This essay draws a structural distinction between liking and worship — two states that appear adjacent but point in opposite directions. Beginning from the observation that attraction to another person is real and valid, the essay argues that what draws us to an idol is never the person themselves, but a signal they momentarily carry: a feeling of strength, beauty, or unlived possibility. The line between liking and worship is crossed when attention shifts from signal to container — when the container is mistaken for the destination. This structure, the essay shows, is not unique to idol culture: it appears wherever a real feeling becomes fixed onto a single form, from patriotism becoming nationalism, to faith becoming fundamentalism, to love of truth becoming devotion to a particular theory. The essay concludes that liking is enough — and that the signal one has always been following was never located outside oneself.
Chen et al. (Sun,) studied this question.