I lived in Tokyo for three and a half years as a Monbusho research student and then as an employee of a Japanese software company. This was a wonderful, memorable time for me, although it was also punctuated by the frustration and aggravation of being an American in Japan. My wife, who is Japanese, reminds me that during the months just before I returned to the US I complained at length about living there. Just about all my discontent arose from an evaporating patience with the Japanese adverse to risk and challenge. This is a deep cultural trait, that has both long historical roots and widespread contemporary manifestations.
Conversely, Americans love challenge and embrace risk, and consequently we foster from a young age the personal independence and ambition that drives us to them. I have been home two years and already I find myself being swept up in "the rat race," although I can hardly even tell what rat race I am in. In the US we value an individual not necessarily on his or her character, but on his or her achievements. We are not in love with good Americans so much as we are with successful ones. Gates and Trump are admired and beloved icons of American capitalism not for what they stand for morally, spiritually, or intellectually (although to be fair Gates, unlike Trump, has made considerable charitable contributions) but for their self-made power and money.
In Japan success is much more a matter of professional or personal alliances and seniority than personal ambition. If I am not an especially successful person in Japan that's okay, because everyone knows that in large part my success, like their own, is beyond my control. To be sure, this certainly takes away the pressure to achieve we place on ourselves in the US. The Japanese work themselves hard, but more so out of a sense of commitment to the company than to one's future social progress. By contrast in the US, most of us work hard for the promotion. Here, personal interest supersedes everything. Although I very much enjoy living in a country where ambition is encouraged and rewarded, I find it disheartening that achievement, regardless of the means or ends, has become a virtue in its own right.
21 February 2005
19 February 2005
Are culinary judgments objective?
All animals eat, but only humans, as far as we know, make judgments on whether the food they eat is good. Dogs, monkeys and cats may have eating preferences but, as far as we know, they do not evaluate what they eat. Call this kind of evaluation culinary evaluation or, to be easier on the ears, culinary judgment. The sort of culinary judgment I have in mind is not grounded on the goodness of food for humans beings, that is, the nutritional value of food for humans beings. Nutrition may be connected to the sort of culinary goodness I am interested in, but it is not necessarily and may be perversely inversely related: the more nutritional the food, the worse the food. If culinary judgments were grounded solely on nutrition, then the culinary arts would be subsumed by the medical sciences. Since we frequently make culinary judgments quite independently of any knowledge or even belief regarding its nutritional value, there is a least a prima facie case for distinguishing the two.
A culinary judgment is a very complex judgment. We make one when, after taking a bite of sautéed foie gras, we deem it excellent or yummy. We make one when, after nibbling on some walnuts and mandarin orange with the foie gras, we say that that is a great pairing or that they go well together. We call a chef excellent or brilliant; oenophiles make judgments about when a wine is ready to drink or when it is too young; we sometimes make wide ranging judgments on the quality of an entire cuisine as compared to another type of cuisine, e.g. French vs. Italian. The question then is whether these types of judgments are objective? Can such judgments be true? Can someone be correct when making such judgments? If so, in what sense? To what extent does culture, upbringing, physiological make-up, education, or class influence or determine such judgments?
There is a great tension in our beliefs regarding this question. On the one hand, many have a great reluctance to tell others that they are wrong when they deem such and such food good (or bad). This would suggest the belief that culinary judgments are subjectively grounded, say, on someone’s subjective preferences. To say that caviar is good (or bad) is just to say that someone prefers it (or not). ‘To each according to his own tastes’ is often used to succinctly express this view. On the other hand, many consider food preparation an art, a craft. This would suggest, on the analogy with other crafts, that there is such a thing as excellence and fault with respect to how the craft is practiced. If a tailor cuts fabric in a certain way, the resulting suit can be judged excellent or shoddy. The judgment is grounded on standards of excellent tailoring. Mutatis mutandis excellent architecture, music and literary composition, carpentry, etc. If so, then to make a judgment contrary to the standards of culinary excellence is to make an incorrect judgment. On this view, someone who considers, for example, Sichuan cuisine bad can be simply incorrect.
There are many questions to be explored before we can make even a preliminary assessment of the relevant terrain. How deep is the dependency of culinary judgments on the senses? Is it possible to judge a dish good even though one despises its taste, smell and sight? What kind of objectivity is in question? Isn’t it absurd to claim that culinary judgments are objective in the same way scientific judgments are? Can convention and the history of a specific cuisine objectively ground judgments made about it in the way, one could argue, legal judgments are grounded in history and convention? How far can the craft analogy be taken? Is being a gourmand like being a tailor or an architect? Can the conflict of culinary judgments be adjudicated? Lastly: Who cares? Does the objectivity (or not) of culinary judgments matter?
A culinary judgment is a very complex judgment. We make one when, after taking a bite of sautéed foie gras, we deem it excellent or yummy. We make one when, after nibbling on some walnuts and mandarin orange with the foie gras, we say that that is a great pairing or that they go well together. We call a chef excellent or brilliant; oenophiles make judgments about when a wine is ready to drink or when it is too young; we sometimes make wide ranging judgments on the quality of an entire cuisine as compared to another type of cuisine, e.g. French vs. Italian. The question then is whether these types of judgments are objective? Can such judgments be true? Can someone be correct when making such judgments? If so, in what sense? To what extent does culture, upbringing, physiological make-up, education, or class influence or determine such judgments?
There is a great tension in our beliefs regarding this question. On the one hand, many have a great reluctance to tell others that they are wrong when they deem such and such food good (or bad). This would suggest the belief that culinary judgments are subjectively grounded, say, on someone’s subjective preferences. To say that caviar is good (or bad) is just to say that someone prefers it (or not). ‘To each according to his own tastes’ is often used to succinctly express this view. On the other hand, many consider food preparation an art, a craft. This would suggest, on the analogy with other crafts, that there is such a thing as excellence and fault with respect to how the craft is practiced. If a tailor cuts fabric in a certain way, the resulting suit can be judged excellent or shoddy. The judgment is grounded on standards of excellent tailoring. Mutatis mutandis excellent architecture, music and literary composition, carpentry, etc. If so, then to make a judgment contrary to the standards of culinary excellence is to make an incorrect judgment. On this view, someone who considers, for example, Sichuan cuisine bad can be simply incorrect.
There are many questions to be explored before we can make even a preliminary assessment of the relevant terrain. How deep is the dependency of culinary judgments on the senses? Is it possible to judge a dish good even though one despises its taste, smell and sight? What kind of objectivity is in question? Isn’t it absurd to claim that culinary judgments are objective in the same way scientific judgments are? Can convention and the history of a specific cuisine objectively ground judgments made about it in the way, one could argue, legal judgments are grounded in history and convention? How far can the craft analogy be taken? Is being a gourmand like being a tailor or an architect? Can the conflict of culinary judgments be adjudicated? Lastly: Who cares? Does the objectivity (or not) of culinary judgments matter?
01 February 2005
Why are crimes getting more perverse?
Today a nut case ran into the Oregon Senate chamber with a big knife and threatened to kill himself. Now, as after every "incident" these days, everyone's talking about what new security measures will be necessary for the capitol building. Up to this point there were none, apparently. At some point in the future we will live and breathe security. Surveillance will permeate our lives as much as the water we drink.
So why are crimes and vandalism getting more violent and ugly? Are people just more desperate and angry? Nah. Is our society producing more psychologically unstable individuals? Nah. Although we live in a society that can be sterile, unjust, polluted, artificial, and cruel, the real reason why crimes are more heinous now than ever is because acts of violence and law breaking are in a dialectic with law enforcement. Aggressive law enforcement and stricter laws beget more imaginative and desperate crimes, which beget more severe punishments and more prohibitions, and so on. Even if we do have fewer crimes now than before, they are unquestionably more extreme and bizarre. Hey, it's the war on terror in miniature!
Why didn't some nut storm the Senate chamber 25 years ago when every one was high and pissed off at the "establishment, man"? There have always been crazy, dangerous people, but could it have been that there were closer community bonds that kept antisocial behavior in check, that was more local and personal than any modern law enforcement system? Even if I may have a tendency to be serial rapist, chances are I am less likely to act on such dark impulses if I, or my family, knows everyone in the neighborhood. The act would be too personal and close to home.
These days, however, few of us really ever get to know our neighbors. And more often than not, we see people whom we don't know by default as obstacles, competitors to our personal happiness. What we consider to be our community is a geographically diffuse network of different social groups: the people I know from work, the dive shop, my friends I see movies with, the guys in my bands, my family members that live all over the place.
So why are crimes and vandalism getting more violent and ugly? Are people just more desperate and angry? Nah. Is our society producing more psychologically unstable individuals? Nah. Although we live in a society that can be sterile, unjust, polluted, artificial, and cruel, the real reason why crimes are more heinous now than ever is because acts of violence and law breaking are in a dialectic with law enforcement. Aggressive law enforcement and stricter laws beget more imaginative and desperate crimes, which beget more severe punishments and more prohibitions, and so on. Even if we do have fewer crimes now than before, they are unquestionably more extreme and bizarre. Hey, it's the war on terror in miniature!
Why didn't some nut storm the Senate chamber 25 years ago when every one was high and pissed off at the "establishment, man"? There have always been crazy, dangerous people, but could it have been that there were closer community bonds that kept antisocial behavior in check, that was more local and personal than any modern law enforcement system? Even if I may have a tendency to be serial rapist, chances are I am less likely to act on such dark impulses if I, or my family, knows everyone in the neighborhood. The act would be too personal and close to home.
These days, however, few of us really ever get to know our neighbors. And more often than not, we see people whom we don't know by default as obstacles, competitors to our personal happiness. What we consider to be our community is a geographically diffuse network of different social groups: the people I know from work, the dive shop, my friends I see movies with, the guys in my bands, my family members that live all over the place.
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