as well as the question of equivalent intelligence (the super smart just can't be bosom buddies with the colossally stoopid), but once you pass those basic deal breakers it falls into a continuum of "What makes you happy?" and "What makes you angry/sad?" And so, I present to you my extremely geeky chart about personal compatibility. Of course, it begs the question "Is it any wonder that someone who would create such a chart has no friends?"




The horizontal axis of the chart represents the sorts of things that make you happy. The vertical are things that make you angry and/or sad. The graph shows how much your list of happy/sad things correspond to those of another person. If there is a high correspondence, it pushes in the positive direction (right, up). A low or negative correspondence pushes it negative (left, down). So, to evaluate the chart and state the obvious, if you and another person have a high degree of correspondence between things that make you both happy and sad/angry, you have a great chance of becoming friends.

On the opposite end of the scale, you have someone who has essentially flipped lists with you: the things that make you sad or angry bring them pleasure, and the things that they enjoy disgust you. Taken to its extreme, they will become your mortal enemy a la Superman and Lex Luthor.

The two other quadrants could be classified in a variety of ways, but because I'm lazy and did the first thing that came to mind they turned out as Allies and Buds. You can spend time with someone who shares your dislikes when you are working to ameliorate the things that you don't like. For example, despite the fact that few of the people you or I work with share all of our likes, we all mutually dislike being poor and homeless and thus band together as allies in work, for the purpose of making money. This suggests that if you are looking for someone as an ally in a cause, it will be effective to look for and appeal to mutual negatives.

In the "Buds" category would be people who you can have fun with, sometimes. Sometimes they go too far (crossing items over from the good list to the bad list), or are into things that you just don't go for. But, while the conditions are right, you can have a good time hanging out. My gut tells me that as we get older, the amount of time we are willing to waste on people who fall in this category for us diminishes greatly, as we fill our lives instead with allies and, more importantly, friends who match us on both axes.

This chart might also be instructive for political analysis, especially with the recent focus on political candidates associates. Who do they call their friends? Who are their allies? Who are their enemies? Who are they just willing to hang out with, but don't let into their inner circle? You cannot trust what a politician says (which doesn't mean that everything they say is untrue, simply that you cannot evaluate its truth based on their say-so) about their own beliefs and stances. In fact, I would argue that as people who will wield some degree of power over the fates of others, it is our responsibility to not take them at their word.

So, look at the people they have called friends. What are their friends for and against? Most likely, the candidate will be as well. Look at their allies. You won't necessarily be able to infer anything about the likes, but you can certainly see the negative aspects that have brought them together. And, most instructive of all, who are their enemies? While we can be surface friends (call them "buds") with people from all walks of life, it is our true friends and those we have chosen as enemies that define us from an external perspective.