(By the way, I like this approach of responding to [really good] comments because (1) so few people read the comments to see this awesomeness, (2) it sometimes takes me a long time to reply to comments so there is a non-trivial risk that the commenter won’t see my response to their comment, and (3) by putting this in front of a larger audience, I push myself to think about it more carefully.)
---
The first one is from Scrilla:
It seems that you refute this whole post when noting your interest in LeBron James. You say food lacks "metaphor." Maybe that's because food is a sui generis good, finding no adequate metaphor in this vast incidental universe.
What I mean to say is that food is necessary for life, LeBron James is not. There is no metaphor for the necessary facets of life -- the things that sustain us.1 How could you justify taking greater interest in things that have no bearing on your existence? Asceticism aka eating unsalted peanuts and (store-band!) raisins is not what one needs to undertake in order to have a MULTITUDE of interests, at that. Thus, you presuppose that one can't be a foodie and an obsessive NBA fanatic, a vegan-world-class chef who never misses a court-side appearance of LBJ The King . . .2
Metaphors are created to symbolize our meaning for non-intrinsic goods, giving them greater psychological heft & emotional resonance.3
1,3Very interesting. So if I’m understanding you correctly you’re saying that, just by the definition of “metaphor,” those things that are necessary facets of life – food, sex, shelter, poop – cannot have metaphors. Of course metaphors abound with the fact that we eat and that we have sex, etc., but food and sex themselves, no metaphor there, is what you’re saying (I think). And I think you’re also saying that food and sex don’t need to have metaphors because the only (evolutionary) purpose of a metaphor is to heighten our appreciation of non-essential goods. Hmm, I’d never thought about that before. I feel like I need more evidence because I don’t really feel prepared to agree or disagree. But I think the analogy that I bust out at the end of this post might sort of respond to this.
2If I am anti-pleasure or ascetic, I am only slightly so. I am only anti-pleasure or ascetic to the extent that it interferes with what I consider to be worthier (i.e., more interesting) goals. You seem to be saying that there’s enough time to go around for us to have lots of interests, some banal, others grand. I’d say that’s only partially true. Every banal interest I pursue necessarily cuts into the limited time and energy I have to pursue less banal interests, and I’m only comfortable making that trade-off to a certain extent. Sometimes I just want straight-up pleasure, even at the expense of “worthier” goals, and that’s okay, but most of the time I don’t (at least not as a second-order desire, which is really what we’re talking about here).
Also, to clarify, I want to avoid an argumentative tone because I am not trying to convince anyone to become less snobbish w/r/t food (if I was, I’d employ a much heftier dose of mockery). I am merely trying to figure out why food snobbishness annoys me. Obviously, I didn’t consciously choose to be annoyed, and it may well be completely irrational that I am. I’m not sure that I found the answer yet, but I just want to be clear that I’m only exploring, not arguing.
+++
Here is Xan:
You're saying something like: A person's preferences depend on the information they receive, and if they were fed the truth about the universe, almost no one would care about fancy food anymore, according to their *own* preferences. If true, that would be a nice way of getting around Pavs' argument.1
But I don't think it is true. I think you're the outlier here. I think you are coming to terms with the notion of the universe not having an undercurrent of purpose, and you feel it pushing your thoughts in a particular direction, but to me it is an unusual direction. If anything, most people respond to this information by taking it as *justification* for pursuing whatever interests them, whatever they want to pursue, whatever they *would* have pursued if they didn't think they were supposed to follow someone else's plan for them.2
Your claim is way too strong. We have an incredible diversity of interests on this planet, and your reasoning suggests that if everyone could be fed a dose of truth about the universe, it would promptly either kill that diversity or dissuade people from pursuing it. If true, that is the single best argument I've ever heard for why more information would be a bad thing.3
*
By the way, I would be interested to hear more about your last paragraph. Our thoughts run on a brain. Sensory input delivers information from the outside world. For some kinds of sensory input, the brain also attaches "pleasure" to the experience of that information. Communication of information would seem to be orthogonal to the question of whether pleasure is *also* being attached to the communication of that information, no? (I think it might be bothering you that pleasure seems to be the primary goal of this exchange, rather than something like "understanding"? That's not a silly thing to say, but it's worth thinking more about your definition of art, maybe some other time).4
1Yes, that’s well-stated.
2That is a very interesting and important point, and I’m going to devote a separate post to it.
3I love the way you flipped this on me. My point was something like enlightened people wouldn’t mess around with stupid stuff and your point is that, if that’s true, enlightenment is stupid. You’ve heard me make a similar point often enough with my suspicion of Truth-seeking, and I think we’re finally getting to the heart of the issue: Enlightenment (ack, I hate that word; can we just call it realism?) might change preferences in a way that is detrimental to the individual or to society.
My challenge back to you: Detrimental in what sense? What’s the outcome that we care about? I suspect that you are thinking in terms of economic/GDP-type outcomes, which you also know I’m suspicious of. To bring this down a little out of the abstract, let’s say that more “realistic” people would have interests converge on topics like evolution, biology, and astronomy. Then the more “realistic” people the planet has, the lower the diversity quotient of ideas and the less idea sex that takes place leading to economic prosperity. But if we really understand ourselves to be vaporous transient consciousnesses in an incidental universe, where economic prosperity is only as good as the moments it doesn’t buy us, then why wouldn’t trying to understand the universe and our place in it be a goal more worthy of pursuing than economic prosperity?
4Excellent. You seem to be saying that swiss chard pancakes are still communicating information in the form of sensory stimuli.
My response: Information, sure. A message? Er, I don’t think so.
We’re getting thickly into semantics here, but there seems to be a crucial difference that I can’t put my finger on. (It may have something to do with intention or the ability to draw conclusions from the information, but that doesn’t quite feel right.)
Let me try it this way: My grandmother making her special jonathan apple sauce because she knows I love it, that’s a message. One that, by the way, has nothing to do with the food. There’s a metaphor there. On the other hand, making myself sweet-tart fresh mint sauce because I heard Lynne Rossetto Kasper talk about it on the radio and it sounds delicious, that’s nothing (that I can see) but pleasure-seeking. No metaphor.
It comes back to the DFW Theory of Aesthetics, which says that art is only interesting to the extent that it feels true (“rings psychic cherries in the communicate”). If there’s no message, no metaphor, then logically there’s nothing there that can feel true.
I suspect that the analogy I’m about to bust out is going to piss some people off. I kind of hope it does, but I also hope that after you’re done being pissed about it you will ask yourself – and tell me – why it’s not true. Here it is: Taking pride or interest in your eating of swiss chard pancakes is as absurd as taking pride or interest in your masturbation to softcore porn. You may think that it makes you sophisticated or interesting or sensitive, but actually you’re just getting off on a primal urge.
###
UPDATE: Here is part of Round 2 with Xan—what I think are his most valid and damning criticisms, with my responses below. The rest is in the comments section.
In any case though, I just don't think a dose of this truth would kill interest in the way you're suggesting. It didn't happen to me.
I think you indirectly hit on the weakest point of my “argument” with this. It’s easy for us to intellectually acknowledge that we are vaporous transient consciousnesses in an incidental universe, but to fully absorb that as an honest-to-Gaga truth, well, I’m not sure we can do that. This is especially speculative but I suspect there might even be biological safeguards preventing us from absorbing certain things as True, or at least preventing us from fully kicking our default naïve viewpoints. If we could absorb the facts of the universe as true, then I’d be comfortable predicting that it would kill a lot of our interests. Instead, we seem to only be able to approach it at the margin, and so it only kills our interests at the margin, and I think it actually does that, wouldn’t you say? I don’t think preferences are immune to new information. I’d bet that if Darwin’s theory didn’t come along until 200 years hence then you would be marginally less interested in having these conversations and marginally more interested in what you’re having for dinner.
If you buy that, then the earlier point still stands: If more info leads to more absorption of the facts of the universe and more absorption leads to a narrower set of interests, then more info might theoretically make things worse if “satisfaction with life” is the goal.
---
…there is a whole culture of foodies who actually care deeply about the logic of how different ingredients and flavors interact with each other.
Yes, good point. Maybe for them it’s not purely “what’s pleasurable” but a more thoughtful “what’s interesting and why.” That makes me feel better about this (except that I still don’t know why I’m annoyed by foodie-ism), but even if people are ruminating over flavor and ingredient interactions, it’s hard for me to see how there’s much of a metaphor there, but maybe I’m just dim and/or an existential asshole.
