How good taste attracts loyal customers
I studied her mysterious smile; the veil covering her hair; and that iconic gaze, which followed me around the room.
As others came and went, snapping their quick trophy photos, I stayed with her for nearly an hour. Try as I might, I couldn’t bring myself to love her.
“But this is Mona Lisa,” I thought to myself, “Leonardo da Vinci’s great masterpiece.”
It was my first time in Paris, and I was visiting the famed portrait in the Louvre Museum. I knew I should like it, I just didn’t. As I struggled to unlock the mystery, I found myself… underwhelmed.
It made me think: how can a work of art be profoundly moving for one person and fall flat for another?
It comes down to taste. Our taste determines a range of judgments we make every single day.
As Nietzsche put it, “All of life is a dispute over taste.”
Taste is an internal gauge of sensory experiences. Simply put, it’s our gut reaction. Our taste feels so instinctual that it’s tempting to think it’s innate — that good or bad, you’re born with a certain level of taste.
But where does taste really come from? And how, if at all, can we develop good taste?
