In Pursuit of Good Taste
One of the things a person needs to develop if they hope to move in polite society is good taste. But that begs the question of which sort of “polite society” they wish to move in, and what is this thing called good taste?
In December and January of 2020 my wife and I were in Tucson and went to a New Year’s Eve dinner with two friends, Joe and Donna. We didn’t know the hosts, Alan and Judy. Joe worked in a local non-profit and Judy was his boss. Two other couples we didn’t know were also there.
We arrived, had a couple of getting to know you glasses of Chianti, then sat down for dinner. The meal was spaghetti with tomato sauce and meat balls. Garlic toast on the side. The tomato sauce and meatballs were in a large bowl in the center of the table next to a bowl of spaghetti. Everybody dished up a generous helping, took a piece of toasted, well-garliced French bread, and sat down to eat. It was very good and we were busy relishing it…, until Alan began a story.
Alan had been an emergency room surgeon until five years earlier when he injured one of his hands and had to retired. He now spent his time indulging himself by making “D-grade adventure and fantasy videos.”
As we ate, he started to tell us about his latest production. More accurately, about the scene that had been the most difficult to film. In this scene, barbarians were sacking a village and in the final frames one of them was to slice his sword across a village woman’s stomach allowing her entrails to fall out. “I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to shoot a good evisceration” Alan said, warming to his topic.
He then proceeded to go into a five-minute description, in detail, of how he managed to film a woman being disemboweled. It involved purchasing several bags of offal from a local butcher arranging something like a belly pack that could be concealed under a costume. It had to be rigged so that at the right moment a line could be pulled to unzip both the stomach area of the costume and the offal stuffed pack. Alan said that it took several takes, but the results were worth it, entrails spilled onto the ground with sprays of blood.
A few of us were interested in the detail of this interesting project but others, especially the women, were looking down rather tentatively at their plates of spaghetti covered with meatballs and blood red tomato sauce.
At that moment, Alan and Judy’s daughter Meghan came in to the room in full grunge Goth attire. She said that she was going out to party with some friends. As she headed out the door, one of the other guests said “Have fun, be good.”
Alan said “Judy and I long ago realized that we could never get her to be good, so we’ve just tried to teach her good taste.”
Although the meal itself was tasty it’s not clear that regaling guests with the details of filming an evisceration while they are busy digging into a pile of spaghetti and meatballs is an example of good taste. But it does raise the question of what good taste might be.
Taste suggests a sense of what is fitting and, in evolutionary terms, finding a niche to fit into is a matter of survival; so, perhaps good taste is a way of surviving in a social group by fitting one’s expressions and actions within an appropriate socially accepted niche so that everything flows smoothly and no one is discomforted.
An important part of this would be to avoid being boring. Boring is not good taste. Discussing a disembowelment at dinner is certainly a way to avoid boring. A few mouths hung open, but nobody yawned.
Another term for taste might be couth, a person shows good taste by not being uncouth. The dictionary definition of uncouth is “crude, unrefined, awkward, clumsy, ungraceful.” Good taste, then, indicates refinement and sophistication. The proto-Indo-European root for uncouth is gno, meaning “to know.” A person who doesn’t know the social niceties may find themselves being uncouth. Does having good taste indicate that one knows how to act to maintaining a refined and sophisticated presence, both socially and in life. Or not? The Afghan Sufi writer Idries Shah wondered whether teaching a cannibal to eat with a knife and fork was really an improvement.
Refinement and sophistication are indicated by more than behavior. The Chinese art of feng shui comes to mind. Arranging a space so as to make it a pleasing and positive presence. Setting up a dining room for a pleasant dinner of spaghetti and meatballs, no gory pictures on the walls. Or, the way that a home is decorated for tasteful living.
In 1991 I purchased a Persian carpet at auction and spread it out in the living room of my apartment. Over the next couple of months, I noticed feelings of dis-ease in the room, and disharmony arising at times when visitors were present. Finally, I realized that it was the carpet. It bore a very energetic design and the energy that it radiated into the room magnified any disharmony that existed. By rearranging the room and changing the color scheme I managed to balance this out and the carpet is still on my floor today, bringing energy and good cheer into the room.
Is good taste a matter of producing a balance of energies?
Ah, but what about individual differences. Does the balance of energies that I produce appear as a tasteful balance to somebody else? If not, are they showing good taste in not mentioning this when they walk into my living room and grit their teeth as they bathe in what is to me a delightful ambiance? Our neighbors are redoing their kitchen and my wife finds what they are planning atrocious. She has the common sense not to mention this — she doesn’t have to cook in that kitchen.
Now I’ve introduced another term, common sense. Is it connected to good taste? If so, how? Is it common sense to cultivate good taste. Taste is one of the classic five senses. Saying that something is in good taste traces back to implications of a pleasant and tasty meal. No bitter aftertaste, and no digestive issues. Fun conversation, sans eviscerations, and good cheer. A banquet of the senses.
Perhaps it’s common sense to cultivate all of the senses, including taste. Different metaphors will arise, depending on the sense, but all will make sense in terms of the sense employed.
Smell is closely related to taste, but the metaphors are different. Einstein attributed his success in physics to having a good sense of smell. He could sniff out possibilities. On the other hand, there are things that just don’t smell right, that don’t pass the smell test. In such cases one might turn up one’s nose. As the saying goes, never get in a pissing contest with a skunk.
Farting in an elegant gathering would be uncouth but couthness, both as good taste and common sense, require that one not comment on hearing, or smelling this announcement of digestive turmoil. One overlooks the faux pas. By not mentioning or reacting we indulge the pretense of not seeing (or smelling as the case may be). Overlooking things can be the tasteful thing to do. We see more than we let on — it saves face and perhaps lives. Sometimes what we see beggers common sense.
It would seem that having second sight would allow one to act with common sense and in good taste, but common sense says that this depends on the clarity of the vision. Is it free of subjective distortion? After all, what you see is what you get (see my medium essay What We See is What We Get and What We Get is What We Are). And, of course, the neighbors have to be taken into account.
Often, it’s not seeing is believing but rather not seeing is forgetting — out of sight, out of mind, so when we encounter an old friend and are re-minded of our great times together, we might say that they are a sight for sore eyes; or, if it’s an unexpected phone call, exclaim that it’s good to hear your voice.
Good taste, however, suggests that some things heard also need to be overlooked. When it comes gossip, common sense tells us not to put much stock in things that are heard on the grapevine, especially if they lack good taste. Nevertheless, in order to tune in to what’s going on it’s important to keep an ear to the ground. In conversation, if a person asks “do you hear what I’m saying?” common courtesy, a mash-up of good taste and common sense, dictates taking a moment to see if they are saying something more than what we are hearing. We’re told that the best response to a fool is silence, and that silence is golden, but also that the squeaky wheel gets greased. And, when we see a friend in trouble we may lend a sympathetic ear, although common sense may warn us of dangers involved in reaching out and touching someone in this way, unless it is done tastefully.
Touch is problematic, taste-wise. To touch someone can mean asking them for a loan, which can be touchy. Even if that person has the Midas touch, common sense indicates that the touch needs to be done tastefully. Nobody wants to be an easy touch, and it’s neither common sense nor good taste to rub somebody the wrong way. A sob story, though, can be touching.
A forceful touch, on the other hand, is a hit, although not in theatre terms. That sort of hit may involve good or bad taste. In either case, it may be considered as cool, which is not the same as tasteful. If, in response to being hit upon, a hot chick gives a guy a cold shoulder he may be left with a bad taste in his mouth, even when she’s cool and acted within the bounds of good taste and common sense.
The unknown in this wandering search is what happened to Meghan after she left our meal and its queasy guests. Was she immersed in the smells of grass and hash, listening to hard rock and a flashing light show? Was she hit upon at a wild party? Did she use her acquired sense of good taste to decide whether or not to accept this uncouth form of sexual suggestion and, at the end of the evening, or perhaps early in the morning of the new year, did she return home to a plate of cold spaghetti and meatballs.
We haven’t captured a definition of good taste in this drunkard’s stroll, but perhaps we can take comfort in what was a forgone conclusion: there’s no accounting for taste. If so, then perhaps good taste is only found in how we react to the taste of others, bracketing out cannibalism, of course.
