Taste Acquisition Syndrome

I recently read Will Manidis’ Against Taste and found myself nodding along to much of that essay:

The taste thesis, at its deepest and most simple structure, reverses this order. It places man at the end of the chain of creation, evaluating what has already been generated, rather than at the beginning, participating in the generation itself. It makes man what he has been slowly becoming for a century: a critic of creation rather than a co-creator. A consumer at his core.

This is taste in its most terminal form. The collector doesn’t look at the painting and judge it. The collector reads the critic, then looks at the painting through the critic’s eyes. The painting is not an object in its own right but a theory to be validated. The taste is not in the looking. The taste is in knowing which theory is fashionable to subscribe to.

Strip the transcendent out and what remains is raw consumption. You are no longer participating in a project that exceeds you. You are furnishing a room. The judgment may be exquisite. The room may be beautiful. But the activity has no telos. It is not pointed at heaven. It is not even pointed at the future. It is pointed at a living room wall.

This morning, I thought it connected nicely to Gear Acquisition Syndrome, in the sense that “taste” is thought of as intellectual acquisition. (Hence, the title of this post.) Acquiring taste, knowing the right brand/software/band/media/etc., has become separate from creation.

At a meta-level, this is my first “note”, a new section of my site inspired by notes.jim-nielsen.com, where I’ll typically point elsewhere on the ’net to something I think is worth your time. Partially inspired by two more links that have been punching around in my head the last little while:

• Tom MacWright’s Accidental anonymity, arguing that too many people online aren’t putting themselves out there, flaws and all. I’m certainly imperfect and this blog so far is a record of it; I cringe at many of my early posts and still have trepidation before letting anything rip on the RSS feed
• Justin Duke’s Why I’m a film blogger now, specifically his bit about “avoiding consumption for consumption’s sake”:

… a rule I set for myself a few years ago was that if I was going to consume anything — any media at all — I would have to write myself a little book report at the end of it, to avoid consumption for consumption’s sake.

This is my attempt to get out more thoughts that aren’t necessarily “blog” shaped (and most future posts will probably be a link or two (not four) with less exposition than this one).