Ethics as Educated Taste

It would be hard to find a culture which did not distinguish better from worse. There are differences, of course, in how to construe better and worse. One culture might place commercial values at the center. Another might make respect for the elderly a centerpiece. Some may deal with the dead via burial, others via cremation.

What strikes outsiders immediately are the differences.  They are, after all, real. So real that people often overlook the

similarities.  

Donald Brown, an anthropologist, did as much as anyone to explore either outright similarities or overlapping and analogous patterns across cultures. Some of what he identified: communication via language, joke telling, crying; the presence of rituals, song, dance, jealousy, feasting, cosmetics; copulation taking place in private, privileged ways of caring for children, cooking.

Indeed cooking can serve as a kind of model. Actual cuisines, it is true, vary widely (differences are real).  At the same time, cooking along with its accompaniments (efforts made toward good taste, predictable meal times, manners). In other words, similarities are also real.

Differences and Overlaps.  General patterns and plenty of flexibility within them.  Hanging on to both is a challenge. People prefer a nice neat either/or: either ONE and only one correct way, or, admit that standards of better and worse simply cannot be discussed apart from what each culture has established.  

The neat either-or opposition works well when dealing with conceptual abstractions.  

Rigid either-or thinking depends on staying within conceptual purity (i.e. the idea "black" and the idea "white") while disregarding the more varied, and, yes, murky components of lived experience.

The dilemma-driven approach although satisfying for those who like neatness, is disastrous for thinking. After all, one side accepts that the proper answers are already there. The other thinks that whatever local groups decide should be the final word.  In either case, we are relieved from the hard work associated with intelligence: thinking seriously about ways to make things better in our own communities. With cooking as our paradigm we could rephrase this as thinking seriously about how to educate our tastes.

To be human is to be, as Linnaeus labelled us, homo sapiens, “man the taster.”  Okay, Linnaeus may have thought he was saying “man the wise one.”  

Still the term he chose, sapiens, from the Latin verb sapere, definitely connotes tasting, savoring. In addition, the tasting/wisdom overlap is considerable. Wisdom suggests the proper orientation in living. Another way of saying this: the proper arrangement and prioritization of tastes.

Those who think that it’s all subjective, don’t put much stock in the educability of taste. Why bother? There are no standards beyond individual predilections.   It is true that there are some strange combinations that will be embraced by somebody somewhere. Take the donut burger, AKA the Luther Vandross burger: patties of meat, cheese, bacon, and, here is the unique dimension, buns made from a doughnut, usually from Krispy Kreme. There is enough of a demand for these that Walmart sells a frozen version. Maybe somewhere, someone loves grapes dunked in

ketchup, or rhubarb soaked in vinegar.  Despite such outliers, certain patterns of acceptability emerge when it comes to tastes. Thinking in terms of ranges is probably a better way to go. Tastes will never converge toward a single pole. But this does not mean that, in general, anything goes.  “Thinking” should begin from this combination.

As a general rule there should be a few guidelines associated with thinking: avoid oversimplification, avoid short-cuts. Thinking aims at coming up with formulations that articulate the concrete situation in which we find ourselves. This aim can be frustrated by an ever present simplification which becomes a short-cut to avoid thinking, the two bin approach: either “there is only one objective model” or “it’s all subjective.”   

If de gustibus non disputandum were common practice, rather than a popular

slogan, then the two-bin approach might actually make sense. In fact, tastes can be and often are disputed. Picture two friends discussing the merits of various beers.  Tastes can also be educated. My first taste of lobster went badly (and I’m from Maine). As a youngster I much preferred a hamburger and fries. (Not the Luther Vandross burger, although previously frozen fries were just fine--always doused with plenty of ketchup.)

In general, thinking in terms of ranges rather than fixed alternatives allows a better take on what it means to differentiate in terms of values.  Most importantly, don’t buy into simplifications that encourage the avoidance of thinking. Most prominent excuse-making techniques to avoid: (1) the answer is already objectively there; (2) there are no real answers, it’s all up to the individual.

Green Bean Casserole:Friend or Foe?

Green bean casserole.  Source of major disagreement. Side A: this is one of the great  inventions of the American kitchen. Side B: this recipe represents American cuisine at  its worst.

Why bring up green bean casserole? Well, Thanksgiving's coming up, and green bean casserole is a popular Thanksgiving side dish. Also, Dorcas Reilly, the woman who oversaw its development at the Campbell Soup Company has just died.

“The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of the human race than the discovery of a star.” This, at least, was how the

gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin saw it.  Examples reinforce the claim: the discovery of a new star has little impact on life; but, pizza, hamburgers, mac ‘n cheese, hot fudge sundae--now those make a big difference.

What’s the controversy over green bean casserole?  One the positive side, the recipe offers great possibilities for tinkering and customizing.  It need not remain “pour factory-produced cans into a casserole.” Fresh beans can be used, ditto with  mushrooms, and onions. The sauce can be a “bechamel” (French names are always a plus for epicures).

On the negative side, and it is a big one, the recipe encourages “assembling” over “cooking,.”  The word “cooking” now means a lot more (and a lot less) than it used to. Michael Pollan made the point most clearly in  Cooked,

a point well summarized in an interview.

The upshot: a lot of activities we call  “cooking” are really “assembling.”

If humans, as the anthropologist Richard Wrangham has asserted, are the “cooking

animals,” then our humanity, to an important degree, depends on keeping up the artistry of cooking. This needn’t mean fancy, complicated dishes. One of my own favorite recipes is for Carbonade Flamande whose ingredients are beef, onions, flour, salt, pepper, thyme and beer.  

If what defines us is the physical activity of cooking, the more we move away from it, the further we remove ourselves from our humanity.   The move from cooking is part of a wider trend: the desire to secure results without old-fashioned effort. If I’m sitting at a piano bench, with a sheet of music in front of me, I can only play the music if I have undertaken lots of preliminary toil and training.  The satisfaction of successful playing comes from the combination of effort-and-result. The preliminary efforts of time, practice and concentration are also important in revealing and shaping character. In our “short-cut, it’s only the results that matter” world, character development suffers, as does the satisfaction of achievement that results from struggle. “Combine the contents of three cans” may get us a quick result, but at an important price: chipping away at what makes for the fullness or wholeness (“holiness” in religious terms) of a life.    

Cooking does not just impact the aesthetic possibilities associated with life (cultivating talent, working in a way that leads to  satisfactory culminations). It is also related to another important constituent of full humanity: liberty. Someone who can cook is actually free, i.e. really able to engage in the activity of preparing meals.   “Assemblers,” and, even more, “microwavers” have

subjugated themselves, made themselves subservient. It might not be the kind of dependency that goes by the name “addiction.” Still, the constant requirement for products from a factory means positioning oneself at the indentured extreme of the  independency-dependency continuum.

So, green bean casserole. Should it be loved or loathed? Once again a continuum has to be considered. At one end: fresh green beans, real mushrooms, cream, onions, lovingly (even if not with epicurean finesse) handled by someone who does real cooking.   At the other end: mere assemblage: empty the contents of three cans into a casserole. The latter, not surprisingly, in diminishing our capacities marks us ever more as indentured.

Why? (1) The emancipatory effects, i.e. the liberation of capacities tied to effort, are marginalized, if not abandoned outright.  (2) Once this shift has occurred, freedom is diminished. The use of factory products becomes more a necessity than a free choice. Creating a dependency that is almost like an addiction represents  a real limit on freedom. Assemblers are simply less free than cooks. This increase in dependency and decrease in freedom is, of course, what the good folks at Campbell’s sought in the first place.